1. 30. This phenomenon, which the author has himself experienced, and of which the reader may find a description in one of the earlier volumes of the Manchester Philosophical Transactions, is applied figuratively in the following passage of the Aids to Reflection: "Pindar's fine remark respecting the different effects of music, on different characters, holds equally true of Genius; as many as are not delighted by it are disturbed, perplexed, irritated. The beholder either recognises it as a projected form of his own being, that moves before him with a glory round its head, or recoils from it as a spectre." -Aids to Reflection, 1825, p. 220. [Note by S. T. C.] 177. Farewell to Love, p. 173. First printed in Gentleman's Magazine, Nov. 1815; then in Lit. Remains, i. 280; also in Allsop (Letters, etc. 1864, p. 76). I believe it was composed in Malta. 178. What is Life? p. 173. First printed in the Lit. Souvenir for 1829; then in Lit. Remains and dated '1829'; first collected in Poems, 1852. Coleridge sent the lines to Mr. Worship of Yarmouth (see Note 175') in 1819, stating that he wrote them when he was aged 'between 15 and 16.' His memory served him badly, for they were really composed at Malta on the 16th August 1805, the day of the Valetta Horse-racing-bells jangling, and stupefying music all day.' In the Diary they are immediately preceded by the lines I have called A Sunset (p. 172), which were begun as nonsense verses. The lines, What is Life? have this note: Written in the same manner 179. The Blossoming of the Solitary Date-Tree, p. 173. First printed in P. W. 1828. In 1829 a few verbal alterations were made in the text both of prose and verse. 11. 28-30. See Allsop's Letters, etc. 1864, p. 208. 1. 31. In a letter (unpublished) writter. in 1819 to a young friend who was about to be married Coleridge wrote: 'O! that you could appreciate by the light of other men's experience the anguish which prompted the ejaculation Why was I made for love, yet love denied to me? or the state of suffering instanced by the following description : Lingering he raised his latch at eve, 180. Separation, p. 175. First printed in P. W. 1834. Believed to have been written on the voyage to Malta. In ed. 1848 there is the following note: The fourth and last stanzas are adapted from the twelfth and last of Cotton's Chlorinda : 'O my Chlorinda! could'st thou see 'Meanwhile my Exit now draws nigh, When, sweet Chlorinda, thou shalt see That I have heart enough to die, Not half enough to part with thee. 'The fifth stanza is the eleventh of Cotton's poem.' 181. A Thought suggested by a View of Saddleback, etc., p. 175. First printed in The Amulet for 1833 with this title; then in Friendship's Offering for 1834 with the title of A Versified Reflection (see Note 127'), with this note: The following stanza (it may not arrogate the name of poem) or versified reflection, was composed while the author was gazing on three parallel Forces, on a moonlight night, at the foot of Saddleback Fell.' The 'reflection' was doubtless made at Saddleback Fell, but it was versified at 'Olevano [Tuscany], March 8, 1806,' while Coleridge was on his way home from Malta. 182. To a Gentleman [William Wordsworth], etc., p. 176. Composed at Coleorton Farmhouse in January 1807, where Coleridge with Hartley was Wordsworth's guest. It was first printed in Sib. Leaves (1815, pub. 1817), but with title and text much altered from the original MS. which was sent to the Beaumonts at the time. The changes are so numerous and so significant that I have printed the original copy in 'APPENDIX H' to this volume. Almost as completely as in the case of Dejection (see 'Note 162') Coleridge removed all traces of personality. The interested reader will prefer to seek out the changes for himself, but a reference may be given to a few of the more important-ll. I; 5-11; 61-64; 82; 107, 108. Between the last mentioned this line was omitted in print : (All whom I deepliest love-in one room all!') Coleorton Farmhouse contained at the time-besides Coleridge and his little son Hartley-Wordsworth, his wife and children, his sister Dorothy, and his sister-inlaw Miss Sarah Hutchinson. It was a cruel line; for it excluded not merely his wife-from whom a formal separation had almost been arranged-but his children Derwent and Sara; to say nothing of Thomas Poole. It is inconceivable how Coleridge should have permitted the line to stand in the copy made for the Beaumonts -whom also he professed to love deeply. The magnificent passage comprising 11. 62-78 (p. 526), never printed by Coleridge, should not be overlooked. 11. 45-47. By an Orphic tale' Coleridge meant, philosophic blank verse, perfect models of which may be found in Wordsworth' (Notes on Barclay's 'Argenis, Lit. Rem. i. 255). 11. 65-75. 