erudition, and display his fine critical taste and discernment. In penetrating into and embracing the whole meaning of a favourite author-unfolding the nice shades and distinctions of thought, character, feeling, or melody-darting on it the light of his own creative mind and suggestive fancy-and perhaps linking the whole to some glorious original conception or image, Coleridge stands unrivalled. He does not appear as a critic, but as an eloquent and gifted expounder of kindred excellence and genius. He seems like one who has the key to every hidden chamber of profound and subtle thought and every ethereal conception. We cannot think, however, that he could ever have built up a regular system of ethics or criticism. He wanted the art to combine and arrange his materials. He was too languid and irresolute. He had never attained the art of writing with clearness and precision; for he is often unintelligible, turgid, and verbose, as if he struggled in vain after perspicacity and method. His intellect could not subordinate the 'shaping spirit' of his imagination. The poetical works of Coleridge have been collected and published in three volumes. They are various in style and manner, embracing ode, tragedy, and epigram, love-poems, and strains of patriotism and superstition-a wild witchery of imagination and, at other times, severe and stately thought and intellectual retrospection. His language is often rich and musical, highly figurative and ornate. Many of his minor poems are characterised by tenderness and beauty, but others are disfigured by passages of turgid sentimentalism and puerile affectation. The most original and striking of his productions is his well-known tale of The Ancient Mariner. According to De Quincey, the germ of this story is contained in a passage of Shelvocke, one of the classical circumnavigators of the earth, who states that his second captain, being a melancholy man, was possessed by a fancy that some long season of foul weather was owing to an albatross which had steadily pursued the ship, upon which he shot the bird, but without mending their condition. Coleridge makes the ancient mariner relate the circumstances attending his act of inhumanity to one of three weddingguests whom he meets and detains on his way to the marriage-feast. He holds him with his glittering eye,' and invests his narration with a deep preternatural character and interest, and with touches of exquisite tenderness and energetic description. The versification is irregular, in the style of the old ballads, and most of the action of the piece is unnatural; yet the poem is full of vivid and original imagination. There is nothing else like it,' says one of his critics; 'it is a poem by itself; between it and other compositions, in parimateria, there is a chasm which you cannot overpass. The sensitive reader feels himself insulated, and a sea of wonder and mystery flows round him as round the spell-stricken ship itself.' Coleridge further illustrates his theory of the connection between the material and the spiritual world in his unfinished poem of Christabel, a romantic supernatural tale, filled with wild imagery and the most remarkable modulation of verse. The versification is founded on what the poet calls a new principle-though it was evidently practised by Chaucer and Shakspeare-namely, that of counting in each line the number of accentuated words, not the number of syllables. Though the latter,' he says, 'may vary from seven to twelve, yet in each line the accents will be found to be only four.' This irregular harmony delighted both Scott and Byron, by whom it was imitated. We add a brief specimen : The night is chill; the forest bare; She foldeth her arms beneath her cloak, A finer passage is that describing broken friendships: Alas! they had been friends in youth; And life is thorny; and youth is vain : Doth work like madness in the brain. Each spake words of high disdain And insult to his heart's best brother: They parted-ne'er to meet again! But never either found another The marks of that which once hath been. This metrical harmony of Coleridge exercises a sort of fascination even when it is found united to incoherent images and absurd conceptions. Thus in Khubla Khan, a fragment written from recollections of a dream, we have the following melodious rhapsody: The shadow of the dome of pleasure A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! In a vision once I saw : It was an Abyssinian maid, The odes of Coleridge are highly_passionate and elevated in conception. That on France was considered by Shelley to be the finest English ode of modern times. The hymn on Chamouni is equally lofty and brilliant. His Genevieve is a pure and exquisite love-poem, without that gorgeous diffuseness which characterises the odes, yet more chastely and carefully finished, and abounding in the delicate and subtle traits of his imagination. Coleridge was deficient in the rapid energy and strong passion necessary for the drama. The poetical beauty of certain passages would not, on the stage, atone for the paucity of action and want of interest in his two plays, though, as works of genius, they vastly excel those of a more recent date which prove highly successful in representation. