by Coleridge · Cluster: Sleep · Sleeper Awakes · Resurrection
Abstract
A wry self-epitaph composed in sleep, imagining the poet dying as he lived, a-dreaming, alone and unknown at an Edinburgh inn; mortality and self-irony.
Connections
Topoi: Memento Mori Motifs: Sleep, Dreams Themes & Concepts: Mortality, Identity Forms & Genres: Epigram Settings: Inn
Testo integrale / Full text
Here sleeps at length poor Col., and without screaming —
Who died as he had always lived, a-dreaming:
Shot dead, while sleeping, by the Gout within —
Alone, and all unknown, at E’nbro’ in an Inn.
‘Composed in my sleep for myself while dreaming that I was dying’ …
at the Black Bull, Edinburgh, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 1803. Sent in a letter
to Thomas Wedgwood, Sept. 16, 1803. First published Cottle’s
Reminiscences, 1848, p. 467. First collected in 1893.