Selections from Five English Poets Part 9

[56.] Wales, selects.

[57.] Dundee, Martyrs, Elgin, well-known psalm tunes.

[58.] Beets, fans or feeds.

[59.] Nae unison hae they, no unison have they; _i.e._ they are not in harmony with.

[60.] Abram, or Abraham. See _Genesis_.

[61.] Moses bade, etc. See _Exodus_ xvii.

[62.] The royal Bard, King David. Probably Burns refers to certain of the Psalms which express suffering and repentance.

[63.] Job's pathetic plaint. The "plaint" begins with _Job_ iii.

[64.] The Christian volume, i.e. the New Testament.

[65.] How His first followers, etc. See _Acts of the Apostles_.

[66.] The precepts sage. See the _Epistles_.

[67.] He, who lone in Patmos, etc. St. John the Evangelist is said to have been exiled to the island of Patmos, or Patmo, west of Asia Minor, and there to have written the _Apocalypse_, or _Book of Revelation_.

The doom of Babylon is p.r.o.nounced in Chapter xviii of that book.

[68.] Hope springs exulting, etc. See Pope's _Essay on Man_, Epistle I, l. 95, and his _Windsor Forest_, l. 112.

[69.] The Power, the Almighty.

[70.] Haply, perhaps, perchance.

[71.] Princes and lords, etc. See _The Deserted Village_, lines 53 and 54.

[72.] An honest man's, etc. Pope's _Essay on Man_, Epistle IV, l. 247.

[73.] Certes, truly.

[74.] Wallace's undaunted heart. Sir William Wallace, born about 1274, is one of the most famous of Scotch heroes. For a time he was a successful opponent of Edward I of England, but he finally suffered defeat, and in 1305 was captured and taken to London, where he was tried, condemned, and beheaded. One of Burns's most celebrated songs begins: "Scots, wha hae (who have) wi' Wallace bled." Scott tells of Wallace in his _Tales of a Grandfather_.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

1772-1834

Coleridge was born in Ottery St. Mary, in Devons.h.i.+re England, and spent his early years in the midst of a large family. His father, who was vicar of the town and master of the grammar school, died when the son was only nine years old. His character must, however, have impressed Coleridge deeply, for he said, in after years: "The memory of my father--my reverend, kind, learned, simple-hearted father--is a religion to me." Soon after his father's death he left his happy home in the country to enter a school it=n London, known as Christ's Hospital. Charles Lamb, who was a schoolmate of his, has sketched the life there in two well-known essays. In one of them, _Christ's Hospital Fifty Years Ago_, he describes the summer holidays, so delightful for himself with his family near, and so dreary for the country boy with no friends in the city; and he pictures Coleridge as forlorn and half-starved, declaring that in those days the food of the "Blue-coat boys" was cruelly insufficient. From early childhood the future poet had been pa.s.sionately fond of reading, and an occurrence which took place during his early years in London enabled him for a time to gratify his taste. One day while walking down the Strand, he put out his arms as if in the act of swimming, and in so doing touched a pa.s.ser-by. The man, taking him for a thief, seized him, crying, "What, so young and so wicked!" "I am not a pickpocket," replied the boy; "I only thought I was Leander swimming the h.e.l.lespont!" After making some inquiries, his chance acquaintance subscribed to a library for him, and the story runs that in a short time the young bookworm had read "right through the catalogue."

In 1791 Coleridge entered Cambridge University. While there he was deeply stirred by events in France--for the Revolution was in progress--and ran some risk of being expelled by the open expression of his radical views on politics. His fine ode, _France_, written several years later, was the expression of this intense interest. During his second year of study, while suffering from a fit of despondency, he suddenly left the university--just why, no one knows--and went to London. There he enlisted in the 15th dragoons under the name of Silas Tompkyn Comberback. While he was in the service his awkwardness in doing manual labor, especially in grooming his horse, led to his exchanging tasks with his comrades: they performed his mechanical duties, while he wrote letters for them to their wives or sweethearts.

A Latin inscription which he placed above his saddle in the stable led to the discovery of his true condition, and about the same time his friends learned of his whereabouts. At the end of four months in the dragoons he was bought out and enabled to return to his studies. He remained in Cambridge but a short time, however, leaving in 1794 without taking a degree.

The following year he married Miss Sara Fricker. This important step was taken on the strength of a small sum promised by a bookseller for a volume of poems which he was then writing. A month later his friend Robert Southey--afterwards well known as an author--married his wife's sister. Some time before this, the two young men had conceived the idea of crossing the sea with a few congenial acquaintances and forming an ideal community on the bank of the Susquehanna. Fortunately the scheme was abandoned and the two dreamers turned their attention to literary projects.

Coleridge's best work as a poet was done in 1797 and 1798, and probably the inspiration came largely from his friends.h.i.+p with William Wordsworth. During these two years the poets lived near each other in the beautiful c.u.mberland country, and while taking long rambles over the Quantock Hills they talked, planned, and wrote. The first result of this intercourse was a joint volume of poems called _Lyrical Ballads_, published in 1798. This included Coleridge's _Ancient Mariner_ and Wordsworth's _We are Seven_. About the same time Coleridge wrote the first part of _Christabel_, the ode _France_, _Kubla Khan_, and a few other well-known poems. The impression which he made at this period of his life upon Dorothy Wordsworth, the poet's sister, was recorded by her in a letter. She says of him: "He is a wonderful man. His conversation teems with soul and mind. . . . His eye is large and full, and not very dark but gray, such an eye as would receive from a heavy soul the dullest expression; but it speaks every emotion of his animated mind; it has more of the poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling than I ever witnessed. He has fine dark eyebrows and an overhanging forehead."

