by Coleridge · Cluster: Appearance vs Reality · Beauty · Eyes and Sight
Abstract
A lyric addressing a ‘fallen’ woman seduced and forsaken, urging her toward penitent melancholy and recovered innocence; themes of seduction, the fallen woman and redemptive melancholy.
Connections
Topoi: Fall from Innocence Archetypes: (Reputed) Fallen Woman Motifs: Birds Themes & Concepts: Melancholy, Innocence and Experience, Deception Forms & Genres: Lyric
Testo integrale / Full text
Maiden, that with sullen brow
Sitt’st behind those virgins gay,
Like a scorch’d and mildew’d bough,
Leafless ‘mid the blooms of May!
Him who lur’d thee and forsook, 5
Oft I watch’d with angry gaze,
Fearful saw his pleading look,
Anxious heard his fervid phrase.
Soft the glances of the Youth,
Soft his speech, and soft his sigh; 10
But no sound like simple Truth,
But no true love in his eye.
Loathing thy polluted lot,
Hie thee, Maiden, hie thee hence!
Seek thy weeping Mother’s cot, 15
With a wiser innocence.
Thou hast known deceit and folly,
Thou hast felt that Vice is woe:
With a musing melancholy
Inly arm’d, go, Maiden! go. 20
Mother sage of Self-dominion,
Firm thy steps, O Melancholy!
The strongest plume in Wisdom’s pinion
Is the memory of past folly.
Mute the sky-lark and forlorn, 25
While she moults the firstling plumes,
That had skimm’d the tender corn,
Or the beanfield’s odorous blooms.
Soon with renovated wing
Shall she dare a loftier flight, 30
Upward to the Day-Star spring,
And embathe in heavenly light.
1797.