THE

POETICAL WORKS

OF

SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE.

Juvenile Poems.

PREFACE.

COMPOSITIONS resembling those here collected are
not unfrequently condemned for their querulous
Egotism. But Egotism is to be condemned then only
when it offends against time and place, as in a His-
tory or an Epic Poem. To censure it in a Monody
or Sonnet is almost as absurd as to dislike a circle
for being round. Why then write Sonnets or Mono-
dies? Because they give me pleasure when perhaps
nothing else could. After the more violent emotions
of Sorrow, the mind demands amusement, and can
find it in employment alone: but, full of its late suf-
ferings, it can endure no employment not in some
measure connected with them. Forcibly to turn
away our attention to general subjects a painful
and most often an unavailing effort.

But O how grateful to a wounded heart
The tale of Misery to impart-
From others' eyes bid artless sorrows flow,
And raise esteem upon the base of Woe!

Shaw.

impelled to seck for sympathy; but a Poet's feelings
are all strong. Quicquid amet valde amat. Akenside
therefore speaks with philosophical accuracy when
he classes Love and Poetry, as producing the same
effects:

Love and the wish of Poets when their tongue
Would teach to others' bosoms, what so charms
Their own.

Pleasures of Imagination. There is one species of Egotism which is truly disgusting; not that which leads us to communicate our feelings to others but that which would reduce the feelings of others to an identity with our own. The Atheist, who exclaims "pshaw!" when he glances his eye on the praises of Deity, is an Egotist: an old man, when he speaks contemptuously of Loveverses, is an Egotist: and the sleek Favorites of Fortune are Egotists, when they condemn all "melancholy, discontented" verses. Surely, it would be candid not merely to ask whether the poem pleases ourselves, but to consider whether or no there may not be others, to whom it is well calculated to give an innocent pleasure.

The communicativeness of our Nature leads us to describe our own sorrows; in the endeavor to de- I shall only add, that each of my readers will, I scribe them, intellectual activity is exerted; and hope, remember, that these Poems on various subfrom intellectual activity there results a pleasure, jects, which he reads at one time and under the inwhich is gradually associated, and mingles as a cor-fluence of one set of feelings, were written at differrective, with the painful subject of the description. ent times and prompted by very different feelings; "True!" (it may be answered) "but how are the and therefore that the supposed inferiority of one PUBLIC interested in your sorrows or your Descrip- Poem to another may sometimes be owing to the tion?" We are for ever attributing personal Unities temper of mind in which he happens to peruse it. to imaginary Aggregates. What is the PUBLIC, but a term for a number of scattered individuals? of whom as many will be interested in these sorrows, as have experienced the same or similar.

Holy be the lay

Which mourning soothes the mourner on his way. If I could judge of others by myself, I should not hesitate to affirm, that the most interesting passages are those in which the Author develops his own feelings? The sweet voice of Cona* never sounds So sweetly, as when it speaks of itself; and I should almost suspect that man of an unkindly heart, who could read the opening of the third book of the Paradise Lost without peculiar emotion. By a Law of our Nature, he, who labors under a strong feeling, is

• Ossian.

My poems have been rightly charged with a pro fusion of double-epithets, and a general turgidness I have pruned the double-epithets with no sparing hand; and used my best efforts to tame the swell and glitter both of thought and diction.* This latter

Without any feeling of anger, I may yet be allowed to express some degree of surprise, that after having run the critical gauntlet for a certain class of faults, which I had, viz. a too ornate and elaborately poetic diction, and nothing having come before the judgment-seat of the Reviewers during the long interval, I should for at least seventeen years, quarter after quarter, have been placed by them in the foremost rank of the proscribed, and made to abide the brunt of abuse and ridicule for faults directly opposite, viz. bald and prosaic language, and an affected simplicity both of matter and manner -faults which assuredly did not enter into the character of my compositions.-Literary Life, i 51. Published 1817

A

And when thou lovest thy pale orb to shroud C
Behind the gather'd blackness lost on high; &
And when thou dartest from the wind-rent cloud
Thy placid lightning o'er the awaken'd sky
Ah such is Hope' as changeful and as fair
Now dimly peering on the wistful sight;
Now hid behind the dragon-wing'd Despair
But soon emerging in her radiant might,
She o'er the sorrow-clouded breast of Care
Sails, like a meteor kindling in its flight.