'In this exculpation I hope to be understood as speaking of myself comparatively, and in proportion to the claims which others are entitled to make on my time or my talents. By what I have effected am I to be judged by my fellow men; what I could have done is a question for my own conscience. On my own account I may perhaps have had sufficient reason to lament my deficiency in self-control, and the neglect of concentering my powers to the realisation of some permanent work. But to verse rather than to prose, if to either, belongs the voice of mourning for Keen pangs of love, awakening as a babe [etc.] These will exist, for the future, I trust only in the poetic strains, which the feelings at the time called forth. In those only, gentle reader, "Affectus animi varios, bellumque sequacis Perlegis invidiæ; curasque revolvis inanes; Quas humilis tenero stylus olim effudit in ævo. Perlegis et lacrymas, et quod pharetratus acutâ Ille puer puero fecit mihi cuspide vulnus. Omnia paulatim consumit longior ætas Vivendoque simul morimur, rapimurque manendo. Ipse mihi collatus enim non ille videbor; Frons alia est, moresque alii, nova mentis imago, Vox aliudque sonat. Jamque observatio vitæ Multa dedit:-lugere nihil, ferre omnia; jamque poem may have been written in 1803, regarding the 'eight' as merely a 'figure Paulatim lacrymas rerum experientia of speech,' used because in its place more tersit."' (Biog. Lit. 1817: end of chap. x.) [The Latin lines are from Petrarch's Epistles, lib. i. Barbato Salmonensi. Basil. 1554, i. 76 (Ref. in B. L. 1847). Part of the same passage was used as motto to the 'Love Poems' division in Sib. Leaves and later. See Note 123.' 1. 98. A beautiful white cloud of foam at momentary intervals coursed by the side of the vessel with a roar, and little stars of flame danced and sparkled and went out in it and every now and then light detachments of this white cloud-like foam darted off from the vessel's side, each with its own small constellation, over the sea, and scoured out of sight like a Tartar troop over a wilderness.'-The Friend, p. 220. [Note by S. T. C. in Sib. Leaves. The passage is in 'Satyrane's Letters,' Biog. Lit. (1817) ii. 196; (1847) ii. 197.] In Knight's Life of Wordsworth (ii. 255) there is a very interesting letter from Coleridge to Wordsworth dated 'Calne, May 30, 1815,' in which he states that he had never determined' to print the Lines, and certainly should not have done so 'without having first consulted' Wordsworth. 'I wanted no additional reason for its not being published in my life-time, than its personality regarding myself. . . . It is for the biographer, not the poet, to give the accidents of individual life. . . . Otherwise, I confess to you, prudential reasons would not have weighed with me, for there is nothing in the lines, as far as your powers are concerned, which I have not as fully expressed elsewhere.' The letter, all of which is deeply interesting, closes thus: bless you! I am, and never have been other than, your most affectionate S. T. COLERIDGE.' 183. Recollections of Love, p. 178. First printed in Sib. Leaves (1815-1817). The date of composition worked out by the eight springs' of the second stanza gives the summer (or later) of 1807, but Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge thinks the harmonious than six or nine, or what not. I have therefore put both dates, and queried both. I introduce here an early unprinted fragment of prose, because not only is it very charming in itself, but it lights up one of the stanzas of the Recollections of Love. It is called QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS IN THE Why is my Love like the Sun? 1. The Dawn=the presentiment of my Love. No voice as yet had made the air That sense of Promise everywhere? Beloved! flew thy spirit by? 2. The Sunrise the suddenness, the all-at-once of Love-and the first silence -the beams of Light fall first on the distance, the interspace still dark. 3. The Cheerful Morning-the established Day-light universal. 4. The Sunset-who can behold it, and think of the Sun-rise? It takes all the thought to itself. The Moon-reflected Light-soft, melancholy, warmthless-the absolute purity (nay, it is always pure, but) the incorporeity of Love in absence---Love per se is a Potassium-it can subsist by itself, tho' in presence it has a natural and necessary combination with a comburient principle. All other Lights (the Sun-Lights for other worlds, not for me. fixed Stars) not borrowed from the absent I see them and admire, but they irradiate nothing. The exquisite fragment (No. 63, p. 460), beginning 'Within these circling hollies, woodbineclad '- was probably composed as the opening of Recollections of Love, and abandoned on account of a change of metre, 184. A Day-Dream, p. 179. First printed in The Bijou for 1828. 