by Coleridge · Cluster: Alienation · Outsider · Exile
Abstract
Sonnet of compassion for a fallen woman cast out to want and scorn by a pitiless world; social injustice, the fallen woman, the outcast, mercy of the great Comforter.
Connections
Archetypes: (Reputed) Fallen Woman, Outsider Themes & Concepts: Social Injustice, Mercy, Alienation, Poverty Forms & Genres: Sonnet
Testo integrale / Full text
Pale Roamer through the night! thou poor Forlorn!
Remorse that man on his death-bed possess,
Who in the credulous hour of tenderness
Betrayed, then cast thee forth to Want and Scorn!
The world is pitiless: the chaste one’s pride 5
Mimic of Virtue scowls on thy distress:
Thy Loves and they that envied thee deride:
And Vice alone will shelter Wretchedness!
O! I could weep to think that there should be
Cold-bosom’d lewd ones, who endure to place 10
Foul offerings on the shrine of Misery,
And force from Famine the caress of Love;
May He shed healing on the sore disgrace,
He, the great Comforter that rules above!
? 1794.