ALLEGORICAL LINES ON THE SAME SUBJECT.
Myrtle Leaf, that, ill besped,
Pinest in the gladsome ray,
Soiled beneath the common tread,
Far from thy protecting spray;
When the scythes-man o’er his sheaf,
Caroll’d in the yellow vale,
Sad, I saw thee, heedless leaf,
Love the dalliance of the gale.
Lightly didst thou, poor fond thing!
Heave and flutter to his sighs
While the flatterer on his wing,
Woo’d, and whisper’d thee to rise.
Gaily from thy mother stalk
Wert thou danced and wafted high;
Soon on this unsheltered walk,
Hung to fade, and rot, and die!
The two poems as printed in Mr. Coleridge’s edition of 1835, here follow, which by being compared with the same poems, in their preceding original form, will exhibit a study, particularly to the Poet.
ON AN UNFORTUNATE WOMAN AT THE THEATRE.
With Mr. Coleridge’s last corrections.
Maiden, that with sullen brow
Sitt’st behind those virgins gay,
Like a scorched and mildew’d bough,
Leafless mid the blooms of May.
Him who lured thee and forsook,
Oft I watch’d with angry gaze,
Fearful saw his pleading look,
Anxious heard his fervid phrase.
Soft the glances of the youth,
Soft his speech, and soft his sigh;
But no sound like simple truth,
But no true love in his eye.
Loathing thy polluted lot,
Hie thee, maiden, hie thee hence!
Seek thy weeping mother’s cot,
With a wiser innocence.
Thou hast known deceit and folly,
Thou hast felt that vice is woe;
With a musing melancholy,
Inly armed, go, maiden! go.
Mother, sage of self dominion,
Firm thy steps, O melancholy!
The strongest plume in wisdom’s pinion
Is the memory of past folly.
Mute the sky-lark and forlorn
While she moults the firstling plumes,
That had skimm’d the tender corn,
Or the bean-field’s odorous blooms.
Soon with renovated wing,
Shall she dare a loftier flight,
Upward to the day-star spring,
And embathe in heavenly light.
ON AN UNFORTUNATE WOMAN,
Whom The Author Had Known In The Days Of Her Innocence.
(With Mr. Coleridge’s last corrections.)
Myrtle-leaf that ill-besped,
Pinest in the gladsome ray;
Soiled beneath the common tread,
Far from thy protecting spray!
When the partridge o’er the sheaf
Whirred along the yellow vale,
Sad I saw thee, heedless leaf!
Love the dalliance of the gale.
Lightly didst thou, foolish thing!
Heave and flutter to his sighs,
While the flatterer on his wing,
Woo’d and whispered thee to rise.
Gaily from thy mother stalk
Wert thou danced and wafted high —
Soon upon this sheltered walk,
Flung to fade, to rot, and die.
Mr. Coleridge having requested me to decide concerning the introduction into his volume of the two preceding Poems, I approved of the second, with certain alterations, (which was accordingly printed,) and rejected the first, for the reasons assigned in the following letter. This letter is introduced for the sake of Mr. C.’s reply, and to exhibit the candid and untenacious quality of his mind. As a mark of Mr. Coleridge’s solicitude to obtain the observations of another, without surrendering his own ultimate judgment, he always encouraged my remarks on his compositions. When about to send the second edition of his Poems to the press, he thus wrote to me.
“My dear Cottle,
… On Thursday morning, by Milton, the Stowey carrier, I shall send you a parcel, containing the book of my Poems interleaved, with the alterations, and likewise the prefaces, which I shall send to you, for your criticisms….”
This is mentioned as an apology for the freedom of the remarks I then took, for it was always my principle not to spare a friend through mistaken kindness; — however much I might spare myself.
“Dear Coleridge,
You have referred your two last Poems to my judgment. I do not think your first, ‘Maiden! that with sullen brow,’ admissible, without a little more of your nice picking.
