1

II

It is practically a reproduction of the tame the swell and glitter both of thought omitted opening paragraph. -ED.]

and diction. This latter fault however had insinuated itself into my Religious

Musings' with such intricacy of union, IF I could judge of others by myself, I that sometimes I have omitted to disenshould not hesitate to affirm, that the most tangle the weed from the fear of snapping interesting passages in our most interesting the flower. A third and heavier accusaPoems are those in which the author de- tion has been brought against me, that of velopes his own feelings. The sweet voice obscurity ; but not, I think, with equal jusof Conal never sounds so sweetly as when tice. An Author is obscure when his conit speaks of itself; and I should almost ceptions are dim and imperfect, and his suspect that man of an unkindly heart, who language incorrect, or unappropriate, or could read the opening of the third book of involved. A poem that abounds in alluthe Paradise Lost without peculiar emotion. sions, like the · Bard' of Gray, or one that By a law of our Nature, he, who labours impersonates high and abstract truths, under a strong feeling, is impelled to seek like Collins's ' Ode on the poetical characfor sympathy ; but a Poet's feelings are all ter,' claims not to be popular—but should strong. Quicquid amet valde amat. Aken- be acquitted of obscurity. The deficiency side therefore speaks with philosophical is in the Reader. But this is a charge accuracy when he classes Love and Poetry, which every poet, whose imagination is as producing the same effects :

warm and rapid, must expect from his 'Love and the wish of Poets when their tongue

contemporaries. Milton did not escape it; Would teach to others' bosoms what so charms

and it was adduced with virulence against Their own.'—Pleasures of Imagination. 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 estabI SHALL only add that each of my readers

lished ; and a critic would accuse himself will, I hope, remember that these poems on various subjects, which he reads at one time

of frigidity or inattention, who should proand under the influence of one set of feel

fess not to understand them. But a living ings, were written at different times and

writer is yet sub judice ; and if we cannot prompted by very different feelings; and

follow his conceptions or enter into his therefore that the supposed inferiority of feelings, it is more consoling to our pride

to consider him as lost beneath, than as one poem to another may sometimes be

If any man expect owing to the temper of mind in which he soaring above, us. happens to peruse it.

from my poems the same easiness of style

which he admires in a drinking-song, for PREFACE TO THE SECOND

him I have not written. Intelligibilia,

non intellectum adfero. EDITION

I expect neither profit nor general fame I RETURN my acknowledgments to the by my writings ; and I consider myself as different Reviewers for the assistance, which having been amply repayed without either. they have afforded me, in detecting my Poetry has been to me its own `exceeding poetic deficiencies. I have endeavoured great reward': it has soothed my afflicto avail myself of their remarks: one tions; it has multiplied and refined my third of the former Volume I have omitted, enjoyments; it has endeared solitude; and and the imperfections of the republished it has given me the habit of wishing to part must be considered as errors of taste,

discover the Good and the Beautiful in all not faults of carelessness. My poems have that meets and surrounds me. been rightly charged with a profusion of

There were inserted in my former Edidouble-epithets, and a general turgidness. tion, a few Sonnets of my Friend and old I have pruned the double-epithets with no School-fellow, CHARLES LAMB. He has sparing hand ; and used my best efforts to

now communicated to me a complete Col1 Ossian.

lection of all his Poems; quæ qui non prorsus amet, illum omnes et Virtutes et did (and still do) perceive a certain likeVeneres odere. My friend CHARLES ness between the two stories ; but certainly LLOYD has likewise joined me; and has not a sufficient one to justify my assertion. contributed every poem of his, which he I feel it my duty, therefore, to apologize to deemed worthy of preservation. With the Author and the Public, for this rashrespect to my own share of the Volume, I ness; and my sense of honesty would not have omitted a third of the former Edition, have been satisfied by the bare omission of and added almost an equal number. The the note. No one can see more clearly Poems thus added are marked in the Con- the littleness and futility of imagining tents by Italics.

