by Coleridge · Cluster: Friendship · Tears
Abstract
Blank-verse epistle to Charles Lamb tending his sick sister, and the poet recalling his own lost sister; friendship, grief, the sister, tenderness.
Connections
Motifs: Memory Themes & Concepts: Friendship, Grief and Loss, Melancholy Forms & Genres: Blank Verse
Testo integrale / Full text
CHARLES LAMB
TOGETHER WITH AN UNFINISHED POEM
Thus far my scanty brain hath built the rhyme
Elaborate and swelling: yet the heart
Not owns it. From thy spirit-breathing powers
I ask not now, my friend! the aiding verse,
Tedious to thee, and from thy anxious thought 5
Of dissonant mood. In fancy (well I know)
From business wandering far and local cares,
Thou creepest round a dear-lov’d Sister’s bed
With noiseless step, and watchest the faint look,
Soothing each pang with fond solicitude, 10
And tenderest tones medicinal of love.
I too a Sister had, an only Sister —
She lov’d me dearly, and I doted on her!
To her I pour’d forth all my puny sorrows
(As a sick Patient in a Nurse’s arms) 15
And of the heart those hidden maladies
That e’en from Friendship’s eye will shrink asham’d.