No More Learning

Not every poem, none perhaps of those in
blank verse, is equal throughout; but I think readers of Coleridge will be
surprised to find how few of the poems contained in this volume are not of
almost flawless workmanship, as well of incomparable poetic genius.
Scarcely any English poet gains so much as Coleridge by not being read in a
complete edition. The gulf between his best and his worst work is as wide
as the gulf between good and evil. Even Wordsworth, even Byron, is not so
intolerable to read in a complete edition. But Coleridge, much more easily
than Byron or Wordsworth, can be extricated from his own lumber-heaps; it
is rare in his work to find a poem which is really good in parts and not
really good as a whole. I have taken every poem on its own merits as
poetry, its own technical merits as verse; and thus have included equally
the frigid eighteenth-century conceits of "The Kiss" and the modern
burlesque license of the comic fragments. But I have excluded everything
which has an interest merely personal, or indeed any other interest than
that of poetry; and I have thus omitted the famous "Ode on the Departing
Year," in spite of the esteem in which Coleridge held it, and in spite of
its one exquisite line--


"God's image, sister of the Seraphim"--


and I have omitted it because as a whole it is untempered rhetoric,
shapeless in form; and I have also omitted confession pieces such as that
early one which contains, among its otherwise too emphatic utterances, the
most delicate and precise picture which Coleridge ever drew of himself:


"To me hath Heaven with bounteous hand assigned
Energic Reason and a shaping mind,
The daring ken of Truth, the Patriot's part,
And Pity's sigh, that breathes the gentle heart--
Sloth-jaundiced all! and from my graspless hand
Drop Friendship's precious pearls, like hour-glass sand.
I weep, yet stoop not! the faint anguish flows,
A dreamy pang in Morning's feverish doze. "


Every poem that I have given I have given in full, and, without exception,
in the form in which Coleridge left it. The dates given after the poems are
Dykes Campbell's; occasionally I have corrected the date given in the text
of his edition by his own correction in the notes.

p. I. _The Ancient Mariner_.
The marginal analysis which Coleridge
added in reprinting the poem (from the _Lyrical Ballads_) in
_Sibylline Leaves_, has been transferred to this place, where it can
be read without interrupting the narrative in verse.


PART I


An ancient Mariner meeteth three Gallants bidden to a wedding-feast, and
detaineth one.

The Wedding-Guest is spell-bound by the eye of the old sea-faring man, and
constrained to hear his tale.

The Mariner tells how the ship sailed southward with a good wind and fair
weather, till it reached the Line.

The Wedding-Guest heareth the bridal music; but the Mariner continueth his
tale.

The ship driven by a storm toward the south pole.

The land of ice, and of fearful sounds where no living thing was to be
seen.

Till a great sea-bird, called the Albatross, came through the snow-fog, and
was received with great joy and hospitality.

And lo! the Albatross proveth a bird of good omen, and followeth the ship
as it returned northward through fog and floating ice.

The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen.


PART II


His shipmates cry out against the ancient Mariner, for killing the bird of
good luck.

But when the fog cleared off, they justify the same, and thus make
themselves accomplices in the crime.

The fair breeze continues; the ship enters the Pacific Ocean, and sails
northward, even till it reaches the Line.

The ship hath been suddenly becalmed.

And the Albatross begins to be avenged.