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. PART I. It is an ancient mariner, "By thy long gray beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me ? 'The bridegroom's doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin ; The guests are met, the feast is set; He holds him with his skinny hand; 'There was a ship,' quoth he. Hold off; unhand me, gray-beard loon ;' Eftsoons his hand dropt he. He holds him with his glittering eye The wedding guest stood still, And listens like a three-years' child; The wedding-guest sat on a stone, He cannot choose but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed mariner : The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared, Merrily did we drop Below the kirk, below the hill, Below the light-house top. 'The sun came up upon the left, Out of the sea came he; And he shone bright, and on the right Went down into the sea. *Higher and higher every day, Till over the mast at noon " The wedding-guest here beat his breast, For he heard the loud bassoon. The bride hath paced into the hall, The wedding-guest he beat his breast, 'And now the storm-blast came, and he He struck with his o'ertaking wings, "With sloping masts and dripping prow, The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, 'And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold; And ice mast-high came floating by 'And through the drifts the snowy cliffs Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken- 'Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, The glorious sun uprist; Then all averred I had killed the bird "Twas right, ," said they, "such birds to slay That bring the fog and mist." 'The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free; We were the first that ever burst 'Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 'Twas sad as sad could be; And we did speak only to break The silence of the sea! 'All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody sun at noon Right up above the mast did stand, 'Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; 'Water, water everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. 'The very deep did rot; O Christ! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs 'About, about, in reel and rout 'And some in dreams assured were 'And every tongue, through utter drought, We could not speak, no more than if 'Ah, well-a-day! what evil looks Instead of the cross, the albatross PART III. 'There passed a weary time. Each throat Was parched, and glazed each eye. A weary time! a weary time! How glazed each weary eye! When looking westward I beheld 'At first it seemed a little speck, It moved and moved, and took at last 'A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist! And still it neared and neared: As if it dodged a water-sprite, It plunged, and tacked, and veered. 'With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, We could nor laugh nor wail; Through utter drought all dumb we stood; I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, And cried: "A sail! a sail!" 'With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, Agape they heard me call; Gramercy they for joy did grin, And all at once their breath drew in, As they were drinking all. "See! see!" I cried, "she tacks no more, Hither to work us weal; Without a breeze, without a tide, She steadies with upright keel." 'The western wave was all a-flame, When that strange shape drove suddenly 'And straight the sun was flecked with bars— Heaven's mother send us grace!— As if through a dungeon grate he peered 'Alas! thought I, and my heart beat loud, Are those her sails that glance in the sun 'Are those her ribs through which the sun And is that woman all her crew? Is that a death, and are there two? Is death that woman's mate? 'Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold; Her skin was as white as leprosy, Who thicks man's blood with cold. 'The naked hulk alongside came, And the twain were casting dice; "The game is done! I've won, I've won!" Quoth she, and whistles thrice. 'The sun's rim dips, the stars rush out, At one stride comes the dark; With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea Off shot the spectre-bark. 'We listened and looked sideways up; Fear at my heart, as at a cup, My life-blood seemed to sip. The stars were dim, and thick the night, The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white; From the sails the dew did drip Till clomb above the eastern bar The horned moon, with one bright star 'One after one, by the star-dogged moon, Each turned his face with a ghastly pang, "Four times fifty living men- 'The souls did from their bodies fly- PART IV. 'I fear thee, ancient mariner, I fear thy skinny hand! And thou art long, and lank, and brown, As is the ribbed sea-sand. 'I fear thee and thy glittering eye, And thy skinny hand so brown.' 'Fear not, fear not, thou wedding-guest, This body dropped not down. 'Alone, alone, all, all alone, And never a saint took pity on 'The many men so beautiful! And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on, and so did I. 'I looked upon the rotting sea, I looked upon the rotting deck, 'I looked to heaven, and tried to pray; But or ever a prayer had gushed, A wicked whisper came, and made 'I closed my lids, and kept them close, And the balls like pulses beat; For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky, 'The cold sweat melted from their limbs, Nor rot nor reek did they; The look with which they looked on me Had never passed away. 