by Coleridge · Cluster: Friendship · Tears
Abstract
An epigram on love spread too thin (after Hesiod) and a lament of a hopeless, solitary man mourning a lost beloved wife; loneliness and grief in love.
Connections
Themes & Concepts: Friendship, Unrequited Frustrated Love, Grief and Loss, Alienation Forms & Genres: Epigram Historical References: Ancient Greece
Testo integrale / Full text
uÀ¹¿¹ ¿P´r 4ñù½ EÃó À»s¿½ À»s¿½ %¼¹ÃÅ Àq½Ä¿Â.
HESIOD. [Works and Days, l. 40.]
What a spring-tide of Love to dear friends in a shoal!
Half of it to one were worth double the whole!
Undated. First published in P. W., 1834.
I stand alone, nor tho’ my heart should break,
Have I, to whom I may complain or speak.
Here I stand, a hopeless man and sad,
Who hoped to have seen my Love, my Life.
And strange it were indeed, could I be glad
Remembering her, my soul’s betrothéd wife.
For in this world no creature that has life
Was e’er to me so gracious and so good.
Her loss is to my Heart, like the Heart’s blood.
? S. T. C. Undated. First published from an MS. in 1893. These lines are
inscribed on a fly-leaf of Tom. II of Benedetto Menzini’s Poesie,
1782.