Of Coleridge as poet there is unfortunately little more to relate, for during the remainder of his life he devoted himself mainly to philosophy and literary criticism, with occasional work in journalism.

After a stay in Germany he brought back to England a knowledge of German metaphysics and an enthusiasm for German literature which enabled him to do much towards awakening in his own countrymen an interest in these subjects. He had never been strong, and from the age of thirty-four he suffered seriously from ill-health and from his practice of using opium--a habit begun by his taking the dangerous drug to relieve acute pain. No doubt his powers were impaired by these causes. In 1804, hoping to benefit by change of climate, he went to Malta, and before his return spent some months in Italy. With the exception of a short tour on the Rhine with the Wordsworths, the last sixteen years of his life were pa.s.sed quietly at Highgate, a village near London, where through the kind care of friends he was enabled to control the opium habit and do a fair amount of intellectual work. His mind dwelt much on religious subjects, and the faith which had earlier found expression in his n.o.ble _Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni_ brought light and consolation as the end drew near. Many young men came to see him during these last years, drawn by his fame as a poet and still more by his remarkable powers as a talker. One of them has said of him in this connection: "Throughout a long summer's day would this man talk to you in low, equable, but clear and musical tones, concerning things human and divine." And the same person has described a day spent with him as "a Sabbath past expression, deep, tranquil, and serene." The poet died at Highgate in 1834, at the age of sixty-two.

Coleridge was a many-sided genius, and perhaps the world has benefited as largely by his powers as a thinker as by his gift for poetry. He did much both by talking and writing to broaden English thought, and his keen and suggestive criticism of other authors, of Shakespeare especially, has been of high value to lovers of literature. As a poet he is distinguished for the rare quality of his imagination and the wonderful music of his verse.

ARGUMENT OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

The argument, or plot, of the poem is as follows:[*]

Three guests were on their way to a wedding, when one of them--the bridegroom's nearest relative--was stopped by a Mariner with long gray beard and glittering eye, who constrained him to listen to his story.

The Mariner once set sail in a s.h.i.+p bound southward. After crossing the equator the vessel was driven by strong winds toward the south pole, and was finally hemmed in by icebergs. An albatross which appeared at this time brought good luck: the ice split and the s.h.i.+p sailed northward. The Mariner, for no apparent reason, shot the bird of good omen. At first his comrades declared that he had done a h.e.l.lish deed, but when the fog cleared away they justified him, believing that the fog had been brought by the bird. In this way they became accomplices in his crime. By killing the albatross the Mariner had offended the Spirit of the South Pole, who now followed the s.h.i.+p "nine fathom deep" to make sure that vengeance was meted out to the guilty man. As a sign of the Mariner's guilt the sailors fastened about his neck the dead bird. The vessel was now in the Pacific Ocean.

On nearing the equator she was becalmed, and before long all the sailors were dying of thirst. Suddenly a skeleton s.h.i.+p appeared in sight, having on board Death and Life-in-Death. The two spectres were throwing dice to see which should possess the doomed Mariner.

Life-in-Death won, and the Mariner was hers. If Death had won, his life would soon have ended; as it was, existence for him was to mean--for a time at least--life in the midst of the dead. No sooner had the spectre bark shot by than his comrades, four times fifty living men, dropped lifeless one by one. For seven days and seven nights he suffered agonies from the curse in their stony eyes; but he could not die, and he could not pray.

One day, while watching some water snakes at play, he was charmed with their beauty and blessed them unawares--a sure sign that love for G.o.d's lower creatures was springing up in his heart. The next instant the spell began to break: the albatross fell from his neck into the sea and he could move his lips in prayer. He slept, and the Holy Mother sent rain; and when he awoke the wind was blowing. A troop of angelic spirits now entered the bodies of the dead sailors and worked the ropes, and, obedient to the angels, the Spirit of the South Pole helped the s.h.i.+p onward. As she sped on, the Mariner, who lay in a swoon, learned from the talk of two spirits that his penance was not yet accomplished. Soon after waking he beheld the sh.o.r.es of his native country. As the vessel neared the land the angels left the bodies of the sailors, and at the same time a small boat approached bringing a pilot and his boy, and a pious hermit--all known to the Mariner.

Suddenly there was a dreadful sound, and the s.h.i.+p sank. On coming to his senses the Mariner found himself in the pilot's boat. When the hermit asked him, "What manner of man art thou?" his agony was fearful until he had found relief in telling his experience. As a punishment for his crime in shooting the albatross the agony was to return at intervals and compel him to travel from land to land relating his strange tale. After admonis.h.i.+ng the wedding guest to love well both man and beast, the ancient Mariner departed. The poet says of his listener,

"A sadder and a wiser man He rose the morrow morn."

[*]When The Ancient Mariner was reprinted in 1800, the poet added explanatory notes in the margin. These have been found useful in writing this argument. The poet's notes are given in his _Poetical Works_, edited by James d.y.k.es Campbell (1893).

THE ANCIENT MARINER

PART I

It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three, "By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

"The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide, 5 And I am next of kin;[1]

The guests are met, the feast is set: Mayst hear the merry din."

He holds him with his skinny hand, "There was a s.h.i.+p," quoth[2] he. 10 "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!"[3]

Eftsoons[4] his hand dropped he.

He holds him with his glittering eye-- The Wedding-Guest stood still, And listens like a three years' child:[5] 15 The Mariner hath his will.

The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone: He cannot choose but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner. 20

"The s.h.i.+p was cheered, the harbor cleared, Merrily did we drop Below the kirk,[6] below the hill, Below the lighthouse top.