33 BROAD-BREASTED Pollards, with broad- Describebranching heads. 34 'TWAS sweet to know it only possibleSome wishes cross'd my mind and dimly cheer'd it And one or two poor melancholy Pleasures In these, the pale unwarming light of Hope Silv'ring their flimsy wing, flew silent by, Moths in the moonlight. 35 Behind the thin 38 the never-bloomless Furze-and the transition to the Gordonia Lasianthus. [Which is done at great length, in prose. "The never-bloomless furze" occurs in the sixth line of Fears in Solitude.-ED.] 39 The sunshine lies on the cottage-wall, A-shining thro' the snow. 40 A maniac in the woods-She crosses heedlessly the woodman's path-scourg'd Grey cloud that cover'd but not hid the by rebounding boughs. sky [Compare this with discarded stanza in Intro. to the Tale of the Dark Ladié' ['Love'], as printed in the Morning Post, Dec. 21, 1799. See Note 123.' And how he cross'd the woodman's paths, Thro' briars and swampy mosses beat ; How bows rebounding scourg'd his limbs, And low stubs gor'd his feet.-ED.] 4I SABBATH-DAY From the Miller's mossy wheel the water-drops dripp'd leisurely. 42 The merry nightingale That crowds, and hurries, and precipi tates With fast thick warble his delicious notes [and so on, down to 'Of all its music' -the passage verbatim et literatim as it has appeared in all the editions of The Nightingale: a Conversation Poem. -ED.] 67 EPILOGUE TO 'THE RASH CONJURER' AN UNCOMPOSED POEM Two wedded hearts, if ere were such, Across whose thin partition-wall The builder left one narrow rent, We ask and urge-(here ends the story!) | A joy with itself at strife— All Christian Papishes to pray That the unhappy Conjurer may, Instead of Hell, be put in Purgatory,— For there, there's hope ; Long live the Pope! Remains, i. 52. 68 O TH' Oppressive, irksome weight 1805. 69 1805. EPIGRAM ON KEPLER FROM THE GERMAN No mortal spirit yet had clomb so high For very want! the Minds alone he fed, Fann'd the calm air upon the brow of Sweet tales, and true, that lull me into The worst the world can wreak on methe worst That can make Life indifferent, yet disturb His own fair countenance, his kingly fore head, His tender smiles, love's day-dawn on his lips, With whisper'd discontent the dying At the same moment in his steadfast eye The sense, and spirit, and the light divine, prayer I have beheld the whole of all, wherein That hostage that the world had in its keeping Given by me as a pledge that I would live That hope of Her, say rather that pure Faith In her fix'd Love, which held me to keep truce With the tyranny of Life-is gone, ah! whither ? What boots it to reply? 'tis gone! and now Well may I break the pact, this league of Blood That ties me to myself-and break I Where Virtue's native crest, th' immortal 80 77 As when the new or full Moon urges The high, large, long unbreaking surges Of the Pacific main. MS. 1811. BREVITY OF THE GREEK AND ENGLISH COMPARED As an instance of compression and brevity in narration, unattainable in any language but the Greek, the following | distich was quoted : Written on a fly-leaf of a copy of Field on the Church, folio, 1628, under the name of a former possessor of the volume inscribed thus: 'Hannah Scollock, her book, February 10, 1787.' THIS, Hannah Scollock! may have been the case; Your writing therefore I will not erase. But now this book, once yours, belongs to me, The Morning Post's and Courier's S. T. C. ; Elsewhere in College, knowledge, wit and scholarage To friends and public known as S. T. Coleridge. Witness hereto my hand, on Ashly Green, One thousand, twice four hundred, and 82 IN the two following lines, for instance, there is nothing objectionable, nothing which would preclude them from forming, in their proper place, part of a descriptive poem : Behold yon row of pines, that shorn and bow'd Bend from the sea-blast, seen at twilight The following burlesque on the Fichtean Egoismus may, perhaps, be amusing to the few who have studied the system, and to those who are unacquainted with it, may convey as tolerable a likeness of Fichte's idealism as can be expected from an avowed caricature. [S. T. C.] The Categorical Imperative, or the Annunciation of the New Teutonic God, ΕΓΩΕΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΝ: a dithyrambic Ode, by Querkopf Von Klubstick, Grammarian, and Subrector in Gymnasio. . . . Eu! Dei vices gerens, ipse Divus, (Speak English, friend!) the God Imperativus, Here on this market-cross aloud I cry: I, I, I! I itself I ! The form and the substance, the what ou, and he, and he, you and I, All souls and all bodies are I itself I ! All I itself I! (Fools! a truce with this starting!) All my I all my I ! Truly Pisa indeed is of Jove, But the Olympiad (or, the Olympian games) did Hercules establish, The first-fruits of the spoils of war. But Theron for the four-horsed car He's a heretic dog who but adds Betty It behoves us now to voice aloud: The Just, the Hospitable, Martin !' In robe of stiffest state, that scoff'd at The Flower, even him |