Like some poor nigh-related guest,
That may not rudely be dismist;
Yet hath outstay'd his welcome while,
And tells the jest without the smile.

1823-1832.

THE REPROOF AND REPLY1

Or, The Flower-Thief's Apology, for a robbery committed in Mr. and Mrs. -'s garden, on Sunday morning, 25th of May, 1823, between the hours of eleven and twelve.

"FIE, Mr. Coleridge!-and can this be you?

Break two commandments? and in church-time too!
Have you not heard, or have you heard in vain,
The birth-and-parentage-recording strain ?—
Confessions shrill, that out-shrill'd mack'rel drown
Fresh from the drop-the youth not yet cut down-
Letter to sweet-heart-the last dying speech-
And didn't all this begin in Sabbath-breach?
You, that knew better! In broad open day,
Steal in, steal out, and steal our flowers away?
What could possess you? Ah! sweet youth, I fear
The chap with horns and tail was at your ear!"

Such sounds of late, accusing fancy brought
From fair Chisholm to the Poet's thought.
Now hear the meek Parnassian youth's reply :--
A bow-a pleading look-a downcast eye,-
And then:

5

10

15

1 First published in Friendship's Offering for 1834, as the first of four 'Lightheartednesses in Rhyme'. A motto was prefixed:-'I expect no sense, worth listening to, from the man who never does talk nonsense.'— Anon. In F. O., 1834, Chisholm was printed C in line 14, C—m in lines 35, 56, and 60, C-m's in line 43. In 1834, 1844 the name was omitted altogether. The text of the present edition follows the MS. First collected in P. W., 1834. A MS. version is in the possession of Miss Edith Coleridge. These lines were included in 1844, but omitted from 1852, 1863, and 1870.

49 Two lines were added in 1832 :-

O might Life cease! and Selfless Mind,

Whose total Being is Act, alone remain behind.

The Reproof, &c.-Title] The Reproof and Reply (the alternative title is omitted) 1834.

"Fair dame! a visionary wight,

Hard by your hill-side mansion sparkling white,
His thoughts all hovering round the Muses' home,
Long hath it been your Poet's wont to roam,
And many a morn, on his becharmed sense
So rich a stream of music issued thence,
He deem'd himself, as it flowed warbling on,
Beside the vocal fount of Helicon!

20

But when, as if to settle the concern,

A Nymph too he beheld, in many a turn,

Guiding the sweet rill from its fontal urn,

Could blame a bard, that he thus inly stirr'd;

Say, can you blame?-No! none that saw and heard

A muse beholding in each fervent trait,
Took Mary H- for Polly Hymnia!
Or haply as there stood beside the maid
One loftier form in sable stole array'd,
If with regretful thought he hail'd in thee
Chisholm, his long-lost friend, Mol Pomene!
But most of you, soft warblings, I complain!
'Twas ye that from the bee-hive of my brain
Did lure the fancies forth, a freakish rout,
And witch'd the air with dreams turn'd inside out.

"Thus all conspir'd-each power of eye and ear,
And this gay month, th' enchantress of the year,
To cheat poor me (no conjuror, God wot!)
And Chisholm's self accomplice in the plot.
Can you then wonder if I went astray?
Not bards alone, nor lovers mad as they ;-
All Nature day-dreams in the month of May.
And if I pluck'd 'each flower that sweetest blows,'-
Who walks in sleep, needs follow must his nose.

Thus, long accustom'd on the twy-fork'd hill,'.
To pluck both flower and floweret at my will;
The garden's maze, like No-man's-land, I tread,
Nor common law, nor statute in my head;
For my own proper smell, sight, fancy, feeling,

25

30

35

40

45

50

The English Parnassus is remarkable for its two summits of unequal height, the lower denominated Hampstead, the higher Highgate.

31 Mary H-] Mary - 1831, 1844. wild F. O. 1884.

38 Did lure the] Lured the

With autocratic hand at once repealing
Five Acts of Parliament 'gainst private stealing!
But yet from Chisholm who despairs of grace ?
There's no spring-gun or man-trap in that face!
Let Moses then look black, and Aaron blue,
That look as if they had little else to do:

55

For Chisholm speaks, 'Poor youth! he's but a waif! 60
The spoons all right? the hen and chickens safe?
Well, well, he shall not forfeit our regards-

The Eighth Commandment was not made for Bards!'"

1823.

1

FIRST ADVENT OF LOVE 2

O FAIR is Love's first hope to gentle mind!
As Eve's first star thro' fleecy cloudlet peeping;
And sweeter than the gentle south-west wind,
O'er willowy meads, and shadow'd waters creeping,
And Ceres' golden fields;-the sultry hind
Meets it with brow uplift, and stays his reaping.

