by Coleridge · Cluster: Satire of Society · Epigram · Satire
Abstract
Self-parodying sonnets signed ‘Nehemiah Higginbottom’ mocking fashionable affected melancholy and over-simple poetic mannerisms; a satire of contemporary verse, in sonnet form.
Connections
Themes & Concepts: Satire of Society, Artist and Society, Melancholy Forms & Genres: Sonnet, Parody
Testo integrale / Full text
SIGNED ‘NEHEMIAH HIGGINBOTTOM’
I
Pensive at eve on the hard world I mus’d,
And my poor heart was sad: so at the Moon
I gaz’d — and sigh’d, and sigh’d! — for, ah! how soon
Eve darkens into night. Mine eye perus’d
With tearful vacancy the dampy grass 5
Which wept and glitter’d in the paly ray;
And I did pause me on my lonely way,
And mused me on those wretched ones who pass
O’er the black heath of Sorrow. But, alas!
Most of Myself I thought: when it befell 10
That the sooth Spirit of the breezy wood
Breath’d in mine ear—’All this is very well;
But much of one thing is for no thing good.’
Ah! my poor heart’s INEXPLICABLE SWELL!
II