by Coleridge · Cluster: Satire of Society · Epigram · Satire
Abstract
A satirical epigram on a lovesick physician (Sangrado) struck by Cupid’s dart, plus a jab at fashionable Bristol atheists.
Connections
Themes & Concepts: Lust Sexual Desire, Satire of Society, Doubt Forms & Genres: Epigram, Satire Historical References: Greek Mythology
Testo integrale / Full text
From Rufa’s eye sly Cupid shot his dart
And left it sticking in Sangrado’s heart.
No quiet from that moment has he known,
And peaceful sleep has from his eyelids flown.
And opium’s force, and what is more, alack!
His own orations cannot bring it back.
In short, unless she pities his afflictions,
Despair will make him take his own prescriptions.
First published in The Watchman, No. V, April 2, 1796. Included in
Lit. Rem., i. 45. First collected P. and D. W., 1877, ii. 368.
Of smart pretty Fellows in Bristol are numbers, some
Who so modish are grown, that they think plain sense cumbersome;
And lest they should seem to be queer or ridiculous,
They affect to believe neither God or old Nicholas!
First published in article ‘To Caius Gracchus’ (signed S. T. Coleridge)
in The Watchman, No. V, p. 159. Reprinted in Essays on His Own
Times, 1850, i. 164. First collected P. and D. W., 1877, ii. 368.