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Royal Institution, in the spring of 1808; in one this question, and always will do so, when it is of which he astonished his auditory by thanking recollected what he has had the power to effect. his Maker, in the most serious manner, for so or- It will not forgive him for writing upon party, ind dering events, that he was totally ignorant of a in support of principles that even now are pretty single word of "that frightful jargon, the French nearly exploded, "what was meant for mankind." language!" And yet, notwithstanding this public Coleridge mistook his walk when he set up for a avowal of his entire ignorance of the language, politician, and it is to be feared the public have a Mr. C. is said to have been in the habit, while great deal to regret on account of it. He vill not conversing with his friends, of expressing the ut- be known hereafter by his Morning Post articles, most contempt for the literature of that country! but by his verses. Whatever pains his political Whelmed in the wild mazes of metaphysics, papers may have cost him, and from his own ac and for ever mingling its speculations with all he count they were laboriously composed, they will does or says, Coleridge has of late produced nothing avail him nothing with posterity. The verses of equal to the power of his pen. A few verses in an Coleridge give him his claim to lasting celebrity, annual, or a sonnet in a magazine, are the utmost and it is in vain that he would have the world of his efforts. He resides at Hampstead, in the think otherwise. He says, "Would hat the crihouse of a friend having a good garden, where he terion of a scholar's utility were the number and walks for hours together enwrapped in visions of moral value of the truths which he has been the new theories of theology, or upon the most abstruse means of throwing into the general arculation, or of meditations. He goes into the world at times, to the number and value of the minds whom, by his the social dinner-party, where he gratifies his self-conversation or letters, he has excited into activity, love by pouring out the stores of his mind in con- and supplied with the germs of their after-growth! versation to admiring listeners. Were he not apt A distinguished rank might not indeed then be to be too profound, he would make an excellent awarded to my exertions, but I should dare look talker, or rather un grand causeur for a second forward to an honorable acquittal." Madame de Sévigné, if such an accomplished fe- In temper and disposition Coleridge is kind and male is to be found in the nineteenth century, amiable. His person is bulky and his physiogeither in England or France. The fluency of nomy is heavy, but his eye is remarkably fine; Coleridge's language, the light he throws upon and neither envy nor uncharitableness have his subjects, and the pleasure he feels in commu- made any successful impression in attacking his nicating his ideas, and his knowledge, innate or moral character. His family have long resided acquired, are equally remarkable to the stranger. with Mr. Southey's in the north of England; the He has been accused of indolence, not perhaps narrow pecuniary circumstances of our poet are with reason: the misdirection of his distinguished assigned as the reason. It is ardently desired talents would be a better explanation of that for by all lovers of the Muses, that the author of the which he has been blamable. He attempts to "Ancient Mariner," and of "Genevieve," may justify himself on the score of quantity, by assert- see life protracted to a green old age, and yet ing that some of his best things were published in produce works which may rival those of his denewspapers. The world differs with him upon parted years.

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impelled to seek for sympathy; but a Poet's feelings are all strong. Quicquid amet valde amat. Akenside therefore speaks with philosophical accuracy when he classes Love and Poetry, as producing the same

effects:

Love and the wish of Poets when their tongue
Would teach to others' bosoms, what so charms
Their own.

Pleasures of Imagination.

COMPOSITIONS resembling those here collected are not unfrequently condemned for their querulous Egotism. But Egotism is to be condemned then only when it offends against time and place, as in a History or an Epic Poem. To censure it in a Monody or Sonnet is almost as absurd as to dislike a circle for being round. Why then write Sonnets or MonoThere is one species of Egotism which is truly dies? Because they give me pleasure when perhaps disgusting; not that which leads us to communicate nothing else could. After the more violent emotions our feelings to others but that which would reduce of Sorrow, the mind demands amusement, and can the feelings of others to an identity with our own. find it in employment alone: but, full of its late suf- The Atheist, who exclaims “ ferings, it can endure no employment not in some glances his eye on the praises of Deity, is an Egotist: pshaw!" when he measure connected with them. Forcibly to turn an old man, when he speaks contemptuously of Loveaway our attention to general subjects is a painful verses, is an Egotist: and the sleek Favorites of and most often an unavailing effort. Fortune are Egotists, when they condemn all "melancholy, discontented" verses. Surely, it would be candid not merely to ask whether the poem pleases ourselves, but to consider whether or no there may not be others, to whom it is well calculated to give an innocent pleasure.