TIME, REAL AND IMAGINARY.

fault however had insinuated itself into my Religious Musings with such intricacy of union, that sometimes I have omitted to disentangle the weed from the fear of snapping the flower. A third and heavier accusation has been brought against me, that of obscurity; but not, I think, with equal justice. An Author is obscure, when his conceptions are dim and imperfect, and his language incorrect, or unappropriate, or involved. A poem that abounds in allusions, like the Bard of Gray, or one that impersonates high and abstract truths, like Collins's Ode on the poetical character, claims not to be popularbut should be acquitted of obscurity. The deficiency is in the Reader. But this is a charge which every poet, whose imagination is warm and rapid, must expect from his contemporaries. Milton did not escape it; and it was adduced with virulence against Gray and Collins. We now hear no more of it: not that their poems are better understood at present, than they were at their first publication; but their fame is established; and a critic would accuse himself of frigidity or inattention, who should profess not to understand them. But a living writer is yet sub judice; and if we cannot follow his conceptions or enter into his feelings, it is more consoling to our pride to consider him as lost beneath, than as soaring above us. If any man expect from my poems the O'er rough and smooth with even step he pass'd, same easiness of style which he admires in a drink- And knows not whether he be first or last. ing-song, for him I have not written. Intelligibilia,

non intellectum adfero.

I expect neither profit nor general fame by my writings; and I consider myself as having been amply repaid without either. Poetry has been to me its own "exceeding great reward:" it has soothed my afflictions; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared solitude: and it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the Good and the Beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me. S. T. C.

JUVENILE POEMS.

GENEVIEVE.

MAID of my Love, sweet Genevieve!
In beauty's light you glide along :
Your eye is like the star of eve,
And sweet your voice, as seraph's song.
Yet not your heavenly beauty gives
This heart with passion soft to glow:
Within your soul a voice there lives!
It bids you hear the tale of woe.
When sinking low the sufferer wan
Beholds no hand outstretch'd to save,
Fair, as the bosom of the swan
That rises graceful o'er the wave,
I've seen your breast with pity heave,
And therefore love I you, sweet Genevieve!

AN ALLEGORY.

On the wide level of a mountain's head
(I knew not where, but 't was some faery place
Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread,
Two lovely children run an endless race,
A sister and a brother!

This far outstript the other;
Yet ever runs she with reverted face,
And looks and listens for the boy behind:
For he, alas! is blind!

MONODY ON THE DEATH OF
CHATTERTON.

O WHAT a wonder seems the fear of death,
Seeing how gladly we all sink to sleep,
Babes, Children, Youths and Men,
Night following night for threescore years and ter
But doubly strange, where life is but a breath
To sigh and pant with, up Want's rugged steep.

Away, Grim Phantom! Scorpion King, away
Reserve thy terrors and thy stings display
For coward Wealth and Guilt in robes of state
Lo! by the grave I stand of one, for whom
A prodigal Nature and a niggard Doom
(That all bestowing, this withholding all)
Made each chance knell from distant spire or dome
Sound like a seeking Mother's anxious call,
Return, poor Child! Home, weary Truant, home!

Thee, Chatterton! these unblest stones protect
From want, and the bleak freezings of neglect.
Too long before the vexing Storm-blast driven,
Here hast thou found repose! beneath this sod!
Thou! O vain word! thou dwell'st not with the clod
Amid the shining Host of the Forgiven
Thou at the throne of Mercy and thy God
The triumph of redeeming Love dost hymn
(Believe it, O my soul!) to harps of Seraphim.

Yet oft, perforce (t is suffering Nature's call,)
I weep, that heaven-born Genius so shall fall;
And oft, in Fancy's saddest hour, my soul
Averted shudders at the poison'd bowl.

Now groans my sickening heart, as still I view
Thy corse of livid hue;

Now indignation checks the feeble sigh,
Or flashes through the tear that glistens in mine eye.