by Coleridge · Cluster: Time · Tempus Fugit · Clock
Abstract
A grotesque metaphysical vision of Limbo, where Time and Space are fettered to a ‘last crepuscular half-being’ and the worst horror is positive Negation. Themes: time, mortality, the grotesque, privation.
Connections
Motifs: Time, Ghosts, Moon, Clock Themes & Concepts: Mortality, Grotesque, Terror and Horror Settings: Underworld Cave
Testo integrale / Full text
The sole true Something — This! In Limbo’s Den
It frightens Ghosts, as here Ghosts frighten men.
Thence cross’d unseiz’d — and shall some fated hour
Be pulveris’d by Demogorgon’s power,
And given as poison to annihilate souls — 5
Even now it shrinks them — they shrink in as Moles
(Nature’s mute monks, live mandrakes of the ground)
Creep back from Light — then listen for its sound; —
See but to dread, and dread they know not why —
The natural alien of their negative eye. 10
‘Tis a strange place, this Limbo! — not a Place,
Yet name it so; — where Time and weary Space
Fettered from flight, with night-mare sense of fleeing,
Strive for their last crepuscular half-being; —
Lank Space, and scytheless Time with branny hands 15
Barren and soundless as the measuring sands,
Not mark’d by flit of Shades, — unmeaning they
As moonlight on the dial of the day!
But that is lovely — looks like Human Time, —
An Old Man with a steady look sublime, 20
That stops his earthly task to watch the skies;
But he is blind — a Statue hath such eyes; —
Yet having moonward turn’d his face by chance,
Gazes the orb with moon-like countenance,
With scant white hairs, with foretop bald and high, 25
He gazes still, — his eyeless face all eye; —
As ‘twere an organ full of silent sight,
His whole face seemeth to rejoice in light!
Lip touching lip, all moveless, bust and limb —
He seems to gaze at that which seems to gaze on him! 30
No such sweet sights doth Limbo den immure,
Wall’d round, and made a spirit-jail secure,
By the mere horror of blank Naught-at-all,
Whose circumambience doth these ghosts enthral.
A lurid thought is growthless, dull Privation, 35
Yet that is but a Purgatory curse;
Hell knows a fear far worse,
A fear — a future state;—’tis positive Negation!
1817.