Samuel Coleridge - The Complete Essays, Lectures & Letters of S. T. Coleridge (Illustrated)

However novel this phaenomenon may have been in Germany at the time of Gellert, it is by no means new, nor yet of recent existence in our language. Spite of the licentiousness with which Spenser occasionally compels the orthography of his words into a subservience to his rhymes, the whole FAIRY QUEEN is an almost continued instance of this beauty. Waller’s song GO, LOVELY ROSE, is doubtless familiar to most of my readers; but if I had happened to have had by me the Poems of Cotton, more but far less deservedly celebrated as the author of the VIRGIL TRAVESTIED, I should have indulged myself, and I think have gratified many, who are not acquainted with his serious works, by selecting some admirable specimens of this style. There are not a few poems in that volume, replete with every excellence of thought, image, and passion, which we expect or desire in the poetry of the milder muse; and yet so worded, that the reader sees no one reason either in the selection or the order of the words, why he might not have said the very same in an appropriate conversation, and cannot conceive how indeed he could have expressed such thoughts otherwise without loss or injury to his meaning.

But in truth our language is, and from the first dawn of poetry ever has been, particularly rich in compositions distinguished by this excellence. The final e, which is now mute, in Chaucer’s age was either sounded or dropt indifferently. We ourselves still use either “beloved” or “belov’d” according as the rhyme, or measure, or the purpose of more or less solemnity may require. Let the reader then only adopt the pronunciation of the poet and of the court, at which he lived, both with respect to the final e and to the accentuation of the last syllable; I would then venture to ask, what even in the colloquial language of elegant and unaffected women, (who are the peculiar mistresses of “pure English and undefiled,”) what could we hear more natural, or seemingly more unstudied, than the following stanzas from Chaucer’s TROILUS AND CRESEIDE.

“And after this forth to the gate he wente,

Ther as Creseide out rode a ful gode pass,

And up and doun there made he many’ a wente,

And to himselfe ful oft he said, Alas!

Fro hennis rode my blisse and my solas

As woulde blisful God now for his joie,

I might her sene agen come in to Troie!

And to the yondir hil I gan her Bide,

Alas! and there I toke of her my leve

And yond I saw her to her fathir ride;

For sorow of whiche mine hert shall to-cleve;

And hithir home I came whan it was eve,

And here I dwel, outcast from ally joie,

And steal, til I maie sene her efte in Troie.

“And of himselfe imaginid he ofte

To ben defaitid, pale and woxin lesse

Than he was wonte, and that men saidin softe,

What may it be? who can the sothe gesse,

Why Troilus hath al this hevinesse?

And al this n’ as but his melancolie,

That he had of himselfe suche fantasie.

Anothir time imaginin he would

That every wight, that past him by the wey,

Had of him routhe, and that thei saien should,

I am right sory, Troilus wol dey!

And thus he drove a daie yet forth or twey,

As ye have herde: suche life gan he to lede

As he that stode betwixin hope and drede:

For which him likid in his songis shewe

Th’ encheson of his wo as he best might,

And made a songe of words but a fewe,

Somwhat his woful herte for to light,

And whan he was from every mann’is sight

With softe voice he of his lady dere,

That absent was, gan sing as ye may here:

This song, when he thus songin had, ful Bone

He fil agen into his sighis olde

And every night, as was his wonte to done;

He stode the bright moone to beholde

And all his sorowe to the moone he tolde,

And said: I wis, whan thou art hornid newe,

I shall be glad, if al the world be trewe!”

Another exquisite master of this species of style, where the scholar and the poet supplies the material, but the perfect well-bred gentleman the expressions and the arrangement, is George Herbert. As from the nature of the subject, and the too frequent quaintness of the thoughts, his TEMPLE; or SACRED POEMS AND PRIVATE EJACULATIONS are Comparatively but little known, I shall extract two poems. The first is a sonnet, equally admirable for the weight, number, and expression of the thoughts, and for the simple dignity of the language. Unless, indeed, a fastidious taste should object to the latter half of the sixth line. The second is a poem of greater length, which I have chosen not only for the present purpose, but likewise as a striking example and illustration of an assertion hazarded in a former page of these sketches namely, that the characteristic fault of our elder poets is the reverse of that, which distinguishes too many of our more recent versifiers; the one conveying the most fantastic thoughts in the most correct and natural language; the other in the most fantastic language conveying the most trivial thoughts. The latter is a riddle of words; the former an enigma of thoughts. The one reminds me of an odd passage in Drayton’s IDEAS

As other men, so I myself do muse,

Why in this sort I wrest invention so;

And why these giddy metaphors I use,

Leaving the path the greater part do go;

I will resolve you: I am lunatic!

The other recalls a still odder passage in THE SYNAGOGUE: or THE SHADOW OF THE TEMPLE, a connected series of poems in imitation of Herbert’s TEMPLE, and, in some editions, annexed to it.

O how my mind

Is gravell’d!

Not a thought,

That I can find,

But’s ravell’d

All to nought!

Short ends of threds,

And narrow shreds

Of lists,

Knots, snarled ruffs,

Loose broken tufts

Of twists,

Are my torn meditations ragged clothing,

Which, wound and woven, shape a suit for nothing:

One while I think, and then I am in pain

To think how to unthink that thought again.

Immediately after these burlesque passages I cannot proceed to the extracts promised, without changing the ludicrous tone of feeling by the interposition of the three following stanzas of Herbert’s.

VIRTUE.

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridal of the earth and sky,

The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;

For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave

Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye

Thy root is ever in its grave,

And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,

A box, where sweets compacted lie

My music shews, ye have your closes,

And all must die.

THE BOSOM SIN:

A SONNET BY GEORGE HERBERT.

Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round,

Parents first season us; then schoolmasters

Deliver us to laws; they send us bound

To rules of reason, holy messengers,

Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin,

Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes,

Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,

Bibles laid open, millions of surprises;

Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness,

The sound of Glory ringing in our ears

Without, our shame; within, our consciences;

Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears.

Yet all these fences and their whole array

One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away.

LOVE UNKNOWN.

Dear friend, sit down, the tale is long and sad

And in my faintings, I presume, your love

Will more comply than help. A Lord I had,

And have, of whom some grounds, which may improve,

I hold for two lives, and both lives in me.

To him I brought a dish of fruit one day,

And in the middle placed my heart. But he

(I sigh to say)

Look’d on a servant, who did know his eye,