by Coleridge · Cluster: Imagination · Fragment · Heroic Couplet
Abstract
A gathering of unfinished notebook jottings (c. 1796-98) of natural imagery, sound, melody and reflection; metrical and imagistic studies later mined for finished poems.
Connections
Topoi: Book of Nature Motifs: Nature, Music and Song, Birds, Sea, Flowers, Death Forms & Genres: Fragment
Testo integrale / Full text
Circa 1796- 98
Light cargoes waft of modulated Sound
From viewless Hybla brought, when Melodies
Like Birds of Paradise on wings, that aye
Disport in wild variety of hues,
Murmur around the honey-dropping flower.
First published in 1893. Compare The Eolian Harp (Aug. 1795), lines
20-5 (ante p. 101).
Broad-breasted rock — hanging cliff that glasses
His rugged forehead in the calmy sea.
First published in 1893. Compare Destiny of Nations (1796), lines 342,
343 (ante p. 143).
Where Cam his stealthy flowings most dissembles
And scarce the Willow’s watery shadow trembles.
First published in 1893. Compare line 1 of A Fragment Found in a
Lecture-Room, ‘Where deep in mud Cam rolls his slumbrous stream’
(ante, p. 35).
With secret hand heal the conjectur’d wound,
[or]
Guess at the wound, and heal with secret hand.
First published in 1893. The alternative line was first published in
Lit. Rem., i. 279.
Outmalic’d Calumny’s imposthum’d Tongue.
First published in 1893. A line from Verses to Horne Tooke, July 4,
1796, line 20 (ante, p. 151).
And write Impromptus
Spurring their Pegasus to tortoise gallop.
First published in 1893.
Due to the Staggerers, that made drunk by Power
Forget thirst’s eager promise, and presume,
Dark Dreamers! that the world forgets it too.
First published in Lit. Rem., 1836, i. 27.
Perish warmth
Unfaithful to its seeming!
First published in Lit. Rem., i. 279.
Old age, ‘the shape and messenger of Death,’
‘His wither’d Fist still knocking at Death’s door.’
First published in Lit. Rem., i. 279. Quoted from Sackville’s
Induction to a Mirrour for Magistrates, stanza 48:
‘His wither’d fist stil knocking at deathes dore,
Tumbling and driveling as he drawes his breth;
For briefe, the shape and messenger of death.’
God no distance knows,
All of the whole possessing!
First published in Lit. Rem., i. 279. Compare Religious Musings, ll.
156-7.
Wherefore art thou come? doth not the Creator of all things
know all things? And if thou art come to seek him, know that
where thou wast, there he was.
First published in 1893. Compare the Wanderings of Cain.
And cauldrons the scoop’d earth, a boiling sea.
First published in 1893.
Rush on my ear, a cataract of sound.
First published in 1893.
The guilty pomp, consuming while it flares.
First published in 1893.
My heart seraglios a whole host of Joys.
First published in 1893.
And Pity’s sigh shall answer thy tale of Anguish
Like the faint echo of a distant valley.
First published in Notizbuch, 1896, p. 350.