The first verse is happy, but two objections apply to the second. To my ear, (perhaps too fastidious) ‘inly,’ and ‘inmost,’ are too closely allied for the same stanza; but the first line presents a more serious objection, in containing a transition verb, (or rather a participle, with the same government) without an objective:
’Inly gnawing, thy distresses
Mock those starts of sudden glee.’
Gnawing what? surely not distresses; though the bar of a comma can hardly keep them apart. In order to give it any decent meaning, a tortuous ellipsis is necessary; to pursue which, gives the reader too much toil. Rejecting the first horse in the team, the three last are beautiful animals.
To the last line in the third stanza, I rather object; ‘With a wiser innocence.’ The meaning, it appears to me, would be more definite and in character, if you were to say, as you do not represent her utterly debased, ‘With thy wreck of innocence.’ The apostrophe to the ‘Weeping mother’s cot,’ is then impressive. In the fourth stanza, why do you introduce the old word ‘Lavrac’ a word requiring an explanatory note? Why not say at once, sky-lark? A short poem, you know better than I, should be smooth as oil, and lucid as glass. The two last stanzas, with their associates, will require a few of your delicate touches, before you mount them on the nautilus which is to bear them buoyant round the world. These two last stanzas, about the ‘Lavrac’ though good in themselves, (with the exception of one line, which I will not point out, its roughness absolutely reminds one of ‘Bowling-green Lane!’) appear to me to be awkward appendages. The illustration is too much extended. It is laboured; far-fetched. It is an infelicitous attempt to blend sportive fancy with fact that has touched the heart, and which, in this its sobered mood, shrinks from all idle play of imagination. The transition is too abrupt from truth to fancy. This simile of two stanzas, also, out of five, is a tail disproportioned to the size of so small a body: — A thought elongated, ramified, attenuated, till its tendril convolutions have almost escaped from their parent stem. I would recommend you to let this Lavrac fly clean away, and to conclude the Poem with the third affecting stanza, unless you can continue the same train of feeling. This you might readily effect, by urging the ‘unfortunate’ in seeking her ‘weeping mother’s cot’ to cheer that mother by moral renovation.
I now come to the second Poem, ‘Allegorical lines.’ This poem has sound materials, but it wants some of your hard tinkering. Pardon my unceremonious language. I do not like that affected old word, ‘ill-besped’ in the first line. To ascribe human feelings to a leaf, as you have done through the whole Poem, notwithstanding your authority, as I conceive, offensively violates reason. There is no analogy; no conceivable bond of union between thought and inanimate things, and it is about as rational as though, in sober reasoning, you were to make the polished shoe remonstrate with its wearer, in being soiled so soon after it had received its lustre. It is the utmost stretch of human concession, to grant thought and language to living things; — birds, beasts, and fishes; rights which the old fablers have rendered inalienable, as vehicles of instruction; but here, as I should think, the liberty ends. It is always a pity when sense and poetry cannot go together. They are excellent arm-in-arm companions, but quarrelsome neighbours, when a stile separates them. The first line in the second stanza I
do not like.
‘When the scythesman o’er his sheaf.’
Two objections apply to this line. The word scythesman, for a short poem, is insufferably rough; and furthermore requires the inhalation of a good breath, before it can be pronounced; besides which, as the second objection, by connecting sheaves with scythesman, it shows that the scythe is cutting wheat, whereas, wheat is cut with a hook or sickle. If my agricultural knowledge be correct, barley and oats are cut with a scythe, but these grains are not put into sheaves. Had you not better substitute rustic, for scythesman?
The first line in the third stanza is not happy. The spondee, in a compound word, sometimes gives a favourable emphasis; but to my taste, rarely, when it is formed of a double epithet. It has the appearance of labour, like tugging against a hill. Would not ‘foolish’ be simpler and better than ‘poor fond?’ I have one other objection, and that, unfortunately, is in the last line.
‘Flung to fade, and rot, and die!’
Surely, if it rots, it must die, or have died.
