by Coleridge · Cluster: Unrequited Frustrated Love · Unattainable Beloved · Petrarchan Sonnet
Abstract
A sonnet sympathizing with the wronged Princess of Wales amid the pomp of state, and her infant; themes of unhappy marriage, grief, and the hollowness of rank.
Connections
Motifs: Rose Themes & Concepts: Marriage and Fidelity, Grief and Loss, Power and Corruption Forms & Genres: Sonnet
Testo integrale / Full text
[PRINCE AND PRINCESS OF WALES]
I sigh, fair injur’d stranger! for thy fate;
But what shall sighs avail thee? thy poor heart,
‘Mid all the ‘pomp and circumstance’ of state,
Shivers in nakedness. Unbidden, start
Sad recollections of Hope’s garish dream, 5
That shaped a seraph form, and named it Love,
Its hues gay-varying, as the orient beam
Varies the neck of Cytherea’s dove.
To one soft accent of domestic joy
Poor are the shouts that shake the high-arch’d dome; 10
Those plaudits that thy public path annoy,
Alas! they tell thee — Thou’rt a wretch at home!
O then retire, and weep! Their very woes
Solace the guiltless. Drop the pearly flood
On thy sweet infant, as the full-blown rose, 15
Surcharg’d with dew, bends o’er its neighbouring bud.
And ah! that Truth some holy spell might lend
To lure thy Wanderer from the Syren’s power;
Then bid your souls inseparably blend
Like two bright dew-drops meeting in a flower. 20
1796.