The Blossoming of the solitary Date tree. 173 190 I12 Allegoric Vision [Prose] APPENDIX J' 534 Anderson, my Jo, John.' [Prose The Garden of Boccaccio THE POETICAL WORKS OF S. T. COLE- 8vo. Vol. I. pp. xiv.; 288. Vol. II. PREFACE [Same as in 1829.] CONTENTS [All the pieces contained in the edition of 1829, with the addition of sixty-six pieces not previously collected. Of these sixty-six, forty-eight then appeared in print for the first time. There were also included (in the second volume) two pieces, not by Coleridge, introduced by the following note: Anxious to associate the name of a most dear and honored friend with my own, I solicited and obtained the permission of Professor J. H. GREEN to permit the insertion of the two following poems, by him composed. S. T. COLE200 RIDGE.' These two poems-Morning invitation to a child, and Consolations of a Maniac continued to be included 204 ridge, and will have an additional interest ST. MARK'S COLLEGE, Chelsea, PREFACE TO THE PRESENT As a chronological arrangement of Poetry in completed collections is now beginning to find general favour, pains have been taken to follow this method in the present Edition of S. T. Coleridge's Poetical and Dramatic Works, as far as circumstances permitted— that is to say, as far as the date of composition of each poem was ascertainable, and as far as the plan could be carried out without effacing the classes into which the Author had himself distributed his most important poetical publication, the 'Sibylline Leaves,' namely, POEMS OCCASIONED BY POLITICAL EVENTS, OR FEELINGS CONNECTED WITH THEM; LOVE POEMS; MEDITATIVE POEMS IN BLANK VERSE; ODES AND MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. On account of these impediments, together with the fact, that many a poem, such as it appears in its ultimate form, is the growth of different periods, the agreement with chronology in this Edition is approximative rather than perfect yet in the majority of instances the date of each piece has been made out, and its place fixed accordingly. In another point of view also, the Poems have been distributed with relation to time: they are thrown into three broad groups, representing, first the Youth, secondly, the Early Manhood and Middle Life,thirdly, the Declining Age of the Poet; and it will be readily perceived that each have; but it is not the clear, bright, mounting fire of his earlier poetry, conceived and executed when he and youth were housemates still.' In the course of a very few years after three-and-twenty all his very finest poems were produced; his twentyfifth year has been called his annus mirabilis. To be a Prodigal's favourite then, worse truth! a Miser's pensioner,' is the lot of Man. In respect of poetry, Coleridge was a Prodigal's favourite,' more, perhaps, than ever Poet was before. [The poems] produced before the Author's twenty-fourth year [1796], devoted as he was to the soft strains' of Bowles, have more in common with the passionate lyrics of Collins and the picturesque wildness of the pretended Ossian, than with the welltuned sentimentality of that Muse which the overgrateful poet has represented as his earliest inspirer. For the young they will ever retain a peculiar charm, because so fraught with the joyous spirit of youth; and in the minds of all readers that feeling which disposes men 'to set the bud above the rose full-blown' would secure them an interest, even if their intrinsic beauty and sweetness were less adequate to obtain it. That of 1834, the last year of his earthly sojourning, a period when his thoughts were wholly engrossed, so far as the decays of his frail outward part left them free for intellectual pursuits and speculations, by a grand scheme of Christian Philosophy, to the enunciation of which in a long projected work his chief thoughts and aspirations had for many years been directed, was arranged mainly, if not entirely, at the discretion of his earliest Editor, H. N. Coleridge, who, not to mention the boon he has conferred on the public in preserving so valuable a record of his Uncle's conversation as is contained in the Table Talk of S. T. Coleridge, performed his task in editing The Friend, The Literary Remains, The Church and State and Lay Sermons, and The Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, in a manner which must ever procure him sentiments of gratitude from all who prize the writings of Coleridge. Such alterations only have been made in this final arrangement of the Poetical and Dramatic Works of S. T. Coleridge, by those into whose charge they have devolved, as they feel assured, both the Author himself and his earliest Editor would at this time find to be either necesThe observations and sary or desirable. experience of eighteen years, a period long enough to bring about many changes in literary opinion, have satisfied them that the immature essays of boyhood and adolescence, not marked with any such prophetic note of genius as certainly does belong to the four school-boy poems they have retained, tend to injure the general effect of a body of poetry. That a writer, especially a writer of verse, should keep out of sight his third-rate performances, is now become a maxim with critics; for they are not, at the worst, effectless: they have an effect, that of diluting and weakening, to the reader's feelings, the general power of the collection. Mr. Coleridge himself con stantly, after 1796, rejected a certain portion of his earliest published Juvenilia: never printed any attempts of his boyhood, except those four with which the present publication commences; 1 and there can be 1 First Advent of Love [Love's first Hope, p. 193], Genevieve, The Raven, and Time, Real and Imaginary.-ED. It must be added, that time has robbed of their charm certain sportive effusions of Mr. C.'s later years, which were given to the public, in the first gloss and glow of novelty in 1834, and has proved that, though not devoid of the quality of genius, they possess, upon the whole, not more than an ephemeral interest. These the Editors have not scrupled to omit on the same grounds and in the same confidence that has been already explained. Four short pieces only have been added, the third and ninth Sonnets 1 (pages 37 and 40), from the edition of 1796, the 'DayDream' (page 196),2 from the Appendix to Coleridge's Essays on his own Times,' and the Hymn (page 281), which is now printed for the first time. ADVERTISEMENT THE last authorised edition of S. T. Coleridge's Poems, published by Mr. Moxon in 1852, bears the names of Derwent and Sara Coleridge, as joint editors. . . . I shared in the responsibility, but cannot claim any share in the credit of the undertaking. This edition I propose to leave intact as it came from her own hands. I wish it to remain as one among other monuments of her fine taste, her solid judgment, and her scrupulous conscientiousness. A few pieces of some interest appear, however, to have been overlooked. Two characteristic sonnets, not included in any former edition of the Poems, have been preserved in an anonymous work, entitled 'Letters, Recollections, and Conversations |
