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FRAGMENTS

1

O'ER the raised earth the gales of evening sigh;
And, see, a daisy peeps upon its slope!

2

I wipe the dimming waters from mine eye; Even on the cold grave lights the Cherub Hope. ?1787. First published in Poems, 1852 (p. 379, Note 1). First collected 1833.

'The following 'Fragments', numbered 1-63, consist of a few translations and versicles inserted by Coleridge in his various prose works, and a larger number of fragments, properly so called, which were published from MS. sources in 1893, or are now published for the first time. These fragments are taken exclusively from Coleridge's Notebooks (the source of Anima Poeta, 1895), and were collected, transcribed, and dated by the present Editor for publication in 1893. The fragments now published for the first time were either not used by J. D. Campbell in 1893, or had not been discovered or transcribed. The very slight emendations of the text are due to the fact that Mr. Campbell printed from copies, and that the collection as a whole has now for the second time been collated with the original MSS. Fragments numbered 64, 96, 98, 111, 113, in P. W., 1893, are quotations from the plays and poems of William Cartwright (1611-1643). They are not included in the present issue. Fragments 56, 58, 59, 61, 63, 67, 80, 81, 83, 88, 91, 93, 94, 117-120, are inserted in the text or among Jeux d'Esprit', or under other headings. The chronological order is for the most part conjectural, and differs from that suggested in 1893. It must be borne in mind that the entries in Coleridge's Notebooks are not continuous, and that the additional matter in prose or verse was inserted from time to time, wherever a page or half a page was not filled up. It follows that the context is an uncertain guide to the date of any given entry. Pains have been taken to exclude quotations from older writers, which Coleridge neither claimed nor intended to claim for his own, but it is possible that two or three of these fragments of verse are not original. 2 This quatrain, described as 'The concluding stanza of an Elegy on a Lady who died in Early Youth', is from part of a memorandum in S. T. C.'s handwriting headed Relics of my School-boy Muse; i.e. fragments of poems composed before my fifteenth year'. It follows First Advent of Love, O fair is Love's first hope,' &c. (vide ante, p. 443), and is compared with Age-a stanza written forty years later than the preceding-'Dewdrops are the gems of morning,' &c. (p. 440).

ANOTHER VERSION.

O'er her piled grave the gale of evening sighs,
And flowers will grow upon its grassy slope,

I wipe the dimming waters from mine eye

Even on the cold grave dwells the Cherub Hope.

Unpublished Letter to Thomas Poole, Feb. 1, 1801, on the death of Mrs. Robinson ('Perdita').

2

SEA-WARD, white gleaming thro' the busy scud
With arching Wings, the sea-mew o'er my head
Posts on, as bent on speed, now passaging
Edges the stiffer Breeze, now, yielding, drifts,
Now floats upon the air, and sends from far
A wildly-wailing Note.

Now first published from an MS. Compare Fragment No. 29 of Fragments from a Notebook.

3

OVER MY COTTAGE

THE Pleasures sport beneath the thatch;
But Prudence sits upon the watch;
Nor Dun nor Doctor lifts the latch!
1799. First published from an MS. in 1893.
Sinngedicht No. 104.

4

Suggested by Lessing's

In the lame and limping metre of a barbarous Latin poetEst meum et est tuum, amice! at si amborum nequit esse, Sit meum, amice, precor: quia certe sum mage pauper. "Tis mine and it is likewise yours;

Nov. 1, 1801.

But and if this will not do,

Let it be mine, because that I

First collected 1893.

Am the poorer of the Two!

First published in the Preface to Christabel, 1816.

5

NAMES do not always meet with Love,

And Love wants courage without a name.1

Dec. 1801. Now first published from an MS.

6

THE Moon, how definite its orb!

Yet gaze again, and with a steady gaze-
'Tis there indeed, but where is it not?—
It is suffused o'er all the sapphire Heaven,
Trees, herbage, snake-like stream, unwrinkled Lake,
Whose very murmur does of it partake!

1 These two lines, slightly altered, were afterwards included in Alice du Clos (11. 111, 112), ante, p. 473.

And low and close the broad smooth mountain is more a thing of Heaven than when distinct by one dim shade, and yet undivided from the universal cloud in which it towers infinite in height.

