Poems by Hartley Coleridge :: :: University of Virginia Library

How wayward oft appears the poet's fate,
Who still is born too early or too late.
If a bold, fond, imaginative age,
Instinct with amorous, or with martial rage,
Enact more wonders than the mind conceives,
And all that fancy can devise believes,—
If such an age behold a bard, whose sight
Looks on earth's objects by a heaven-born light,
Skill'd to pourtray each lineament of nature,
And shed purpureal grace on every feature,
The fleeting language, to its trust untrue,
Vext by the jarring claims of old and new,
Defeats his beauty, makes his sense the fee
Of a blind, guessing, blundering glossary.
Thus Chaucer, quaintly clad in antique guise,
With unfamiliar mien scares modern eyes.
No doubt he well invented—nobly felt—
But then, O Lord! how monstrously he spelt.

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His syllables perplex our critic men,
Who try in vain to find exactly ten;
And waste much learning to reduce his songs
To modish measurement of shorts and longs.
His language, too, unpolish'd and unfixt,
Of Norman, Saxon, Latin, oddly mixt—
Such words might please th' uneducated ears
That hail'd the blaring trumpets of Poictiers.
They shared the sable Edward's glee and glory,
And, like his conquests, they were transitory.
Then how shall such unpolish'd lingo cope
With polish'd elegance and Mister Pope?

Yet, ancient Bard! let not our judgment wrong
Thy rich, spontaneous, many-colour'd song;
True mirror of a bold, ambitious age,
In passion furious, in reflection sage!—
An age of gorgeous sights and famous deeds,
And virtue more than peace admits or needs;
When shiver'd lances were our ladies' sport,
And love itself assumed a lofty port;
When every beast, and bird, and flower, and tree,
Convey'd a meaning and a mystery;
And men in all degrees, sorts, ranks, and trades,
Knights, Palmers, Scholars, Wives, devoted Maids,

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In garb, and speech, and manners, stood confest
To outward view, by hues and signs exprest,
And told their state and calling by their vest.

SPENSER.

Sweet was the youth of virgin Poesy,
That virgin sweetness which she gave to thee,
My Spenser, bard of happy innocence!
For thou didst with a bridegroom's love intense
Caress the fair inventions of thy brain,
Those babes of paradise, without the pain
Of mortal birth, to fairest heritage
Born in the freshness of their perfect age.
Thy Faery Knight had all the world in fee,
For all the world was Faeryland to thee.
Thine is no tale, once acted, then forgot;
Thy creatures never were, and never will be not.
Oh! look not for them in the dark abyss
Where all things have been, and where nothing is—
The spectral past;—nor in the troubled sea
Where all strange fancies are about to be—

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The unabiding present. Seek them where
For ever lives the Good, the True, the Fair,
In the eternal silence of the heart.
There Spenser found them; thence his magic art
Their shades evoked in feature, form, and limb,
Real as a human self, and bright as cherubim.
And what though wistful love and emulous arms,
And all the wizard might of mutter'd charms,—
Though slimy snakes disgorge their loathly rage,
And monstrous phantoms wait on Archimage:
These are but dreams, that come, and go, and peep
Through the thin curtain of a morning sleep,
And leave no pressure on the soul, that wakes
And hails the glad creation that it makes.

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SHAKESPEARE.

Shakespeare, what art thou? Could'st thou rise again
To praise thyself, thy praise were old and vain;
Thy highest flight would sink beneath thy due;
Thy own invention would find nothing new.
In the whole orb of nature that thou art,
Complete in essence, and distinct in part;
No theme, no topic, and no simile,
But busy men have stolen in praise of thee.
Then let thy cumbrous crities keep their shelves;
We find thy truest comment in ourselves.
In thee our thoughts find utterance, and combine
Their airy substance with those thoughts of thine.
By thee our feelings all are judged, acquitted,
Reproved, condemn'd, with seemly action fitted.
What chance, or change, affection, or the faith
Of hope and fear, the benison or scathe
Of Fortune infinite can make of man,—
What man has been since first the world began,

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Thou well hast shown. One task alone remains,
One great adventure for succeeding brains;
The golden branch upon the mystic tree,
Unpluck'd, to show—man as he ought to be.

DRAYTON.