But O! how grateful to a wounded heart
The tale of Misery to impart-
From others' eyes bid artless sorrows flow,
And raise esteem upon the base of Woe!

Shaw.

The communicativeness of our Nature leads us to describe our own sorrows; in the endeavor to de- I shall only add, that each of my readers will, I scribe them, intellectual activity is exerted; and hope, remember, that these Poems on various subfrom intellectual activity there results a pleasure, jects, which he reads at one time and under the inwhich is gradually associated, and mingles as a cor-fluence of one set of feelings, were written at differrective, with the painful subject of the description. ent times and prompted by very different feelings; "True!" (it may be answered) "but how are the and therefore that the supposed inferiority, of one PUBLIC interested in your sorrows or your Descrip- Poem to another may sometimes be owing to the tion?" We are for ever attributing personal Unities temper of mind in which he happens to peruse it. to imaginary Aggregates. What is the PUBLIC, but a term for a number of scattered individuals? of whom as many will be interested in these sorrows, as have experienced the same or similar.

Holy be the lay

My poems have been rightly charged with a profusion of double-epithets, and a general turgidness. I have pruned the double-epithets with no sparing hand; and used my best efforts to tame the swell and glitter both of thought and diction.* This latter

Which mourning soothes the mourner on his way. If I could judge of others by myself, I should not hesitate to affirm, that the most interesting passages * Without any feeling of anger, I may yet be allowed to are those in which the Author develops his own express some degree of surprise, that after having run the feelings? The sweet voice of Cona* never sounds a too ornate and elaborately poetic diction, and nothing havcritical gauntlet for a certain class of faults, which I had, viz. So sweetly, as when it speaks of itself; and I should ing come before the judgment-seat of the Reviewers during almost suspect that man of an unkindly heart, who the long interval, I should for at least seventeen years, quarter could read the opening of the third book of the Paradise Lost without peculiar emotion. By a Law of our Nature, he, who labors under a strong feeling, is

* Ossian.

after quarter, have been placed by them in the foremost rank

ridicule for faults directly opposite, viz. bald and prosaic language, and an affected simplicity both of matter and manner

of the proscribed, and made to abide the brunt of abuse and

-faults which assuredly did not enter into the character of my compositions.-Literary Life, i. 51. Published 1817.

fault however had insinuated itself into my Religious Musings with such intricacy of union, that sometimes I have omitted to disentangle the weed from the fear of snapping the flower. A third and heavier accusation has been brought against me, that of obscurity; but not, I think, with equal justice. An Author is obscure, when his conceptions are dim and imperfect, and his language incorrect, or unappropriate, or involved. A poem that abounds in allusions, like the Bard of Gray, or one that impersonates high and abstract truths, like Collins's Ode on the poetical character, claims not to be popular— but should be acquitted of obscurity. The deficiency is in the Reader. But this is a charge which every poet, whose imagination is warm and rapid, must expect from his contemporaries. Milton did not escape it; and it was adduced with virulence against Gray and Collins. We now hear no more of it: not that their poems are better understood at present, than they were at their first publication; but their fame is established; and a critic would accuse himself of frigidity or inattention, who should profess not to understand them. But a living writer is yet sub judice; and if we cannot follow his conceptions or enter into his feelings, it is more consoling to our pride to consider him as lost beneath, than as soaring above us. If any man expect from my poems the same easiness of style which he admires in a drinking-song, for him I have not written. Intelligibilia, non intellectum adfero.

I expect neither profit nor general fame by my writings; and I consider myself as having been amply repaid without either. Poetry has been to me its own "exceeding great reward:" it has soothed my afflictions; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared solitude: and it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the Good and the Beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me. S. T. C.

JUVENILE POEMS.

GENEVIEVE.

