by Coleridge · Cluster: Unrequited Frustrated Love · Unattainable Beloved · Petrarchan Sonnet
Abstract
A tender love lyric to Genevieve, prizing not her beauty but the pity and compassion of her soul as the true ground of the poet’s love.
Connections
Archetypes: Lover Motifs: Stars Themes & Concepts: Romantic Love, Beauty Forms & Genres: Lyric, Comic Verse Song
Testo integrale / Full text
Maid of my Love, sweet Genevieve!
In Beauty’s light you glide along:
Your eye is like the Star of Eve,
And sweet your voice, as Seraph’s song
Yet not your heavenly beauty gives 5
This heart with Passion soft to glow:
Within your soul a voice there lives!
It bids you hear the tale of Woe.
When sinking low the sufferer wan
Beholds no hand outstretch’d to save, 10
Fair, as the bosom of the Swan
That rises graceful o’er the wave,
I’ve seen your breast with pity heave,
And therefore love I you, sweet Genevieve!
1789-90.