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even so far back as to those old suppers at our old ********* Inn, -when life was fresh, and topics exhaustless,-and you first kindled in me, if not the power, yet the love of poetry, and beauty, and kindliness -

What words have I heard
Spoke at the Mermaid !

The world has given you many a shrewd nip and gird since that time, but either my eyes are grown dimmer, or my old friend is the same, who stood before me three-and-twenty years ago --his hair a little confessing the hand of time, but still shrouding the same capacious brain, his heart not altered, scarcely where it "alteration finds.'

"

One piece, Coleridge, I have ventured to publish in its original form, though I have heard you complain of a certain over-imitation of the antique in the style. If I could see any way of getting rid of the objection, without re-writing it entirely, I would make some sacrifices. But when I wrote John Woodvil, never proposed to myself any distinct deviation from common English. I had been newly initiated in the writings of our elder dramatists; Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger, were then a first love; and from what I was so freshly conversant in, what wonder if my language imperceptibly took a tinge? The very time, which I had chosen for my story, that which immediately followed the Restoration, seemed to require, in an English play, that the English should be of rather an older cast, than that of the precise year in which it happened to be written. I wish it had not some faults, which I can less vindi

cate than the language.

I remain, my dear Coleridge,

Yours, with unabated esteem,

CHARLES LAMB.

THE

WORKS OF CHARLES LAMB.

Poetical Works.

EARLIEST AND LATER SONNETS.

[The four sonnets immediately subjoined were the first poems, the first writings, in fact, Charles Lamb ever published. They originally appeared in 1796, as printed by the Robinsons of London, and published by Joseph Cottle of Bristol, in an insignificant-looking volume entitled "Poems on Various Subjects," by his friend and schoolfellow Samuel Taylor Coleridge, late of Jesus College, Cambridge. The latter touched up many of them unjustifiably in spite of their author's remonstrance "I charge you, Coleridge, spare my ewe lambs!" The last six lines of the second, as first printed, were entirely Coleridge's own. They are all now given, these first four sonnets of Charles Lamb, exactly as he wrote them, and with a scrupulous regard to his own reiterated emendations.]

I.

WAS it some sweet device of Faëry

That mock'd my steps with many a lonely glade,
And fancied wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid?
Have these things been? or what rare witchery,
Impregning with delights the charmed air,
Enlightened up the semblance of a smile

In those fine eyes? methought they spake the while
Soft soothing things, which might enforce despair
To drop the murdering knife, and let go by
His foul resolve. And does the lonely glade
Still court the footsteps of the fair-hair'd maid?
Still in her locks the gales of summer sigh?
While I forlorn do wander, reckless where,
And 'mid my wanderings meet no Anna there.

II.

METHINKS how dainty sweet it were, reclined
Beneath the vast out-stretching branches high
Of some old wood, in careless sort to lie,
Nor of the busier scenes we left behind

D

Aught envying. And, O Anna! mild-eyed maid!
Beloved! I were well content to play
With thy free tresses all a summer's day,
Losing the time beneath the greenwood shade.
Or we might sit and tell some tender tale
Of faithful vows repaid by cruel scorn,
A tale of true love, or of friend forgot;
And I would teach thee, lady, how to rail
In gentle sort, on those who practise not
Or love or pity, though of woman born.

III.

As when a child on some long winter's night
Affrighted clinging to its grandam's knees
With eager wondering and perturb'd delight
Listens strange tales of fearful dark decrees
Mutter'd to wretch by necromantic spell;
Or of those hags, who at the witching time
Of murky midnight ride the air sublime,
And mingle foul embrace with fiends of hell:
Cold Horror drinks its blood! Anon the tear
More gentle starts, to hear the beldame tell
Of pretty babes, that loved each other dear,
Murder'd by cruel Uncle's mandate fell :
Even such the shivering joys thy tones impart,
Even so thou, SIDDONS! meltest my sad heart!

IV.

WRITTEN AT MIDNIGHT, BY THE SEA-SIDE AFTER A VOYAGE.

O, I could laugh to hear the midnight wind,
That, rushing on its way with careless sweep
Scatters the ocean waves. And I could weep
Like to a child. For now to my raised mind
On wings of winds comes wild-eyed Phantasy,
And her rude visions give severe delight.
O winged bark! how swift along the night
Pass'd thy proud keel; nor shall
let go by
Lightly of that drear hour the memory,
When wet and chilly on thy deck I stood,
Unbonneted, and gazed upon the flood,
Even till it seem'd a pleasant thing to die,-
To be resolved into th' elemental wave,

Or take my portion with the winds that rave.