MAID of my Love, sweet Genevieve!
In beauty's light you glide along :
Your eye is like the star of eve,
And sweet your voice, as seraph's song.
Yet not your heavenly beauty gives
This heart with passion soft to glow:
Within your soul a voice there lives!
It bids you hear the tale of woe.
When sinking low the sufferer wan
Beholds no hand outstretch'd to save,
Fair, as the bosom of the swan
That rises graceful o'er the wave,
I've seen your breast with pity heave,
And therefore love I you, sweet Genevieve!

SONNET.

TO THE AUTUMNAL MOON.

MILD Splendor of the various-vested Night!
Mother of wildly-working visions! hail!
I watch thy gliding, while with watery light
Thy weak eye glimmers through a fleecy veil;

And when thou lovest thy pale orb to shroud
Behind the gather'd blackness lost on high;
And when thou dartest from the wind-rent cloud
Thy placid lightning o'er the awaken'd sky.
Ah such is Hope! as changeful and as fair!
Now dimly peering on the wistful sight;
Now hid behind the dragon-wing'd Despair:
But soon emerging in her radiant might,
She o'er the sorrow-clouded breast of Care
Sails, like a meteor kindling in its flight.

TIME, REAL AND IMAGINARY.

AN ALLEGORY.

ON the wide level of a mountain's head
(I knew not where, but 't was some faery place)
Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread,
Two lovely children run an endless race,
A sister and a brother!

This far outstript the other;
Yet ever runs she with reverted face,
And looks and listens for the boy behind:

For he, alas! is blind!

O'er rough and smooth with even step he pass'd, And knows not whether he be first or last.

MONODY ON THE DEATH OF CHATTERTON.

O WHAT a wonder seems the fear of death,
Seeing how gladly we all sink to sleep,
Babes, Children, Youths and Men,
Night following night for threescore years and ten!
But doubly strange, where life is but a breath
To sigh and pant with, up Want's rugged steep.

Away, Grim Phantom! Scorpion King, away,!
Reserve thy terrors and thy stings display

For coward Wealth and Guilt in robes of state!
Lo! by the grave I stand of one, for whom
A prodigal Nature and a niggard Doom
(That all bestowing, this withholding all)

Made each chance knell from distant spire or dome
Sound like a seeking Mother's anxious call,
Return, poor Child! Home, weary Truant, home!

Thee, Chatterton! these unblest stones protect
From want, and the bleak freezings of neglect.
Too long before the vexing Storm-blast driven,
Here hast thou found repose! beneath this sod!
Thou! O vain word! thou dwell'st not with the clod!
Amid the shining Host of the Forgiven
Thou at the throne of Mercy and thy God
The triumph of redeeming Love dost hymn
(Believe it, O my soul!) to harps of Seraphim.

Yet oft, perforce ('t is suffering Nature's call,)
I weep, that heaven-born Genius so shall fall;
And oft, in Fancy's saddest hour, my soul
Averted shudders at the poison'd bowl.
Now groans my sickening heart, as still I view
Thy corse of livid hue;

Now indignation checks the feeble sigh,
|Or flashes through the tear that glistens in mine eye!

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And now his cheeks with deeper ardors flame,
His eyes have glorious meanings, that declare
More than the light of outward day shines there,
A holier triumph and a sterner aim!
Wings grow within him; and he soars above
Or Bard's, or Minstrel's lay of war or love.
Friend to the friendless, to the Sufferer health,
He hears the widow's prayer, the good man's praise;
To scenes of bliss transmutes his fancied wealth,
And young and old shall now see happy days.
On many a waste he bids trim gardens rise,
Gives the blue sky to many a prisoner's eyes;
And now in wrath he grasps the patriot steel,
And her own iron rod he makes Oppression feel.

But that Despair and Indignation rose,
And told again the story of thy woes;
Told the keen insult of the unfeeling heart;
The dread dependence on the low-born mind,
Told every pang, with which thy soul must smart,
Neglect, and grinning Scorn, and Want combined!
Recoiling quick, thou bad'st the friend of pain
Roll the black tide of Death through every freezing
vein!