185. To Two Sisters, p. 179. First printed in the Courier, Dec. 10, 1807. The signature was 'SIESTI,' but this disguise of ESTEESI' proved too thin, and Mrs. Coleridge was highly displeased. When the poet's wife and the children left Bristol under the escort of De Quincey in 1807, Coleridge was to have proceeded at once to London to deliver lectures at the Royal Institution, but he fell ill and was nursed by these two pretty and kind sisters, the elder being the wife of J. J. Morgan, then resident in Bristol. The Morgans afterwards removed to Hammersmith, later to the neighbourhood of Bath, and later still to Calne, and in all these homes Coleridge had an honoured place and was tenderly cared for. The poem was never reprinted, but in P. W. 1834 these few lines were inserted with the heading ON TAKING LEAVE OF 1817.1 To know, to esteem, to love—and then to part, Makes up life's tale to many a feeling heart! O for some dear abiding-place of Love, O'er which my spirit, like the mother dove, Might brood with warming wings!-O fair as kind, Were but one sisterhood with you combined, (Your very image they in shape and mind) Far rather would I sit in solitude, The forms of memory all my mental food, And dream of you sweet sisters, (ah, not mine!) 1 A misprint for '1807' in 1834, and repeated in all subsequent editions until 1877-80.-ED. And only dream of you (ah, dream and pine!) Than have the presence. and partake the pride, And shine in the eye of all the world beside! The editor of P. and D. W. 1877-80, by an oversight, states that these lines were printed in Sib. Leaves. He was the first to reprint the poem of 1807 in its integrity. 186. A Tombless Epitaph, p. 180. First printed, without a title, in The Friend, No. XIV. Nov. 23, 1809. A note says Imitated, in the movements rather than the thought, from the VIIth of Gli Epitafi of Chiabrera : 'Fu ver, che Ambrosio Salinero a torto Si pose in pena d' odiose liti,' etc. The poem received its title when reprinted in Sib. Leaves (1817), but from first to last the text was left unaltered, except in the correction of outlets to inlets in the 16th line. Of course Satyrane was Coleridge himself, and the poem should be read as a portrait exquisitely and in the main truly drawn, allowing for the inevitable romantic point of view. He allows Alhadra to add a touch or two to his own, in the portrait she draws of her husband (Remorse, Act i. Sc. ii. ll. 241-243, p. 367). 187. For a Market-Clock - Inscription for a Time-Piece, p. 181. The former printed for the first time from a letter to Poole (1809); the latter from Table Talk, 1835, Appendix ii. 360. I give H. N. Coleridge's date, '1830,' but feel obliged to add a query, believing the lines to belong to a much earlier date. 188. The Virgin's Cradle-Hymn, First printed in the Courier, Aug. 30, 1811, with the following introductory note : [About thirteen years ago or more, travelling through the middle parts of Germany, I saw a little print of the Virgin and Child in the small public-house of a And then he left it like a Sylph beguiled To live and learn and languish incomplete! Catholic village with the following beautiful Latin lines under it, which I transcribed. They may be easily adapted to the air of the famous Sicilian Hymn, Adeste fideles, Day following day, more rugged grows my læti triumphantes, by the omission of a few notes.]' In the Morning Post, Dec. 26, 1801, the Latin lines only appeared as from a 'Correspondent in Germany.' Coleridge was doubtless the 'Correspondent.' The piece has been frequently set to music-by Booth (1859), Moysen (1872), Howells (1874), etc. 189. To a Lady offended by a sportive Observation Reason for Love's Blindness, p. 181. The former appeared in Omniana (1812), i. 238, and when collected in P. W. 1828, the latter was linked with it. 190. The Suicide's Argument, p. 182. First printed in P. W. 1828. It is path, A Blank upon my Heart, and Hope is Yet this deep yearning will not die-yet Clings on and cloathes the marrowless remains What is the Pang more sharp than found in a note-book of 1811, preceded all' the poet does not reveal until the close. by this couplet : 'Complained of, complaining, there shov'd and here shoving, Every one blaming me, ne'er a one loving.' It is not that Esteem, even Self-esteem, O pang of pangs Is Kindness counterfeiting absent Love!' And Love absent, if it has once been present, is Love dead, and without power to be born again-as we are told in the 'Envoy' to Love's Apparition and Evanishment (p. 208). 192. In many ways does the full heart reveal, etc., p. 183. I have placed this motto here out of what may possibly be its true chronological position, because it is an echo of The Pang, etc. 193. The Night-Scene, p. 183. First printed in Sib. Leaves (1815-17), · rewritten in 1813 from a drama begun and left in a fragmentary condition in 1801, under the title The Triumph of Loyalty, an Historic Drama in Five Acts.' |