by Coleridge · Cluster: Melancholy · Suffering · Pain and Suffering
Abstract
A sonnet on bodily suffering contrasting the lost delights of health and nature with the sleepless anguish of disease and tyrannous pain.
Connections
Motifs: Nature, Music and Song Themes & Concepts: Melancholy, Mortality, Transience Forms & Genres: Sonnet
Testo integrale / Full text
Once could the Morn’s first beams, the healthful breeze,
All Nature charm, and gay was every hour: —
But ah! not Music’s self, nor fragrant bower
Can glad the trembling sense of wan Disease.
Now that the frequent pangs my frame assail, 5
Now that my sleepless eyes are sunk and dim,
And seas of Pain seem waving through each limb —
Ah what can all Life’s gilded scenes avail?
I view the crowd, whom Youth and Health inspire,
Hear the loud laugh, and catch the sportive lay, 10
Then sigh and think — I too could laugh and play
And gaily sport it on the Muse’s lyre,
Ere Tyrant Pain had chas’d away delight,
Ere the wild pulse throbb’d anguish thro’ the night!
? 1790.