S. T. C. plagiarisms in the works of men of Genius ; STOWEY, May 1797.

but nemo omnibus horis sapit ; and my

mind, at the time of writing that note, was [This volume included a 'SUPPLEMENT,' sick and sore with anxiety, and weakened to which was prefixed the following :-) through much suffering. I have not the

most distant knowledge of Mr. Rogers, ADVERTISEMENT

except as a correct and elegant Poet. If I HAVE excepted the following Poems any of my readers should know him perfrom those, which I had determined to omit. sonally, they would oblige me by informSome intelligent friends particularly re-ing him that I have expiated a sentence quested it, observing that what most de- of unfounded detraction, by an unsolicited lighted me when I was young in writing and self-originating apology. poetry would probably best please those Having from these motives re-admitted who are young in reading poetry : and a two, and those the longest of the poems I man must learn to be pleased with a sub- had omitted, I yielded a passport to the ject, before he can yield that attention to three others, which were recommended by it, which is requisite in order to acquire a the greatest number of votes. There are just taste.' I however was fully convinced, some lines too of Lloyd's and Lamb's in that he, who gives to the press what he this Appendix. They had been omitted in does not thoroughly approve in his own the former part of the volume, partly by closet, commits an act of disrespect, both accident; but I have reason to believe that against himself and his fellow - citizens. the Authors regard them, as of inferior The request and the reasoning would not, merit; and they are therefore rightly placed, therefore, have influenced me, had they where they will receive some beauty from not been assisted by other motives. The their vicinity to others much worse. first in order of these verses, which I have thus endeavoured to reprieve from imme

CONTENTS diate oblivion, was originally addressed [Coleridge's portion only. Titles of poems not * To the Author of Poems published in 1796 are printed in italics.] anonymously, at Bristol.' A second edi,

A tion of these poems has lately appeared POEMS by S. T. COLERIDGE

Page in

present with the Author's name prefixed ; and I

Edition. could not refuse myself the gratification of Dedication [to the Rev. Geo. Coleseeing the name of that man among my ridge] poems, without whose kindness they would Preface to the First Edition

539 probably have remained unpublished ; and Preface to the Second Edition

540 to whom I know myself greatly and vari- Ode to the New Year ously obliged, as a Poet, a Man and a Monody on Chatterton

61 Christian.

Songs of the Pixies The second is entitled “An Effusion on The Rose

23 an Autumnal Evening, written in early The Kiss

30 youth.' In a note to this poem I had To a young Ass

35 asserted that the tale of Florio in Mr. Domestic Peace

33 Rogers' “ Pleasures of Memory' was to be The Sigh

29 found in the 'Lochleven' of Bruce, I Epitaph on an Infant

145

81

78

21

6

.

46

Page in

Page in present

present Edition.

Édition. Lines on the Man of Ross'.

33
On an Autumnal Evening

24 to a beautiful Spring

24
In the manner of Spencer

46 on the Death of a Friend

35
The Composition of a Kiss [ Kisses

23 To a Young Lady [with a poem on To an Infant

44 the French Revolution]

6 On the Christening of a Friend's To a Friend, with an unfinished Poem

37
Child

83 SONNETS

Among POEMS BY CHARLES LLOYD' Introduction to the Sonnets

542 To W. L. Bowles .

Introductory Sonnet [to Poems on

41 On a Discovery made too late

the Death of Priscilla Farmer'

34 On Hope [ Thou gentle Look'

- the sonnet beginning The

23 To the River Otter

piteous sobs that choak the Vir23

68 On Brockly Comb.

gin's breath']. To an Old Man ['Sweet Mercy!' 45

The 'SONNETS' in this volume were Sonnet ['Pale Roamer ']

32 To Schiller [To the Author of The preceded by a half-title :Robbers 'l

34 On the Birth of a Son [ Oft o'er my

SONNETS attempted in the manner of

the Rev. W. L. Bowles. brain,' etc.)

66 On first seeing my Infant [. Charles !

Non ita certandi cupidus, quam propter my slow heart,' etc.]

66

amorem Ode to Sara [Written at Shurton Bars] 47

Quod te IMITARI aveo. LUCRET.
Composed at Clevedon ['Tne Eolian
Harp'] .

and by the following :

49 On leaving a Place of Residence

INTRODUCTION TO THE ['Low was our pretty Cot'] 52 On an unfortunate Woman ['Myrtle

SONNETS leaf that, ill besped ']

The composition of the Sonnet has been On observing a Blossom .

63 regulated by Boileau in his Art of Poetry, The Hour when we shall meet again

47 and since Boileau, by William Preston, in Lines to C. Lloyd

the elegant preface to his Amatory Poems : Religious Musings.

