The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume II Part 191

FOOTNOTES:

[996:1] The following 'Fragments', numbered 1-63, consist of a few translations and versicles inserted by Coleridge in his various prose works, and a larger number of fragments, properly so called, which were published from MS. sources in 1893, or are now published for the first time. These fragments are taken exclusively from Coleridge's Notebooks (the source of _Anima Poetae_, 1895), and were collected, transcribed, and dated by the present Editor for publication in 1893. The fragments now published for the first time were either not used by J. D. Campbell in 1893, or had not been discovered or transcribed. The very slight emendations of the text are due to the fact that Mr. Campbell printed from copies, and that the collection as a whole has now for the second time been collated with the original MSS. Fragments numbered 64, 96, 98, 111, 113, in _P. W._, 1893, are quotations from the plays and poems of William Cartwright (1611-1643). They are not included in the present issue. Fragments 56, 58, 59, 61, 63, 67, 80, 81, 83, 88, 91, 93, 94, 117-120, are inserted in the text or among 'Jeux d'Esprit', or under other headings. The chronological order is for the most part conjectural, and differs from that suggested in 1893. It must be borne in mind that the entries in Coleridge's Notebooks are not continuous, and that the additional matter in prose or verse was inserted from time to time, wherever a page or half a page was not filled up. It follows that the context is an uncertain guide to the date of any given entry.

Pains have been taken to exclude quotations from older writers, which Coleridge neither claimed nor intended to claim for his own, but it is possible that two or three of these fragments of verse are not original.

[996:2] This quatrain, described as 'The concluding stanza of an Elegy on a Lady who died in Early Youth', is from part of a memorandum in S.

T. C.'s handwriting headed 'Relics of my School-boy Muse; i. e.

fragments of poems composed before my fifteenth year'. It follows _First Advent of Love_, 'O fair is Love's first hope,' &c. (vide _ante_, p.

443), and is compared with Age--a stanza written forty years later than the preceding--'Dewdrops are the gems of morning,' &c. (p. 440).

ANOTHER VERSION.

O'er her piled grave the gale of evening sighs, And flowers will grow upon its gra.s.sy slope, I wipe the dimming waters from mine eye Even on the cold grave dwells the Cherub Hope.

_Unpublished Letter to Thomas Poole_, Feb. 1. 1801, on the death of Mrs.

Robinson ('Perdita').

[997:1] These two lines, slightly altered, were afterwards included in _Alice du Clos_ (ll. 111, 112), _ante_, p. 473.

[998:1] The lines are an attempt to reduce to blank verse one of many minute descriptions of natural objects and scenic effects. The concluding lines are illegible.

[1001:1] These lines, 'slip torn from some old letter,' are endorsed by Poole, 'Reply of Coleridge on my urging him to exert himself.' First collected in 1893.

[1007:1] The translation is embodied in a marginal note on the following quotation from _The Select Discourses_ by John Smith, 1660:--

'_So the Sibyl was noted by Herac.l.i.tus as a?????? st?at? ?e?ast? ?a?

??a???p?sta f?e??????, as one speaking ridiculous and unseemly speeches with her furious mouth._' The fragment is misquoted and misunderstood: for ?e?ast?, etc. should be ????sta unperfumed, inornate lays, not redolent of art.--Render it thus:

Not her's, etc.

St?at? a?????? is 'with ecstatic mouth'.

J. D. Campbell in a note to this Fragment (_P. W._, 1893, pp. 464-5) quotes the 'following prose translation of the same pa.s.sage', from Coleridge's _Statesman's Manual_ (1816, p. 132); 'Multiscience (or a variety and quant.i.ty of acquired knowledge) does not test intelligence.

But the Sibyll with wild enthusiastic mirth shrilling forth unmirthful, inornate and unperfumed truths, reaches to a thousand years with her voice through the power of G.o.d.'

The prose translation is an amalgam of two fragments. The first sentence is quoted by Diogenes Laertius, ix. 1: the second by Plutarch, de Pyth.

orac. 6, p. 377.

[1009:1] These rhymes were addressed to a Miss Eliza Nixon, who supplied S. T. C. with books from a lending library.

METRICAL EXPERIMENTS[1014:1]

1

AN EXPERIMENT FOR A METRE

I heard a voice pealing loud triumph to-day: The voice of the Triumph, O Freedom, was thine!

Sumptuous Tyranny challeng'd the fray,[1014:2]

'Drunk with Idolatry, drunk with wine.'

Whose could the Triumph be Freedom but thine?

Stars of the Heaven s.h.i.+ne to feed thee; Hush'd are the Whirl-blasts and heed thee;-- By her depth, by her height, Nature swears thou art mine!

1. Amphibrach tetrameter catalectic ? ? | ? ? | ? ? | ?

2. Ditto.

3. Three pseudo amphimacers, and one long syllable.

4. Two dactyls, and one perfect Amphimacer.

5. = 1 and 2.

6. ? | ? ? |

7. ? | ? ? |

8. ? | ? , ? , ?

1801. Now first published from an MS.

2

TROCHAICS

Thus she said, and, all around, Her diviner spirit, gan to borrow; Earthly Hearings hear unearthly sound, Hearts heroic faint, and sink aswound.

Welcome, welcome, spite of pain and sorrow, Love to-day, and Thought to-morrow.

1801. Now first published from an MS.

3

THE PROPER UNMODIFIED DOCHMIUS

(_i. e._ antispastic Catalectic)

Benign shooting stars, ecstatic delight.

_or_

The Lord's throne in Heaven amid angel troops Amid troops of Angels G.o.d throned on high.

1801. Now first published from an MS.