Hail to thee, Drayton! true, pains-taking wight,
So various that 'tis hard to praise thee right;
For driest fact and finest faery fable
Employ'd thy genius indefatigable.
What bard more zealous of our England's glory,
More deeply versed in all her antique story,
Recorded feat, tradition quaint and hoary?
What muse like thine so patiently would plod
From shire to shire in pilgrim sandal shod,
Calling to life and voice, and conscious will,
The shifting streamlet and the sluggish hill?
Great genealogist of earth and water,
The very Plutarch of insensate matter.

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DONNE.

Brief was the reign of pure poetic truth;
A race of thinkers next, with rhymes uncouth,
And fancies fashion'd in laborious brains,
Made verses heavy as o'erloaded wains.
Love was their theme, but love that dwelt in stones,
Or charm'd the stars in their concentric zones;
Love that did first the nuptial bond conclude
'Twixt immaterial form and matter rude;
Love that was riddled, sphered, transacted, spelt,
Sublimed, projected, everything but felt.
Or if in age, in orders, or the cholic,
They damn'd all loving as a heathen frolic;
They changed their topic, but in style the same,
Adored their Maker as they would their dame.
Thus Donne, not first, but greatest of the line,
Of stubborn thoughts a garland thought to twine;

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To his fair maid brought cabalistic posies,
And sung quaint ditties of metempsychosis;
Twists iron pokers into true love-knots,
Coining hard words, not found in polyglots.

DANIEL.

Not such was Daniel, gentle, bland, and good,
The wisest monitor of womanhood;
Plain morals utter'd in plain mother tongue,
And flat historic facts he plainly sung.
And yet by earnest faith bestow'd a grace
On bald event and ancient common-place.
The oldest truths to him were ever new;
No wonder, for he always felt them true.
The bootless battles of the red and white,
Which few can read, he patiently could write.

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DRYDEN.

Then Dryden came, a mind of giant mould,
Like the north wind, impetuous, keen, and cold;
Born to effect what Waller but essay'd,
In rank and file his numbers he array'd,
Compact as troops exact in battle's trade.
Firm by constraint, and regularly strong,
His vigorous lines resistless march along,
By martial music order'd and inspired,
Like glowing wheels by their own motion fired.
So as a nation long inured to arms,
And stirring strains, fierce pleasures, brisk alarms,
Disdains a calm, and can no longer bear
A soft, a pensive, or a solemn air;
Thus Dryden taught the English to despise
The simply sweet, long-lingering melodies
That lovely Spenser and his thoughtful peers
Had warbled erst to rapt attentive ears.
E'en Milton's billowy ocean of high sound,

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Delighted little, though it might astound;
The restless crowd impatient turn'd away,
And sought a shorter, shriller, lighter lay.

Yet Dryden nobly earn'd the poet's name,
And won new honours from the gift of fame.
His life was long, and when his head was grey,
His fortune broken, and usurp'd his bay,
His dauntless genius own'd no cold dismay;
Nor in repining notes of vain regret
He made his crack'd pipe pitifully fret.
But when cashier'd and laid upon the shelf,
To shame the court excell'd his former self,
Who meant to clip, but imp'd his moulted wings,
And cured him of his ancient itch of praising kings.
He sat gigantic on the shore of time,
And watch'd the ingress of encroaching slime,
Nor dream'd how much of evil or of good
Might work amid the far unfathom'd flood.

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DRYDEN'S SUCCESSORS.

Sad were the times in Dryden's latter day,
He saw all genius but his own decay;
Poor Otway starved, and Lee in misery dead,
The laurel torn from his own hoary head,
Like a frail father, he was doom'd to trace
His vices only in his spurious race;
For many a rhymer claim'd him for a sire,
With all his soot and less than half his fire.
Their boast to reconcile—a vain pretence—
The old antipathy of wit and sense.
To write in rhyme as men might write in prose,
And win the frigid praise of critic beaux.
But though their general theme was worldly man,
Small was their skill the living heart to scan;
Their fancy little and their wisdom less,
No inward truth their flippant lines express;
No image to the inward eye convey,
Reveal no secret impulse to the day.

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Action or passion there were seldom found,
Or the sweet magic of heart-stirring sound.
Smooth was their verse indeed; their turns were nice,
Quick, neat, exact, as if they moved on ice;
They skimm'd the surface of the chilling town,
And sought from courts and clubs a brief renown.

PARNELL.