? 1824.

5

THE DELINQUENT TRAVELLERS 3

SOME are home-sick-some two or three,
Their third year on the Arctic Sea-

Compare The Eighth Commandment was not made for Love', 1. 16 of Elegy I of The Love Elegies of Abel Shufflebottom, by R. Southey.

2 First published in 1834. In a MS. note, dated September 1827, it is included in 'Relics of my School-boy Muse: i. e. fragments of poems composed before my fifteenth year', P. W., 1852, Notes, p. 379; but in an entry in a notebook dated 1824, Coleridge writes: 'Apretty unintended couplet in the prose of Sidney's Arcadia :

'And, sweeter than a gentle south-west wind

O'er flowery fields and shadowed waters creeping

In summer's extreme heat.'

The passage which Coleridge versified is to be found in the Arcadia :'Her breath is more sweet than a gentle south-west wind, which comes creeping over flowing fields and shadowed waters in the heat of summer.'

3 From an hitherto unpublished MS., formerly in the possession of Coleridge's friend and amanuensis Joseph Henry Green.

First Advent of Love-Title] Love's First Hopo 1893.

Brave Captain Lyon tells us so
Spite of those charming Esquimaux.
But 0, what scores are sick of Home,
Agog for Paris or for Rome!

Nay! tho' contented to abide,

You should prefer your own fireside;

Yet since grim War has ceas'd its madding,
And Peace has set John Bull agadding,
"Twould such a vulgar taste betray,
For very shame you must away!
'What? not yet seen the coast of France!
The folks will swear, for lack of bail,

You've spent your last five years in jail!'

Keep moving! Steam, or Gas, or Stage,
Hold, cabin, steerage, hencoop's cage-
Tour, Journey, Voyage, Lounge, Ride, Walk,
Skim, Sketch, Excursion, Travel-talk-
For move you must! 'Tis now the rage,
The law and fashion of the Age.
If you but perch, where Dover tallies,
So strangely with the coast of Calais,
With a good glass and knowing look,
You'll soon get matter for a book!
Or else, in Gas-car, take your chance
Like that adventurous king of France,
Who, once, with twenty thousand men
Went up-and then came down again;
At least, he moved if nothing more:
And if there's nought left to explore,

5

10

15

20

25

30

Yet while your well-greased wheels keep spinning,

The traveller's honoured name you're winning,

And, snug as Jonas in the Whale,

You may loll back and dream a tale.

35

Move, or be moved-there's no protection,
Our Mother Earth has ta'en the infection-
(That rogue Copernicus, 'tis said

First put the whirring in her head,)

1 The Private Journal of Captain G. F. Lyon of the Mt. Hecla, during the recent voyage of discovery under Captain Parry, was published by John Murray in 1824. In a letter dated May, 1823, Lucy Caroline Lamb writes to Murray:-'If there is yet time, do tell Captain Lyon, that I, and others far better than I am, are enchanted with his book. Memoirs... of John Murray, 1891, i. 145.

40

A planet She, and can't endure
T'exist without her annual Tour:
The name were else a mere misnomer,
Since Planet is but Greek for Roamer.
The atmosphere, too, can do no less
Than ventilate her emptiness,
Bilks turn-pike gates, for no one cares,
And gives herself a thousand airs-
While streams and shopkeepers, we see,
Will have their run toward the sea-
And if, meantime, like old King Log,
Or ass with tether and a clog,

Must graze at home! to yawn and bray
'I guess we shall have rain to-day!
Nor clog nor tether can be worse
Than the dead palsy of the purse.
Money, I've heard a wise man say,
Makes herself wings and flys away:
Ah! would She take it in her head
To make a pair for me instead!
At all events, the Fancy's free,
No traveller so bold as she.
From Fear and Poverty released
I'll saddle Pegasus, at least,

And when she's seated to her mind,
I within I can mount behind:

And since this outward I, you know,

Must stay because he cannot go,
My fellow-travellers shall be they
Who go because they cannot stay-

Rogues, rascals, sharpers, blanks and prizes,
Delinquents of all sorts and sizes,

Fraudulent bankrupts, Knights burglarious,

And demireps of means precarious

All whom Law thwarted, Arms or Arts,
Compel to visit foreign parts,

All hail! No compliments, I pray,
I'll follow where you lead the way!
But ere we cross the main once more,
Methinks, along my native shore,
Dismounting from my steed I'll stray
Beneath the cliffs of Dumpton Bay,'

1 A coast village near Ramsgate. Coleridge passed some weeks at

Ramsgate in the late autumn of 1824.