Anima Poetae Part 4

The thing that causes _in_stability in a particular state, of itself causes stability. For instance, wet soap slips off the ledge--detain it till it dries a little, and it _sticks_.

Is there anything in the idea that citizens are fonder of good eating and rustics of strong drink--the one from the rarity of all such things, the other from the uniformity of his life?

[Sidenote: October 19, 1801]

[Sidenote: 1797-1801]

On the Greta, over the bridge by Mr. Edmundson's father-in-law, the ashes--their leaves of that light yellow which autumn gives them, cast a reflection on the river like a painter's suns.h.i.+ne.

[Sidenote: October 20, 1801]

My birthday. The snow fell on Skiddaw and Grysdale Pike for the first time.

[A life-long mistake. He was born October 21, 1772.]

[Sidenote: Tuesday evening, 1/2 past 6, October 22, 1801]

All the mountains black and tremendously obscure, except Swinside. At this time I saw, one after the other, nearly in the same place, two perfect moon-rainbows, the one foot in the field below my garden, the other in the field nearest but two to the church. It was grey-moonlight-mist-colour. Friday morning, Mary Hutchinson arrives.

The art in a great man, and of evidently superior faculties, to be often _obliged_ to people, often his inferiors--in this way the enthusiasm of affection may be excited. Pity where we can help and our help is accepted with grat.i.tude, conjoined with admiration, breeds an enthusiastic affection. The same pity conjoined with admiration, where neither our help is accepted nor efficient, breeds dyspathy and fear.

_Nota bene_ to make a detailed comparison, in the manner of Jeremy Taylor, between the searching for the first cause of a thing and the seeking the fountains of the Nile--so many streams, each with its particular fountain--and, at last, it all comes to a name!

The soul a mummy embalmed by Hope in the catacombs.

To write a _series_ of love poems truly Sapphic, save that they shall have a large interfusion of moral sentiment and calm imagery--love in all the moods of mind, philosophic, fantastic--in moods of high enthusiasm, of simple feeling, of mysticism, of religion--comprise in it all the practice and all the philosophy of love!

[Greek: Ho myrionous]--hyperbole from Naucratius' panegyric of Theodoras Chersites. Shakspere, _item_, [Greek: ho pollostos kai polyeides te poikilostropho sophia. Ho megalophronotatos tes aletheias keryx.]--LORD BACON.

[Compare _Biographia Literaria_, cap. xv., "our myriad-minded Shakspere"

and _footnote_. [Greek: Aner myrionous] a phrase which I have borrowed from a Greek monk, who applies it to a Patriarch of Constantinople. I might have said that I have reclaimed rather than borrowed it; for it seems to belong to Shakspere, _de jure singulari, et ex privilegio naturae. Coleridge's Works_, iii. 375.]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: Presumably George Dyer.]

CHAPTER II

_1802-1803_

"In a half sleep, he dreams of better worlds, And dreaming hears thee still, O singing lark, That singest like an angel in the clouds!"

S. T .C.

[Sidenote: THOUGHTS AND FANCIES]

No one can leap over his own shadow, but poets leap over death.

The old world begins a new year. That is _ours_, but this is from G.o.d.

We may think of time as threefold. Slowly comes the Future, swift the Present pa.s.ses by, but the Past is unmoveable. No impatience will quicken the loiterer, no terror, no delight rein in the flyer, and no regret set in motion the stationary. Wouldst be happy, take the delayer for thy counsellor; do not choose the flyer for thy friend, nor the ever-remainer for thine enemy.

[Sidenote: LIMBO]

Vastum, incultum, solitudo mera, et incrinitissima nuditas.

[_Crinitus_, covered with hair, is to be found in Cicero, _nuditas_ in Quintilian, but _incrinitissima_ is, probably, Coleridgian Latinity.]

[An old man gloating over his past vices may be compared to the] devil at the very end of h.e.l.l, warming himself at the reflection of the fire in the ice.

Dimness of vision, mist, &c., magnify the powers of sight, numbness adds to those of touch. A numb limb seems twice its real size.

Take away from sounds the sense of outness, and what a horrible disease would every minute become! A drive over a pavement would be exquisite torture. What, then, is sympathy if the feelings be not disclosed? An inward reverberation of the stifled cry of distress.

Metaphysics make all one's thoughts equally corrosive on the body, by inducing a habit of making momently and common thought the subject of uncommon interest and intellectual energy.

A kind-hearted man who is obliged to give a refusal or the like which will inflict great pain, finds a relief in doing it roughly and fiercely. Explain this and use it in Christabel.

The unspeakable comfort to a good man's mind, nay, even to a criminal, to be _understood_--to have some one that understands one--and who does not feel that, on earth, no one does? The hope of this, always more or less disappointed, gives the pa.s.sion to friends.h.i.+p.

[Sidenote: October,1802]

Hartley, at Mr. Clarkson's, sent for a candle. The _seems_ made him miserable. "What do you mean, my love?" "The seems, the seems. What seems to be and is not, men and faces, and I do not [know] what, ugly, and sometimes pretty, and these turn ugly, and they seem when my eyes are open and worse when they are shut--and the candle cures the _seems_."