DEDICATION

(1818)

TO S. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ.

Y DEAR COLERIDGE,

MY

You will smile to see the slender labors of your friend designated by the title of Works; but such was the wish of the gentlemen who have kindly undertaken the trouble of collecting them, and from their judgment could be no appeal.

“

It would be a kind of disloyalty to offer to any one but yourself a volume containing the early pieces, which were first published among your poems, and were fairly derivatives from you and them. My friend Lloyd and myself came into our first battle (authorship is a sort of warfare) under cover of the greater Ajax. How this association, which shall always be a dear and proud recollection to me, came to be broken, -who snapped the three-fold cord,—whether yourself (but I know that was not the case) grew ashamed of your former companions, or whether (which is by much the more probable) some ungracious bookseller was author of the separation, -I cannot tell ;--but wanting the support of your friendly elm, (I speak for myself,) my vine has, since that time, put forth few or no fruits; the sap (if ever it had any) has become, in a manner, dried up and extinct; and you will find your old associate, in his second volume, dwindled into prose and criticism.

Am I right in assuming this as the cause? or is it that, as years come upon us, (except with some more healthy-happy spirits,) Life itself loses much of its Poetry for us? we trans-. cribe but what we read in the great volume of Nature; and,

as the characters grow dim, we turn off, and look another way. You yourself write no Christabels, nor Ancient Mariners,

now.

Some of the Sonnets, which shall be carelessly turned over by the general reader, may happily awaken in you remembrances, which I should be sorry should be ever totally extinct -the memory

*

* *

****

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

and

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, I 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 have 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 vindicate than the language.

I remain,

My dear Coleridge,
Your's,

With unabated esteem,
C. LAMB,

W

LAMB'S EARLIEST POEM

MILLE VIÆ MORTIS

(1789)

HAT time in bands of slumber all were laid,

To Death's dark court, methought I was convey'd ;

In realms it lay far hid from mortal sight,

And gloomy tapers scarce kept out the night.

On ebon throne the King of Terrors sate;
Around him stood the ministers of Fate;
On fell destruction bent, the murth'rous band
Waited attentively his high command.

Here pallid Fear & dark Despair were seen.
And Fever here with looks forever lean,
Swoln Dropsy, halting Gout, profuse of woes,
And Madness fierce & hopeless of repose,
Wide-wasting Plague; but chief in honour stood
More-wasting War, insatiable of blood;
With starting eye-balls, eager for the word;
Already brandish'd was the glitt'ring sword.
Wonder and fear alike had fill'd my breast,
And thus the grisly Monarch I addrest-

"Of earth-born Heroes why should Poets sing,
"And thee neglect, neglect the greatest King?
"To thee ev'n Cæsar's self was forc'd to yield
"The glories of Pharsalia's well-fought field."
When, with a frown, "Vile caitiff, come not here,"
Abrupt cried Death; "shall flatt'ry soothe my ear?"
"Hence, or thou feel'st my dart!" the Monarch said,
Wild terror seiz'd me, & the vision fled,

POEMS IN COLERIDGE'S POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, 1796

AS

(Written late in 1794.

Text of 1797)

S when a child on some long winter's night
Affrighted clinging to its Grandam's knees
With eager wond'ring 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 lov'd each other dear,
Murder'd by cruel Uncle's mandate fell:
Ev'n such the shiv'ring joys thy tones impart,
Ev'n so thou, SIDDONS! meltest my sad heart!

(Probably 1795. Text of 1818)

Was it some sweet device of Faery

That mocked 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,
Enlighted 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 foot-steps 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,