The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume I Part 119

The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume I Part 119

So will not fade the flowers which Emmeline With delicate fingers on the snow-white silk 15 Has worked (the flowers which most she knew I loved), And, more beloved than they, her auburn hair.

In the cool morning twilight, early waked By her full bosom's joyous restlessness, Softly she rose, and lightly stole along, 20 Down the slope coppice to the woodbine bower, Whose rich flowers, swinging in the morning breeze, Over their dim fast-moving shadows hung, Making a quiet image of disquiet In the smooth, scarcely moving river-pool. 25 There, in that bower where first she owned her love, And let me kiss my own warm tear of joy From off her glowing cheek, she sate and stretched The silk upon the frame, and worked her name Between the Moss-Rose and Forget-me-not-- 30 Her own dear name, with her own auburn hair!

That forced to wander till sweet spring return, I yet might ne'er forget her smile, her look, Her voice, (that even in her mirthful mood Has made me wish to steal away and weep,) 35 Nor yet the enhancement of that maiden kiss With which she promised, that when spring returned, She would resign one half of that dear name, And own thenceforth no other name but mine!

? 1800.

FOOTNOTES:

[345:2] First published in the _Morning Post_, September 17, 1802 (signed, ?S??S?): included in _Sibylline Leaves_, 1817, 1828, 1829, 1834. 'It had been composed two years before' (1802), _Note_, 1893, p.

624. Mr. Campbell may have seen a dated MS. Internal evidence would point to the autumn of 1802, when it was published in the _Morning Post_.

[346:1] One of the names (and meriting to be the only one) of the _Myosotis Scorpioides Pal.u.s.tris_, a flower from six to twelve inches high, with blue blossom and bright yellow eye. It has the same name over the whole Empire of Germany (_Vergissmeinnicht_) and, we believe, in Denmark and Sweden.

LINENOTES:

[1] om. M. P.

[2] one] _one_ M. P.

[12] Line 13 precedes line 12 M. P.

[17] they] all M. P.

[19] joyous] joyless S. L. 1828.

[19-21]

joyous restlessness, Leaving the soft bed to her sister, Softly she rose, and lightly stole along, Her fair face flushing in the purple dawn, Adown the meadow to the woodbine bower

M. P.

[Between 19-20] Leaving the soft bed to her sleeping sister S. L. 1817.

[25] scarcely moving] scarcely-flowing M. P.

[39] thenceforth] henceforth M. P.

A THOUGHT SUGGESTED BY A VIEW[347:1]

OF SADDLEBACK IN c.u.mBERLAND

On stern Blencartha's perilous height The winds are tyrannous and strong; And flashing forth unsteady light From stern Blencartha's skiey height, As loud the torrents throng! 5 Beneath the moon, in gentle weather, They bind the earth and sky together.

But oh! the sky and all its forms, how quiet!

The things that seek the earth, how full of noise and riot!

1800.

FOOTNOTES:

[347:1] First published in the _Amulet_, 1833, reprinted in _Friendship's Offering_, 1834: included in _Essays on His Own Times_, 1850, iii. 997. First collected in _P. and D. W._, 1877-80. These lines are inserted in one of the Malta Notebooks, and appear from the context to have been written at Olevano in 1806; but it is almost certain that they belong to the autumn of 1800 when Coleridge made a first acquaintance of 'Blencathara's rugged coves'. The first line is an adaptation of a line in a poem of Isaac Ritson, quoted in Hutchinson's _History of c.u.mberland_, a work which supplied him with some of the place-names in the Second Part of _Christabel_. Compare, too, a sentence in a letter to Sir H. Davy of Oct. 18, 1800:--'At the bottom of the Carrock Man . . . the wind became so fearful and _tyrannous_, etc.'

LINENOTES:

t.i.tle] A Versified Reflection F. O. 1834. In F. O. 1834, the lines were prefaced by a note:--[A Force is the provincial term in c.u.mberland for any narrow fall of water from the summit of a mountain precipice. 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 the Saddleback Fell. _S.

T. C._] A ---- by the view of Saddleback, near Threlkeld in c.u.mberland, Essays, &c.

[1] Blencartha's] Blenkarthur's MS.: Blencarthur's F. O.: Blenharthur's Essays, &c., 1850.

[2] The wind is F. O.

[4] Blencartha's] Blenkarthur's MS.: Blencarthur's F. O.: Blenharthur's Essays, &c., 1850.

[8] oh!] ah! Essays, &c.

THE MAD MONK[347:2]

I heard a voice from Etna's side; Where o'er a cavern's mouth That fronted to the south A chesnut spread its umbrage wide: A hermit or a monk the man might be; 5 But him I could not see: And thus the music flow'd along, In melody most like to old Sicilian song:

'There was a time when earth, and sea, and skies, The bright green vale, and forest's dark recess, 10 With all things, lay before mine eyes In steady loveliness: But now I feel, on earth's uneasy scene, Such sorrows as will never cease;-- I only ask for peace; 15 If I must live to know that such a time has been!'

A silence then ensued: Till from the cavern came A voice;--it was the same!

And thus, in mournful tone, its dreary plaint renew'd: 20

'Last night, as o'er the sloping turf I trod, The smooth green turf, to me a vision gave Beneath mine eyes, the sod-- The roof of Rosa's grave!

My heart has need with dreams like these to strive, 25 For, when I woke, beneath mine eyes I found The plot of mossy ground, On which we oft have sat when Rosa was alive.-- Why must the rock, and margin of the flood, Why must the hills so many flow'rets bear, 30 Whose colours to a _murder'd_ maiden's blood, Such sad resemblance wear?--

'_I struck the wound_,--this hand of mine!

For Oh, thou maid divine, I lov'd to agony! 35 The youth whom thou call'd'st thine Did never love like me!

'Is it the stormy clouds above That flash'd so red a gleam?

On yonder downward trickling stream?-- 40 'Tis not the blood of her I love.-- The sun torments me from his western bed, Oh, let him cease for ever to diffuse Those crimson spectre hues!

Oh, let me lie in peace, and be for ever dead!' 45

Here ceas'd the voice. In deep dismay, Down thro' the forest I pursu'd my way.

1800.