'An orphan's curse would drag to hell A spirit from on high; But oh! more horrible than that Is a curse in a dead man's eye! Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, And yet I could not die. 'The moving moon went up the sky, And nowhere did abide : Softly she was going up, 'Her beams bemocked the sultry main, Like April hoarfrost spread; But where the ship's huge shadow lay 'Beyond the shadow of the ship I watched the water-snakes; They moved in tracks of shining white, And when they reared, the elfish light Fell off in hoary flakes. 'Within the shadow of the ship I watched their rich attire: Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, They coiled and swam; and every track Was a flash of golden fire. ‘O happy living things! no tongue Their beauty might declare: A spring of love gushed from my heart, And I blessed them unaware: Sure my kind saint took pity on me, And I blessed them unaware. 'The self-same moment I could pray; And from my neck so free The albatross fell off, and sank 'The loud wind never reached the ship, "They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, Nor spake, nor moved their eyes; It had been strange, even in a dream, To have seen those dead men rise. "The helmsman steered, the ship moved on, Yet never a breeze up blew ; The mariners all 'gan work the ropes They raised their limbs like lifeless tools- 'The body of my brother's son Stood by me, knee to knee : The body and I pulled at one rope, But he said nought to me.' 'I fear thee, ancient mariner!' 6 Be calm, thou wedding-guest! 'Twas not those souls that fled in pain, Which to their corses came again, But a troop of spirits blest : 'For when it dawned, they dropped their arms, And clustered round the mast; Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, And from their bodies passed. 'Around, around, flew each sweet sound, Then darted to the sun; Slowly the sounds came back again, 'Sometimes, a-dropping from the sky, How they seemed to fill the sea and air, 'And now 'twas like all instruments, Now like a lonely flute; And now it is an angel's song, That makes the heavens be mute. 'It ceased; yet still the sails made on A pleasant noise till noon, A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, That to the sleeping woods all night [The ship is driven onward, but at length the curse is finally expiated. A wind springs up: It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek The mariner sees his native country. The angelic spirits leave the dead bodies, and appear in their own forms of light, each waving his hand to the shore. A boat with a pilot and hermit on board approaches the ship, which suddenly sinks. The mariner is rescued ; he entreats the hermit to shrive him, and the penance of life falls on him.] 'Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched With a woful agony, Which forced me to begin my tale; And then it left me free. 'Since then, at an uncertain hour That agony returns ; And till my ghastly tale is told, "I pass, like night, from land to land; I have strange power of speech; I know the man that must hear me : To him my tale I teach. 'What loud uproar bursts from that door! The wedding-guests are there : But in the garden-bower the bride 'O wedding-guest! this soul hath been So lonely 'twas, that God himself 'O sweeter than the marriage-feast, 'Tis sweeter far to me, To walk together to the kirk With a goodly company! 'To walk together to the kirk, And all together pray, While each to his great Father bends, Old men, and babes, and loving friends, 'Farewell, farewell! but this I tell 'He prayeth best who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, The mariner, whose eye is bright, Is gone and now the wedding-guest He went like one that hath been stunned, A sadder and a wiser man From the Ode to the Departing Year' (1795) With inward stillness, and submitted mind; Starting from my silent sadness, Ere yet the entered cloud foreclosed my sight, I raised the impetuous song, and solemnised his flight. Hither, from the recent tomb, From Distemper's midnight anguish ; And thence, where Poverty doth waste and languish ; Or where, o'er cradled infants bending, Ye Woes! ye young-eyed Joys! advance! Raises its fateful strings from sleep, I bid you haste, a mixed tumultuous band! From every private bower, And each domestic hearth, And with a loud and yet a louder voice, Weep and rejoice! Still echoes the dread name that o'er the earth I marked Ambition in his war-array! I heard the mailèd monarch's troublous cry'Ah ! wherefore does the northern conqueress stay! Groans not her chariot on its onward way?' Fly, mailed monarch, fly! Stunned by Death's twice mortal mace, The insatiate hag shall gloat with drunken eye! Ye that gasped on Warsaw's plain ! When human ruin choked the streams, Fell in conquest's glutted hour, 'Mid women's shrieks and infants' screams! Spirits of the uncoffined slain, Sudden blasts of triumph swelling, Oft, at night, in misty train, Rush around her narrow dwelling! The exterminating fiend is fled Foul her life, and dark her doom Mighty armies of the dead Dance like death-fires round her tomb! |