[Charles Lamb having begun his career in authorship as a sonneteer, and having written to Coleridge with effusion, "I love my sonnets!" the four first are in this Centenary Edition of his Writings followed immediately by those he afterwards produced at various times. They are all arranged as nearly as possible in chronological order, being succeeded by the miscellaneous poems, which are also arranged chronologically.]

V.

WHEN last I roved these winding wood-walks green,

Green winding walks, and shady pathways sweet,

Ofttimes would Anna seek the silent scene,

Shrouding her beauties in the lone retreat.

No more I hear her footsteps in the shade:
Her image only in these pleasant ways

Meets me self-wandering, where in happier days
I held free converse with the fair-hair'd maid.
I pass'd the little cottage which she loved,
The cottage which did once my all contain;
It spake of days which ne'er must come again,
Spake to my heart, and much my heart was moved.
Now fair befall thee, gentle maid!" said I,
And from the cottage turn'd me with a sigh.

VI.

A TIMID grace sits trembling in her eye,
As loth to meet the rudeness of men's sight,
Yet shedding a delicious lunar light,
That steeps in kind oblivious ecstasy

The care-crazed mind, like some still melody:
Speaking most plain the thoughts which do possess
Her gentle sprite: peace, and meek quietness,
And innocent loves, and maiden purity:
A look whereof might heal the cruel smart
Of changed friends, or fortune's wrongs unkind;
Might to sweet deeds of mercy move the heart
Of him who hates his brethren of mankind.
Turn'd are those lights from me, who fondly yet
Past joys, vain loves, and buried hopes regret.

VII.

IF from my lips some angry accents fell,
Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind,

'Twas but the error of a sickly mind

And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well,
And waters clear of Reason; and for me

Let this my verse the poor atonement be-

My verse, which though to praise wert ever inclined
Too highly, and with a partial eye to see
No blemish. Thou to me didst ever show
Kindest affection; and would ofttimes lend
An ear to the desponding love-sick lay,
Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay
But ill the mighty debt of love I owe,
Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend.

VIII.

We were two pretty babes, the youngest she,
The youngest, and the loveliest far, I ween,
And INNOCENCE her name. The time has been,

We two did love each other's company;

Time was, we two had wept to have been apart.
But when by show of seeming good beguiled,
I left the garb and manners of a child,
And my first love for man's society,
Defiling with the world my virgin heart-

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HARMONY IN UNLIKENESS.

By Enfield lanes, and Winchmore's verdant hill,
Two lovely damsels cheer my lonely walk:
The fair Maria, as a vestal, still;

And Emma brown, exuberant in talk.
With soft and lady speech the first applies
The mild correctives that to grace belong
To her redundant friend, who her defies
With jest, and mad discourse, and bursts of song.
O differing pair, yet sweetly thus agreeing,
What music from your happy discord rises,
While your companion hearing each, and seeing,
Nor this, nor that, but both together, prizes;
This lesson teaching, which our souls may strike,
That harmonies may be in things unlike!

X.

TO MARTIN CHARLES BURNEY.

[A dedicatory sonnet originally published at the beginning of the second volume of the
1818 edition of Charles Lamb's Works, as a prefix to his earliest essays and criticisms.]
FORGIVE me, BURNEY, if to thee these late
And hasty products of a critic pen,
Thyself no common judge of books and men,
In feeling of thy worth I dedicate.
My verse was offer'd to an older friend;
The humbler prose has fallen to thy share:
Nor could I miss the occasion to declare,
What spoken in thy presence must offend-
That, set aside some few caprices wild,

Those humorous clouds, that flit o'er brightest days,
In all my threadings of this worldly maze,

(And I have watch'd thee almost from a child,)
Free from self-seeking, envy, low design,

I have not found a whiter soul than thine.

XI.

WRITTEN AT CAMBRIDGE ON THE 15TH AUGUST, 1819.

I WAS not train'd in Academic bowers,

And to those learned streams I nothing owe

Which copious from those twin fair founts do flow;
Mine have been anything but studious hours.
Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers,
Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap;

My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap,
And I walk gowned; feel unusual powers.

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