by Coleridge · Cluster: Poet as Prophet · Prophet · Romantic Movement (Sensibility)
Abstract
A hexameter fragment celebrating Mohammed as enthusiast prophet-warrior who scattered both blessing and persecution and crushed idolatry, an epic-scale meditation on religion and history.
Connections
Topoi: Poet as Prophet Archetypes: Prophet, Hero Motifs: River Themes & Concepts: Faith, Good vs Evil, Power and Corruption Forms & Genres: Hexameter Verse, Fragment Historical References: Islam
Testo integrale / Full text
Utter the song, O my soul! the flight and return of Mohammed,
Prophet and priest, who scatter’d abroad both evil and blessing,
Huge wasteful empires founded and hallow’d slow persecution,
Soul-withering, but crush’d the blasphemous rites of the Pagan
And idolatrous Christians. — For veiling the Gospel of Jesus, 5
They, the best corrupting, had made it worse than the vilest.
Wherefore Heaven decreed th’ enthusiast warrior of Mecca,
Choosing good from iniquity rather than evil from goodness.
Loud the tumult in Mecca surrounding the fane of the idol; —
Naked and prostrate the priesthood were laid — the people with mad
shouts 10
Thundering now, and now with saddest ululation
Flew, as over the channel of rock-stone the ruinous river
Shatters its waters abreast, and in mazy uproar bewilder’d,
Rushes dividuous all — all rushing impetuous onward.
? 1799.