53 the rules, which they would establish, are

founded on the practice of Petrarch. I SUPPLEMENT)

have never yet been able to discover sense, Advertisement

541

nature, or poetic fancy in Petrarch's poems; Lines to Joseph Cottle

50

they appear to me all one cold glitter of 1 The · Supplement was an intention formed heavy conceits and metaphysical abstracas early as November 1, 1796. In a letter of that tions. 1 However, Petrarch, although not date to Thomas Poole, Coleridge, after detailing the poems which would form his second edition, an asterisk [*] were not inserted even in the 'Supwrites :—'Then another title-page with Juvenilia plement, and that they were replaced by four on it, and an advertisement signifying that the which had been condemned to death. poems were retained by the desire of some friends, 1 A piece of petulant presumption, of which I but that they are to be considered as being in the should be more ashamed if I did not flatter myAuthor's own opinion of very inferior merit. In self that it stands alone in my writings. The this sheet will be *Absence—*La Fayette—*Ge- best of the joke is that at the time I wrote it, I nevieve _*Kosciusko —*Autumnal Moon --*To did not understand a word of Italian, and could the Nightingale-Imitation of Spenser—Poem therefore judge of this divine Poet only by bald written in Early Youth [An Autumnal Evening). translations of some half-dozen of his Sonnets. All the others will be finally and totally omitted.' (MS. Note by S. T. C. in a copy of the edition -Biog. Lit. Biog. Supp. (1847, ii. 377). It will of 1797, now in the possession of Mr. Frederick be observed that the poems I have marked with | Locker.) [Note in edition of 1877.]

32

the inventor of the Sonnet, was the first mesticate with the heart, and become, as it who made it popular; and his countrymen were, a part of our identity. have taken his poems as the model. Respecting the metre of a Sonnet, the Charlotte Smith and Bowles are they who Writer should consult his own confirst made the Sonnet popular among the venience. — Rhymes, many or few, or no present English : I am justified therefore rhymes at all—whatever the chastity of his by analogy in deducing its laws from their ear may prefer, whatever the rapid excompositions.

pression of his feelings will permit; -all The Sonnet then is a small poem, in these things are left at his own disposal. which some lonely feeling is developed. It A sameness in the final sound of its words is limited to a particular number of lines, is the great and grievous defect of the in order that the reader's mind having ex

Italian language. That rule, therefore, pected the close at the place in which he which the Italians have established, of finds it, may rest satisfied ; and that so the exactly four different sounds in the Sonnet, poem may acquire, as it were, a Totality, seems to have arisen from their wish to -in plainer phrase, may become a Whole. have as many, not from any dread of findIt is confined to fourteen lines, because as ing more. But surely it is ridiculous to some particular number is necessary, and make the defect of a foreign language a that particular number must be a small reason for our not availing ourselves of one one, it may as well be fourteen as any other of the marked excellencies of our own. number. When no reason can be adduced · The Sonnet,' says Preston, 'will ever be against a thing, Custom is a sufficient cultivated by those who write on tender, reason for it. Perhaps, if the Sonnet were pathetic subjects. It is peculiarly adapted comprised in less than fourteen lines, it to the state of a man violently agitated by would become a serious Epigram ; if it ex- a real passion, and wanting composure tended to more, it would encroach on the and vigor of mind to methodize his province of the Elegy. Poems, in which

Poems, in which thought. It is fitted to express a momentno lonely feeling is developed, are not ary burst of passion,' etc. Now, if there Sonnets because the Author has chosen to be one species of composition more difficult write them in fourteen lines : they should and artificial than another, it is an English rather be entitled Odes, or Songs, or In- Sonnet on the Italian Model. Adapted to scriptions. The greater part of Warton's the agitations of a real passion ! Express Sonnets are severe and masterly likenesses momentary bursts of feeling in it! I should of the style of the Greek επίγραμματα. sooner expect to write pathetic Axes or

In a Sonnet then we require a develop- pour forth Extempore Eggs and Altars! ment of some lonely feeling, by whatever But the best confutation of such idle rules cause it may have been excited ; but those is to be found in the Sonnets of those who Sonnets appear to me the most exquisite, have observed them, in their inverted in which moral Sentiments, Affections, or sentences, their quaint phrases, and inFeelings, are deduced from, and associated congruous mixture of obsolete and Spenwith, the Scenery of Nature. Such com- serian words : and when, at last, the positions generate a kind of thought highly thing is toiled and hammered into fit favourable to delicacy of character. They shape, it is in general racked and tortured create a sweet and indissoluble union Prose rather than any thing resembling between the intellectual and the material world. Easily remembered from their The Sonnet has been ever a favourite briefness, and interesting alike to the eye species of composition with me; but I am and the affections, these are the poems conscious that I have not succeeded in it. which we can lay up in our heart and From a large number I have retained such our soul,' and repeat them ‘when we walk only as seemed not beneath mediocrity. by the way, and when we lie down, and Whatever more is said of them, ponamus when we rise up. Hence the Sonnets of lucro. Bowles derive their marked superiority over all other Sonnets ; hence they do

Poetry.