A gentle wit was pure, polite Parnell,
By many praised, for many loved him well.
His muse glides on “with gentle swimming walk,”
And e'en while singing only seems to talk.
In fact she is an English gentlewoman,
Whom no one would believe a thing uncommon,
Till by experience taught, we find how rare
Such truly English gentlewomen are.

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SWIFT.

First in the list behold the caustic Dean,
Whose muse was like himself compact of spleen;
Whose sport was ireful, and whose laugh severe,
His very kindness cutting, cold, austere.

YOUNG AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

'Tis sad to think, of all the names that strive
For immortality, how few survive;
How many leave preferment's open ways,
Smit by the love of hard-earn'd, barren praise,
Defying poverty, and worldly blame,
And self-reproach, to win the puff of fame;
Unhappy breathe, and unregarded rot,
First starved to death, and soon as dead forgot.

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Eternal laurels shall the bust entwine
Of Young at once a poet and divine.
And Gray, while Windsor's antique towers shall stand,
Or spring revisit Britain's favour'd strand;
While those old bards whose praise he sung so well
Shall keep their place in memory's haunted cell;
While the green churchyard and the hallow'd tower
Attract your steps at eve's soft, solemn hour;
As long as men can read, or boys recite,
As long as critics sneer, and bards endite,
And lavish lords shall print their jingling stuff,
'Mid ample margin, leaving verge enough;
So long shall Gray, and all he said and sung,
Tang the shrill accents of the school-girl's tongue;
So long his Ode, his Elegy, his Bard,
By lisping prodigies be drawl'd and marr'd.

For Littelton, he gain'd the name of poet;
But, made a lord, might easily forego it.

West tried to soar on Pindar's ample pinion,
And bring his strains beneath our king's dominion.
All praise to him for what he well intended;
Of his success least said the soonest mended.

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Moore, Cawthorne, Cunningham, and Brown and Green,
Not much remember'd nor forgotten clean,
Of Britain's poets swell the lengthy list,
Scarce mark'd if present, nor if absent miss'd.

Boyce, sad example of the poet's lot,
His faults remember'd and his verse forgot,
From cold contempt a morsel doom'd to crave,
And owe to public charity a grave.
In want's worst miseries ran his woeful race,
And all his fame was but proclaim'd disgrace.
Peace to his dust, and may his ashes soar
Where mortal frailty shall beset no more;
Where want shall never tempt to deeds of shame,
And Heaven's pure light shall cleanse the tainted name!

Churchill, by want and rage impell'd to write,
Whose muse was anger, and whose genius spite,
With satire meant to stab, and not to heal,
The morbid, bloated, feverish commonweal;
Too proud to yield to humble virtue's rule,
Smote half the world with reckless ridicule.

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Wit, honour, sense, to him did Heaven impart,
But not that last, best gift, a pious heart.
He blazed awhile in fortune, fame, and pride,
But unrespected lived, untimely died.

But gentler Goldsmith, whom no man could hate,
Beloved by Heaven, pursued by wayward fate,
Whose verse shall live in every British mind,
Though sweet, yet strong; though nervous, yet refined;—
A motley part he play'd in life's gay scene,
The dupe of vanity and wayward spleen;
Aping the world, a strange fantastic elf;
Great, generous, noble, when he was himself.

Grainger possess'd a true poetic vein,
But why waste numbers on a Sugar-cane?
Say, Doctor, why, since those who only need
Thy blank instructions, sure will never read?

Cooper essay'd a vein to England new,
To be the poet of refined virtù.
His muse, half French, half English, trips away,
A nymph presentable, though rather gay,
Brought up at Paris, and not half at ease
Where British morals hold their strict decrees.

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But ill the gentleman supports his claim
To Gresset's wit or old Anacreon's name.

Smollett and Armstrong, both of Pæan's band,
Compatriot offspring of a thoughtful land,
A land severe, whose mettle yet unbroke.
Toils in the team, and yet disdains the yoke.
In mind Athenian, but in spirit still
The land of Wallace wight, and Christie's Will.
Such then was Scotland, nor could learning, art,
Or finest genius quite subdue that heart.
So neither keenest sense nor soundest morals
Could keep her brightest sons from needless quarrels.
And oft't would seem her literary men
Reluctant changed the claymore for the pen.
Scots were they both by temper as by birth,
And both were racy of their native earth;
But pensive Armstrong, though he heir'd a name
For bloody deeds of old bequeath'd to fame,
On Liddal's banks renown'd and sands of Drife,
Was yet almost too indolent for strife.
And little of the Scot was in him seen,
Save now and then a passing fit of spleen.

