by Coleridge · Cluster: Terror and Horror · Madness
Abstract
A sonnet praising the tragic actress Siddons by likening her effect to a child’s terror and pity at ghost-tales of witches and murdered babes; themes of terror, pity, and the theatrical sublime.
Connections
Motifs: Supernatural, Childhood, Night Themes & Concepts: Terror and Horror, Sublime Forms & Genres: Sonnet
Testo integrale / Full text
As when a child on some long Winter’s night
Affrighted clinging to its Grandam’s knees
With eager wond’ring and perturb’d delight
Listens strange tales of fearful dark decrees
Muttered to wretch by necromantic spell; 5
Or of those hags, who at the witching time
Of murky Midnight ride the air sublime,
And mingle foul embrace with fiends of Hell:
Cold Horror drinks its blood! Anon the tear
More gentle starts, to hear the Beldame tell 10
Of pretty Babes, that lov’d each other dear.
Murder’d by cruel Uncle’s mandate fell:
Even such the shiv’ring joys thy tones impart,
Even so thou, SIDDONS! meltest my sad heart!
December 29, 1794.