by Coleridge · Cluster: Appearance vs Reality · Beauty · Eyes and Sight
Abstract
A short lyric figuring a ruined woman as a myrtle-leaf danced from its stalk by a flatterer and left to rot; an allegory of seduction, lost innocence and the fallen woman.
Connections
Topoi: Fall from Innocence Archetypes: (Reputed) Fallen Woman Motifs: Flowers Themes & Concepts: Innocence and Experience, Deception Forms & Genres: Lyric
Testo integrale / Full text
Myrtle-leaf that, ill besped,
Pinest in the gladsome ray,
Soil’d beneath the common tread
Far from thy protecting spray!
When the Partridge o’er the sheaf 5
Whirr’d along the yellow vale,
Sad I saw thee, heedless leaf!
Love the dalliance of the gale.
Lightly didst thou, foolish thing!
Heave and flutter to his sighs, 10
While the flatterer, on his wing,
Woo’d and whisper’d thee to rise.
Gaily from thy mother-stalk
Wert thou danc’d and wafted high —
Soon on this unshelter’d walk 15
Flung to fade, to rot and die.
1797.