Query. ‘Flung to wither and to die.’
I am astonished at my own temerity. This is reversing the order of things; the pupil correcting his master. But, candidly speaking, I do think these two poems the most defective of any I ever saw of yours, which, usually, have been remarkably free from all angles on which the race of snarlers can lay hold.
From, &c. &c.,
Joseph Cottle.”
Mr. Coleridge’s reply to the preceding letter.
“Wednesday morning, 10 o’clock.
My dearest Cottle,
… ‘Ill besped’ is indeed a sad blotch; but after having tried at least a hundred ways, before I sent the Poem to you, and often since, I find it incurable. This first Poem is but a so so composition. I wonder I could have been so blinded by the ardour of recent composition, as to see anything in it.
Your remarks are perfectly just on the ‘Allegorical lines,’ except that, in this district, corn is as often cut with a scythe, as with a hook. However, for ‘Scythesman’ read Rustic. For ‘poor fond thing’ read foolish thing, and for ‘flung to fade, and rot, and die,’ read flung to wither and to die.
* * * * *
Milton (the carrier) waits impatiently.
S. T. C.”
Having once inquired of Mr. Coleridge something respecting a nicety in hexameters, he asked for a sheet of paper, and wrote the following. These hexameters appear in the last edition of Mr. C.’s Poems, though in a less correct form, and without the condensed and well-expressed preliminary remarks. Two new lines are here also added.
“The Hexameter consists of six feet, or twelve times. These feet, in the Latin and Greek languages, were always either dactyls, or spondees; the time of a dactyl, being only that of a spondee. In modern languages, however, metre being regulated by the emphasis, or intonation of the syllables, and not by the position of the letters, spondees can scarcely exist, except in compound words, as dark-red. Our dissyllables are for the most part, either iambics, as desire; or trochees, as languid. These therefore, but chiefly the latter, we must admit, instead of spondees. The four first feet of each line may be dissyllable feet, or dactyls, or both commingled, as best suits the melody, and requisite variety; but the two last feet must, with rare exceptions, be uniformly, the former a dactyl, the latter a dissyllable. The amphimacer may, in English, be substituted for the dactyl, occasionally.
EXAMPLES.
Oh, what a life is the eye! What a fine and inscrutable essence!
He that is utterly blind, nor glimpses the fire that warms him;
He that never beheld the swelling breast of his mother,
He that smiled at the bosom, the babe that smiles in its slumber,
Even to him it exists. It moves, and stirs in its prison;
Lives with a separate life, and “Is it a spirit?” he murmurs,
Sure it has thoughts of its own, and to see is only a language.
ANOTHER SPECIMEN, DESCRIBING HEXAMETERS IN HEXAMETERS.
Strongly it tilts us along, o’er leaping and limitless billows,
Nothing before, and nothing behind, but the sky and the ocean.
ANOTHER SPECIMEN.
In the Hexameter rises the fountain’s silvery column
In the Pentameter still, falling melodious down.
* * * * *
THE ENGLISH DUODECASYLLABLE.
This consists of two dactyls, and three trochees; the two dactyls first; and the trochees following.
Hear, my beloved! an old Milesian story;
High and embosomed in congregated laurels,
Glimmered a temple, upon a breezy headland
In the dim distance, amid the skyey billows,
Rose a fair island; the God of flocks had blest it:
From the dim shores of this bleak resounding island,
Oft in the moon-light a little boat came floating,
Came to the sea-cave beneath the breezy headland,
Where between myrtles a path-way stole in mazes,
Up to the groves of the high embosomed temple.
There in a thicket of consecrated roses,
Oft did a Priestess, as lovely as a vision,
Pouring her soul to the son of Cytherea,
Pray him to hover around the light canoe boat,
And with invisible pilotage to guide it
Over the dusky waves, till the nightly sailor
Shiv’ring with ecstacy sank upon her bosom.
Now, by the immortals! he was a beauteous stripling,
Worthy to dream the sweet dream of young Endymion.”
