by Coleridge · Cluster: Poet as Prophet · Prophet · Romantic Movement (Sensibility)
Abstract
A verse rendering of Heraclitus on the Sibyl’s prophetic voice rolling unadorned truth through a thousand years, plus a couplet on truth and erring fancy.
Connections
Topoi: Poet as Prophet Archetypes: Prophet Themes & Concepts: Truth Forms & Genres: Fragment Historical References: Ancient Greece, Greek Mythology
Testo integrale / Full text
Not hers
To win the sense by words of rhetoric,
Lip-blossoms breathing perishable sweets;
But by the power of the informing Word
Roll sounding onward through a thousand years
Her deep prophetic bodements.
1816. First published in Lit. Rem., iii. 418, 419. First collected P.
and D. W., 1877, ii. 367.
Truth I pursued, as Fancy sketch’d the way,
And wiser men than I went worse astray.
First published as Motto to Essay II, The Friend, 1818, ii. 37; 1850,
ii. 27. First collected 1893.