by Coleridge · Cluster: Imagination · Fragment · Heroic Couplet
Abstract
Fragment personifying Melancholy stretched on a ruined abbey wall, dreaming troubled dreams; ruins, dreams, melancholy and the grotesque/Gothic mood.
Connections
Motifs: Ruins the Abbey, Dreams, Sleep Themes & Concepts: Melancholy, Grotesque Forms & Genres: Fragment
Testo integrale / Full text
A FRAGMENT
Stretch’d on a moulder’d Abbey’s broadest wall,
Where ruining ivies propp’d the ruins steep —
Her folded arms wrapping her tatter’d pall, The fern was press’d beneath her hair,
The dark green Adder’s Tongue was there;
And still as pass’d the flagging sea-gale weak,
The long lank leaf bow’d fluttering o’er her cheek.
That pallid cheek was flush’d: her eager look
Beam’d eloquent in slumber! Inly wrought, 10
Imperfect sounds her moving lips forsook,
And her bent forehead work’d with troubled thought.
Strange was the dream ——
? 1794.