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And sure the man of whom our Thomson sung
(Thomson a Scot in nothing but his tongue)
In such a gentle strain of kind reproof,
As could be dictated by nought but love,
Could not be other than a kindly soul,
Who oft forgot the doctor o'er a bowl;
And when he spied the humming, sparkling cream
Of bright champagne, or snuff'd of punch the steam,
Even as a poet would forget his theme.

Yet in his graver mood he lectured well
On ills which haply oft himself befell.
And with small practice, but with some small wealth,
He turn'd to stately verse the Art of Health;
And justly earn'd a lofty place among
The masters of the blank didactic song.
Correct his judgment, he knew where to stop,
And smells by no means often of the shop.
Yea, though a learn'd disciple of St. Luke,
He never once alludes to purge or puke;
Nor with hard words of most portentous omen
Describes the thorax, pelvis, or abdomen.

See Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, vol. III., p. 105. Second Edition.

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WILKIE, DODSLEY, &c.

Wilkie, the Scottish Homer, so 'tis said;
I will not censure what I never read.
Had Homer been a chief of merry Tweeddale,
And had his trumpet been an old Scotch fiddle,
His Pegasus a shuffling Scotland pad,
He then had wrote the Epigoniad.

Good Dodsley, honest, bustling, hearty soul,
A footman, verse-man, prose-man, bibliopole;
A menial first beneath a lady's roof,
Then Mercury to guttling Dartineuf,
His humble education soon complete,
He learnt good things to write, good things to eat.
Then boldly enter'd on the buskin'd stage,
And show'd how toys may help to make us sage:
Nay, dared to bite the great with satire's tooth,
And made a Miller tell his King the truth.
In tragic strain he told Cleone's woes,
The touching sorrows and the madd'ning throes

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Of a fond mother and a faithful wife.
He wrote “The Economy of Human Life.”
For flights didactic then his lyre he strung,
Made rhymes on Preaching, and blank verse on Dung;
Anon with soaring weary, much at his ease,
Wrote Epigrams, and Compliments, and Kisses.
All styles he tried, the tragic, comic, lyric,
The grave didactic and the keen satiric;
Now preach'd and taught as sober as a dominie,
Now went pindaric-mad about Melpomene;
Now tried the pastoral pipe and oaten stop,
Yet all the while neglected not his shop.
Fair be his fame, among a knavish clan
His noblest title was an honest man.
A bookseller, he robb'd no bard of pelf,
No bard he libell'd, though a bard himself.

Far other fate was thine, unhappy Kit,
Luckless adventurer in the trade of wit.
A bitter cup was offer'd to thy lip,
Drugg'd with the wants and woes of authorship.
Untimely thrust upon this mortal stage,
No childish pastime could thy thoughts engage.

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Books were thy playmates. In a happy dream
Thy hours unmark'd would glide along the stream
Of fancies numberless, and sweet, and fair;
Link'd like the notes of some voluptuous air,
For ever varying as the hues that deck
With changeful loveliness the ring-dove's neck.
Still rising, flitting, melting, blending,
For ever passing, and yet never ending.
Sweet life were this, if life might pass away
Like the soft numbers of a warbled lay;
Were man not doom'd to carefulness and toil,
A magic lamp with unconsuming oil.
Truth is a lesson of another school,
And duty sways us with a stricter rule.
The stream of life awhile that smoothest flows,
'Ere long is hurried down the stream of woes,
Or, lost in swamps of penury and shame,
Leaves the foul vapour of a tainted name.

Like fate, or worse, poor Cuthbert, made thy life
A woful monument to thy dead wife.
With her of virtue and of hope bereft,
Thou and thy passions in the world wert left.

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True, thou hast sweetly mourn'd thy youthful bride,
But well it were if thou with her hadst died.

For Langhorne, Reverend let him still continue,
Although his mind had very little sinew.
'Twas his to ape our reverend ancient lays
With mincing prettiness of modern phrase,
As some fine ladies mimic in their dress
The simple finery of a shepherdess;
And shape their silks and muslins to the cut
That decks the dwellers of the mud-built hut.

Christopher Smart, born April 11, 1722; died May 21, 1773.

Cuthbert Shaw, born 1738 or 1739; died September 1, 1771.