The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume I Part 136

PHANTOM[393:1]

All look and likeness caught from earth, All accident of kin and birth, Had pa.s.s'd away. There was no trace Of aught on that illumined face, Uprais'd beneath the rifted stone 5 But of one spirit all her own;-- She, she herself, and only she, Shone through her body visibly.

1805.

FOOTNOTES:

[393:1] These lines, without t.i.tle or heading, are quoted ('vide . . .

my lines') in an entry in one of Coleridge's Malta Notebooks, dated Feb.

8, 1805, to ill.u.s.trate the idea that the love-sense can be abstracted from the accidents of form or person (see _Anima Poetae_, 1895, p. 120).

It follows that they were written before that date. _Phantom_ was first published in 1834, immediately following (ii. 71) _Phantom or Fact. A dialogue in Verse_, which was first published in 1828, and was probably written about that time. Both poems are 'fragments from the life of dreams'; but it was the reality which lay behind both 'phantom' and 'fact' of which the poet dreamt, having his eyes open. With lines 4, 5 compare the following stanza of one of the _MS._ versions of the _Dark Ladie_:--

Against a grey stone rudely carv'd The statue of an armed knight, She lean'd in melancholy mood To watch ['d] the lingering Light.

A SUNSET[393:2]

Upon the mountain's edge with light touch resting, There a brief while the globe of splendour sits And seems a creature of the earth; but soon More changeful than the Moon, To wane fantastic his great orb submits, 5 Or cone or mow of fire: till sinking slowly Even to a star at length he lessens wholly.

Abrupt, as Spirits vanish, he is sunk!

A soul-like breeze possesses all the wood.

The boughs, the sprays have stood 10 As motionless as stands the ancient trunk!

But every leaf through all the forest flutters, And deep the cavern of the fountain mutters.

1805.

FOOTNOTES:

[393:2] First published in 1893. The t.i.tle 'A Sunset' was prefixed by the Editor. These lines are inscribed in one of Coleridge's Malta Notebooks. The following note or comment is attached:--'These lines I wrote as nonsense verses merely to try a metre; but they are by no means contemptible; at least in reading them I am surprised at finding them so good. 16 Aug., 1805, Malta.

'Now will it be a more English music if the first and fourth are double rhymes and the 5th and 6th single? or all single, or the 2nd and 3rd double? Try.' They were afterwards sent to William Wors.h.i.+p, Esq., Yarmouth, in a letter dated April 22, 1819, as an unpublished autograph.

LINENOTES:

[1] with light touch] all lightly MS.

[4] the] this MS.

[6] A distant Hiss of fire MS. alternative reading.

[7] lessens] lessened MS.

[12] flutters] fluttered MS.

[13] mutters] muttered MS.

WHAT IS LIFE?[394:1]

Resembles life what once was deem'd of light, Too ample in itself for human sight?

An absolute self--an element ungrounded-- All that we see, all colours of all shade By encroach of darkness made?-- 5 Is very life by consciousness unbounded?

And all the thoughts, pains, joys of mortal breath, A war-embrace of wrestling life and death?

1805.

FOOTNOTES:

[394:1] First published in _Literary Souvenir_, 1829: included in _Literary Remains_, 1836, i. 60. First collected in 1844. These lines, 'written in the same manner, and for the same purpose, but of course with more conscious effort than the two stanzas on the preceding leaf,'

are dated '16 August, 1805, the day of the Valetta Horse-racing--bells jangling, and stupefying music playing all day'. Afterwards, in 1819, Coleridge maintained that they were written 'between the age of 15 and 16'.

LINENOTES:

[1] deem'd] held Lit. Souvenir, 1829.

[2] ample] simple MS.

[6]

{ [*per se*] (in its own Nature) { Is Life itself

MS.

THE BLOSSOMING OF THE SOLITARY DATE-TREE[395:1]

A LAMENT

I seem to have an indistinct recollection of having read either in one of the ponderous tomes of George of Venice, or in some other compilation from the uninspired Hebrew writers, an apologue or Rabbinical tradition to the following purpose:

While our first parents stood before their offended Maker, and the last 5 words of the sentence were yet sounding in Adam's ear, the guileful false serpent, a counterfeit and a usurper from the beginning, presumptuously took on himself the character of advocate or mediator, and pretending to intercede for Adam, exclaimed: 'Nay, Lord, in thy justice, not so! for the man was the least in fault. Rather let the Woman return at once to 10 the dust, and let Adam remain in this thy Paradise.' And the word of the Most High answered Satan: '_The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel._ Treacherous Fiend! if with guilt like thine, it had been possible for thee to have the heart of a Man, and to feel the yearning of a human soul for its counterpart, the sentence, which thou now counsellest, should have 15 been inflicted on thyself.'