by Coleridge · Cluster: Maturation and Growth · Childhood · Innocence and Experience
Abstract
A sonnet to Charles Lamb on first seeing his infant, sad at first then thrilled by mother-and-child love; themes of fatherhood, domestic love, and tenderness.
Connections
Archetypes: Child, Great Mother Motifs: Childhood Themes & Concepts: Romantic Love, Maturation and Growth Forms & Genres: Sonnet
Testo integrale / Full text
Charles! my slow heart was only sad, when first
I scann’d that face of feeble infancy:
For dimly on my thoughtful spirit burst
All I had been, and all my child might be!
But when I saw it on its mother’s arm, 5
And hanging at her bosom (she the while
Bent o’er its features with a tearful smile)
Then I was thrill’d and melted, and most warm
Impress’d a father’s kiss: and all beguil’d
Of dark remembrance and presageful fear, 10
I seem’d to see an angel-form appear —
‘Twas even thine, belovéd woman mild!
So for the mother’s sake the child was dear,
And dearer was the mother for the child.
1796.