?1801. First published from an MS. in 1893.

7

SUCH love as mourning Husbands have
To her whose Spirit has been newly given
To her guardian Saint in Heaven-

Whose Beauty lieth in the grave—

(Unconquered, as if the Soul could find no purer Tabernacle, nor place of sojourn than the virgin Body it had before dwelt in, and wished to stay there till the Resurrection)—

Far liker to a Flower now than when alive,
Cold to the Touch and blooming to the eye.

Sept. 1803. Now first published from an MS.

8

[THE NIGHT-MARE DEATH IN LIFE] I KNOW 'tis but a dream, yet feel more anguish Than if 'twere truth. It has been often so:

Must I die under it? Is no one near?

Will no one hear these stifled groans and wake me? ? 1803.

Now first published from an MS.

9

BRIGHT clouds of reverence, sufferably bright,
That intercept the dazzle, not the Light;

That veil the finite form, the boundless power reveal,
Itself an earthly sun of pure intensest white.

1803.

First published from an MS. in 1893.

10

A BECK IN WINTER'

OVER the broad, the shallow, rapid stream,
The Alder, a vast hollow Trunk, and ribb❜d-
All mossy green with mosses manifold,
And ferns still waving in the river-breeze

1 The lines are an attempt to reduce to blank verse minute descriptions of natural objects and scenic effects. lines are illegible.

one of many The concluding

Sent out, like fingers, five projecting trunks-
The shortest twice 6 (?) of a tall man's strides.—
One curving upward in its middle growth

Rose straight with grove of twigs-a pollard tree:-
The rest more backward, gradual in descent-
One in the brook and one befoamed its waters:
One ran along the bank in the elk-like head
And pomp of antlers-

Jan. 1804. Now first published from an MS. (pencil).

11

I FROM the influence of thy Looks receive,
Access in every virtue, in thy Sight

More wise, more wakeful, stronger, if need were
Of outward strength.-

1804. Now first published from an MS.

12

WHAT never is, but only is to be

This is not Life:

O hopeless Hope, and Death's Hypocrisy ! And with perpetual promise breaks its promises. 1804-5. Now first published from an MS.

13

THE silence of a City, how awful at Midnight!
Mute as the battlements and crags and towers
That Fancy makes in the clouds, yea, as mute
As the moonlight that sleeps on the steady vanes.
(or)

The cell of a departed anchoret,

His skeleton and flitting ghost are there,

Sole tenants

And all the City silent as the Moon

That steeps in quiet light the steady vanes

Of her huge temples.

1804-5. Now first published from an MS.

14

O BEAUTY in a beauteous body dight!

Body that veiling brightness, beamest bright;

Fair cloud which less we see, than by thee see the light.

1805. First published from an MS. in 1893.

15

О TH' Oppressive, irksome weight
Felt in an uncertain state:
Comfort, peace, and rest adieu
Should I prove at last untrue!
Self-confiding wretch, I thought
I could love thee as I ought,
Win thee and deserve to feel
All the Love thou canst reveal,

And still I chuse thee, follow still.

1805. First published from an MS. in 1893.

16

"Twas not a mist, nor was it quite a cloud,
But it pass'd smoothly on towards the sea—
Smoothly and lightly between Earth and Heaven:
So, thin a cloud,

It scarce bedimm'd the star that shone behind it :
And Hesper now

Paus'd on the welkin blue, and cloudless brink,
A golden circlet! while the Star of Jove—
That other lovely star-high o'er my head
Shone whitely in the centre of his Haze

...

one black-blue cloud Stretch'd, like the heaven, o'er all the cope of Heaven. Dec. 1797. First published from an MS. in 1893.

17

[NOT A CRITIC-BUT A JUDGE]

WHOм should I choose for my Judge? the earnest, impersonal reader,

Who, in the work, forgets me and the world and himself! You who have eyes to detect, and Gall to Chastise the imperfect,

Have you the heart, too, that loves,-feels and rewards the Compleat?

1805. Now first published from an MS.

18

A SUMPTUOUS and magnificent Revenge. March 1806. First published from an MS. in 1893.

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