In the last edition of Mr. Coleridge’s poems, (3 vols., 1835) there is a poem, called “The Destiny of Nations, a Vision;” — a sounding title, with which the contents but ill accord. No note conveys information to the reader, what was the origin of this poem; nor does any argument show its object, or train of thought. Who the maid is, no one can tell, and if there be a vision respecting the destiny of nations, it is nearly as confused and incoherent as a true vision of the night; exciting in the mind some such undefined wonderment, as must have accompanied the descent of one of Peter Wilkins’ winged Aerials.
The reader may here be informed, that the Second book of Mr. Southey’s “Joan of Arc,” to line 452, as acknowledged, was written by Mr. Coleridge, with the intermixture of 97 lines, written by Mr. Southey, in which there are noble sentiments, expressed in the loftiest poetical diction; and in which also there is a tutelary spirit introduced to instruct and counsel the Maid of Orleans. In the second edition of “Joan of Arc,” Mr. Southey omitted the whole of these lines, and intimated to Mr. C. his intention so to do, as early as the autumn of 1795. I advised Mr. Coleridge, from the intrinsic merit of the lines, to print them in the second edition of his poems. To this he assented, but observed, that he must greatly extend them.
Some considerable time after, he read me the poem in its enlarged state, calling it “The Progress of Liberty, or the Visions of the Maid of Orleans.” After hearing it read, I at once told him, it was all very fine, but what it was all about, I could not tell: that it wanted, I thought, an obvious design, a definite purpose, a cohesion of parts, so as to make it more of a whole, instead of its being, as it then was, profuse, but detached splendour, and exhibiting in the management, nothing like construction. Thus improved, I told him the poem would be worthy of him. Mr. C. was evidently partial to the lines, and said, “I shall consider of what you say, and speak again about them.”
Amongst my papers I find two or three notes from Mr. C. on this subject, subsequently received.
“Stowey.
My dear Cottle,
If you delay the press it will give me the opportunity I so much wish, of sending my “Visions of the Maid of Arc” to Wordsworth, who lives not above twenty miles from this place; and to Charles Lamb, whose taste and judgment, I see reason to think more correct and philosophical than my own, which yet I place pretty high….”
In a succeeding letter Mr. Col
eridge says,
“My dear Cottle,
The lines which I added to my lines in the ‘Joan of Arc’ have been so little approved by Charles Lamb, to whom I sent them, that although I differ from him in opinion, I have not heart to finish the poem.” Mr. Coleridge in the same letter, thus refers to his “Ode to the Departing Year.”
“… So much for an ‘Ode,’ which some people think superior to the ‘Bard’ of Gray, and which others think a rant of turgid obscurity; and the latter are the more numerous class. It is not obscure. My ‘Religious Musings’ I know are, but not this ‘Ode.’”
Mr. C. still retained a peculiar regard for these lines of the “Visions” and once meant to remodel the whole, as will appear from the following letter.
“Stowey, 1797.
My dear Cottle,
I deeply regret, that my anxieties and my slothfulness, acting in a combined ratio, prevented me from finishing my ‘Progress of Liberty, or Visions of the Maid of Orleans’ with that Poem at the head of the volume, with the ‘Ode’ in the middle, and the ‘Religious Musings’ at the end.
… In the ‘Lines on the Man of Ross’ immediately after these lines,
’He heard the widow’s heaven-breathed prayer of praise,
He mark’d the shelter’d orphan’s tearful gaze.’
Please to add these two lines.
’And o’er the portioned maiden’s snowy cheek,
Bade bridal love suffuse its blushes meek.’
And for the line,
‘Beneath this roof, if thy cheer’d moments pass.’
I should be glad to substitute this,
‘If near this roof thy wine-cheer’d moments pass.’
These emendations came too late for admission in the second edition; nor have they appeared in the last edition. They will remain therefore for insertion in any future edition of Mr. Coleridge’s Poems.
Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey Page 324