Ye woods! that wave o'er Avon's rocky steep,
To Fancy's ear sweet is your murmuring deep!
For here she loves the cypress wreath to weave,
Watching, with wistful eye, the saddening tints of eve.
Here, far from men, amid this pathless grove,
In solemn thought the Minstrel wont to rove,
Like star-beam on the slow sequester'd tide
Lone-glittering, through the high tree branching wide.
And here, in Inspiration's eager hour,
When most the big soul feels the mastering power,
These wilds, these caverns roaming o'er,
Round which the screaming sea-gulls soar,
With wild unequal steps he pass'd along,
Oft pouring on the winds a broken song:
Anon, upon some rough rock's fearful brow
Would pause abrupt-and gaze upon the waves
below.

Poor Chatterton! he sorrows for thy fate

Who would have praised and loved thee, ere too

late.

Poor Chatterton! farewell! of darkest hues
This chaplet cast I on thy unshaped tomb;
But dare no longer on the sad theme muse,
Lest kindred woes persuade a kindred doom:
For oh! big gall-drops, shook from Folly's wing,
Have blacken'd the fair promise of my spring;

Sweet Flower of Hope! free Nature's genial child! And the stern Fate transpierced with viewless dart

That didst so fair disclose thy early bloom,
Filling the wide air with a rich perfume!
For thee in vain all heavenly aspects smiled;
From the hard world brief respite could they win-
The frost nipp'd sharp without, the canker prey'd

within!

Ah! where are fled the charms of vernal Grace,
And Joy's wild gleams that lighten'd o'er thy face?
Youth of tumultuous soul, and haggard eye!
Thy wasted form, thy hurried steps, I view,
On thy wan forehead starts the lethal dew,
And oh the anguish of that shuddering sigh!

Such were the struggles of the gloomy hour,
When Care, of wither'd brow,
Prepar'd the poison's death-cold power:
Already to thy lips was raised the bowl,
When near thee stood Affection meek
(Her bosom bare, and wildly pale her cheek,)
Thy sullen gaze she bade thee roll

On scenes that well might melt thy soul;
Thy native cot she flash'd upon thy view,
Thy native cot, where still, at close of day,
Peace smiling sate, and listen'd to thy lay;
Thy Sister's shrieks she bade thee hear,
And mark thy Mother's thrilling tear;

See, see her breast's convulsive throe,
Her silent agony of woe!

Ah! dash the poison'd chalice from thy hand!
And thou hadst dash'd it, at her soft command,

The last pale Hope that shiver'd at my heart!

Hence, gloomy thoughts! no more my soul shall
dwell

On joys that were! No more endure to weigh
The shame and anguish of the evil day,
Wisely forgetful! O'er the ocean swell
Sublime of Hope I scek the cottaged dell,
Where Virtue calm with careless step may stray;
And, dancing to the moon-light roundelay,
The wizard Passions weave a holy spell!

O Chatterton! that thou wert yet alive!
Sure thou wouldst spread the canvas to the gale,
And love with us the tinkling team to drive
O'er peaceful Freedom's undivided dale;
And we, at sober eve, would round thee throng,
Hanging, enraptured, on thy stately song!
And greet with smiles the young-eyed Poesy
All deftly mask'd, as hoar Antiquity.

Alas vain Phantasies! the fleeting brood
Of Woe self-solaced in her dreamy mood!
Yet will I love to follow the sweet dream,
Where Susquehannah pours his untamed stream;
And on some hill, whose forest-frowning side
Waves o'er the murmurs of his calmer tide,
Will raise a solemn Cenotaph to thee,
Sweet Harper of time-shrouded Minstrelsy!
And there, soothed sadly by the dirgeful wind,

* Avon, a river near Bristol; the birth place of Chatterton. Muse on the sore ills I had left behind.

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SONGS OF THE PIXIES.

The Pixies, in the superstition of Devonshire, are a race of beings invisibly small, and harmless or friendly to man. At a small distance from a village in that county, half-way up a

O'er his hush'd soul our soothing witcheries shed,
And twine our faery garlands round his head.

V.

When Evening's dusky car,
Crown'd with her dewy star,

wood-covered hill, is an excavation called the Pixies' Parlor. Steals o'er the fading sky in shadowy flight,

The roots of old trees form its ceiling; and on its sides are innumerable ciphers, among which the author discovered his own cipher and those of his brothers, cut by the hand of their childhood. At the foot of the hill flows the river Otter.

