This is one of Coleridge's most
masterly
experiments in
dealing with material hardly possible to turn into poetry.
dealing with material hardly possible to turn into poetry.
Coleridge - Poems
This, almost Coleridge's loveliest fragment of
verse, was composed in sleep, like "Kubla Khan," "Constancy to an Ideal
Object," and "Phantom or Fact? " There is a quality, in this and some other
poems of Coleridge, which he himself has exquisitely rendered in the
passage on Ariel in the lectures on Shakespeare: "In air he lives, from air
he derives his being, in air he acts; and all his colours and properties
seem to have been obtained from the rainbow and the skies. There is nothing
about Ariel that cannot be conceived to exist either at sunrise or sunset:
hence all that belongs to Ariel belongs to the delight the mind is capable
of receiving from the most lovely external appearances. "Coleridge is the
Ariel of English Poetry: glittering in the song from "Zapolya," translucent
in the "Phantom," infantine, with a note of happy infancy almost like that
of Blake, in "Something Childish, but very Natural. " In these poems, and in
the "Ode to the Rain," and the "Inscription for a Fountain on a Heath,"
there is a unique way of feeling, which he can render to us on those rare
occasions when his sensations are uninterrupted; by thought, which clouds
them, or by emotion, which disturbs them. He reveals mysterious intimacies
with natural things, the "flapping" flame or a child's scarcely more
articulate moods. And in some of them, which are experiments in form, he
seems to compete gaily with the Elizabethan lyrists, doing wonderful things
in jest, like one who is for once happy and disengaged, and able to play
with his tormentor, verse.
p. 153. _Forbearance_. "Gently I took that which urgently came" is
from Spenser's "Shepherds' Calendar": "But gently tooke that ungently
came. "
p. 154. _Sancti Dominici Pallium_. The "friend," as Dykes Campbell
points out, was Southey, whose "Book of the Church" had been attacked by
Charles Butler.
This is one of Coleridge's most masterly experiments in
dealing with material hardly possible to turn into poetry. What exquisite
verse, and what variety of handling! The eighteenth-century smooth force
and pungency of the main part of it ends in an anticipation of the
burlesque energy of some of Mr. George Meredith's most characteristic
verse. Anyone coming upon the lines:
"More than the Protestant milk all newly lapt,
Impearling a tame wild-cat's whiskered jaws,"
would have assigned them without hesitation to the writer of "A Certain
People" and other sonnets in the "Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth. "
p. 158. _Ne plus ultra_. This mysterious fragment is one of the most
original experiments which Coleridge ever made, both in metre and in
language (abstract terms becoming concrete through intellectual passion)
and may seem to anticipate "The Unknown Eros. "
p. 164. _The Pains of Sleep_. In a letter to Sir George and Lady
Beaumont, dated September 22, 1803, Coleridge wrote, describing his journey
to Scotland: "With the night my horrors commence. During the whole of my
journey three nights out of four I have fallen asleep struggling and
resolving to lie awake, and, awaking, have blest the scream which delivered
me from the reluctant sleep. . .
verse, was composed in sleep, like "Kubla Khan," "Constancy to an Ideal
Object," and "Phantom or Fact? " There is a quality, in this and some other
poems of Coleridge, which he himself has exquisitely rendered in the
passage on Ariel in the lectures on Shakespeare: "In air he lives, from air
he derives his being, in air he acts; and all his colours and properties
seem to have been obtained from the rainbow and the skies. There is nothing
about Ariel that cannot be conceived to exist either at sunrise or sunset:
hence all that belongs to Ariel belongs to the delight the mind is capable
of receiving from the most lovely external appearances. "Coleridge is the
Ariel of English Poetry: glittering in the song from "Zapolya," translucent
in the "Phantom," infantine, with a note of happy infancy almost like that
of Blake, in "Something Childish, but very Natural. " In these poems, and in
the "Ode to the Rain," and the "Inscription for a Fountain on a Heath,"
there is a unique way of feeling, which he can render to us on those rare
occasions when his sensations are uninterrupted; by thought, which clouds
them, or by emotion, which disturbs them. He reveals mysterious intimacies
with natural things, the "flapping" flame or a child's scarcely more
articulate moods. And in some of them, which are experiments in form, he
seems to compete gaily with the Elizabethan lyrists, doing wonderful things
in jest, like one who is for once happy and disengaged, and able to play
with his tormentor, verse.
p. 153. _Forbearance_. "Gently I took that which urgently came" is
from Spenser's "Shepherds' Calendar": "But gently tooke that ungently
came. "
p. 154. _Sancti Dominici Pallium_. The "friend," as Dykes Campbell
points out, was Southey, whose "Book of the Church" had been attacked by
Charles Butler.
This is one of Coleridge's most masterly experiments in
dealing with material hardly possible to turn into poetry. What exquisite
verse, and what variety of handling! The eighteenth-century smooth force
and pungency of the main part of it ends in an anticipation of the
burlesque energy of some of Mr. George Meredith's most characteristic
verse. Anyone coming upon the lines:
"More than the Protestant milk all newly lapt,
Impearling a tame wild-cat's whiskered jaws,"
would have assigned them without hesitation to the writer of "A Certain
People" and other sonnets in the "Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth. "
p. 158. _Ne plus ultra_. This mysterious fragment is one of the most
original experiments which Coleridge ever made, both in metre and in
language (abstract terms becoming concrete through intellectual passion)
and may seem to anticipate "The Unknown Eros. "
p. 164. _The Pains of Sleep_. In a letter to Sir George and Lady
Beaumont, dated September 22, 1803, Coleridge wrote, describing his journey
to Scotland: "With the night my horrors commence. During the whole of my
journey three nights out of four I have fallen asleep struggling and
resolving to lie awake, and, awaking, have blest the scream which delivered
me from the reluctant sleep. . .