To this place the Author conducted a party of young Ladies, during the Summer months of the year 1793; one of whom, of stature elegantly small, and of complexion colorless yet clear, was proclaimed the Faery Queen. On which occasion the following irregular Ode was written.

I.

WHOM the untȧught Shepherds call
Pixies in their madrigal,
Fancy's children, here we dwell:
Welcome, Ladies! to our cell.
Here the wren of softest note

Builds its nest and warbles well;
Here the blackbird strains his throat;
Welcome, Ladies! to our cell.

II.

When fades the moon all shadowy-pale,
And scuds the cloud before the gale,
Ere Morn with living gems bedight
Purples the East with streaky light,
We sip the furze-flower's fragrant dews
Clad in robes of rainbow hues :
Or sport amid the rosy gleam,
Soothed by the distant-tinkling team,
While lusty Labor scouting sorrow
Bids the Dame a glad good-morrow,
Who jogs the accustom'd road along,
And paces cheery to her cheering song.

III.

But not our filmy pinion
We scorch amid the blaze of day,
When Noontide's fiery-tressed minion
Flashes the fervid ray.

Aye from the sultry heat

We to the cave retreat

O'ercanopied by huge roots intertwined
With wildest texture, blacken'd o'er with age:
Round them their mantle green the ivies bind,
Beneath whose foliage pale,
Fann'd by the unfrequent gale,
We shield us from the Tyrant's mid-day rage.

IV.

Thither, while the murmuring throng
Of wild-bees hum their drowsy song,
By Indolence and Fancy brought,
A youthful Bard, "unknown to Fame,"
Wooes the Queen of Solemn Thought,
And heaves the gentle misery of a sigh,

Gazing with tearful eye,

As round our sandy grot appear
Many a rudely-sculptured name

To pensive Memory dear!

Weaving gay dreams of sunny-tinctured hue,
We glance before his view:

On leaves of aspen trees
We tremble to the breeze,

Veil'd from the grosser ken of mortal sight.

Or, haply, at the visionary hour,

Along our wildly-bower'd sequester'd walk,
We listen to the enamour'd rustic's talk;
Heave with the heavings of the maiden's breast,
Where young-eyed Loves have built their turtle
nest;

Or guide of soul-subduing power
The electric flash, that from the melting eye
Darts the fond question and the soft reply.

VI.

Or through the mystic ringlets of the vale
We flash our faery feet in gamesome prank;
Or, silent-sandall'd, pay our defter court
Circling the Spirit of the Western Gale,
Where wearied with his flower-caressing sport
Supine he slumbers on a violet bank;
Then with quaint music hymn the parting gleam
By lonely Otter's sleep-persuading stream;
Or where his waves with loud unquiet song
Dash'd o'er the rocky channel froth along;
Or where, his silver waters smoothed to rest,
The tall tree's shadow sleeps upon his breast.

VII.

Hence, thou lingerer, Light!
Eve saddens into Night.

Mother of wildly-working dreams! we view
The sombre hours, that round thee stand
With downcast eyes (a duteous band!)
Their dark robes dripping with the heavy dew.
Sorceress of the ebon throne!
Thy power the Pixies own,
When round thy raven brow
Heaven's lucent roses glow,

And clouds, in watery colors drest,
Float in light drapery o'er thy sable vest:
What time the pale moon sheds a softer day,
Mellowing the woods beneath its pensive beam:
For 'mid the quivering light 't is ours to play,
Aye dancing to the cadence of the stream.

VIII.

Welcome, Ladies! to the cell

Where the blameless Pixies dwell:

But thou, sweet Nymph! proclaim'd our Faery
Queen,

With what obeisance meet

Thy presence shall we greet?

For lo! attendant on thy steps are seen
Graceful Ease in artless stole,
And white-robed Purity of soul,
With Honor's softer mien;
Mirth of the loosely-flowing hair,

And meek-eyed Pity eloquently fair,
Whose tearful cheeks are lovely to the view,
As snow-drop wet with dew.

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