The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume I Part 100

TO ----[292:1]

I mix in life, and labour to seem free, With common persons pleas'd and common things, While every thought and action tends to thee, And every impulse from thy influence springs.

? 1798.

FOOTNOTES:

[292:1] First published without t.i.tle in _Literary Remains_, 1836, i.

280 (among other short pieces and fragments 'communicated by Mr.

Gutch'). First collected, again without t.i.tle, in _P. and D. W._, 1877-80.

LINENOTES:

t.i.tle] To ---- 1893. The heading _Ubi Thesaurus Ibi Cor_ was prefixed to the ill.u.s.trated edition of The Poems of Coleridge, 1907.

THE BALLAD OF THE DARK LADIe[293:1]

A FRAGMENT

Beneath yon birch with silver bark, And boughs so pendulous and fair, The brook falls scatter'd down the rock: And all is mossy there!

And there upon the moss she sits, 5 The Dark Ladie in silent pain; The heavy tear is in her eye, And drops and swells again.

Three times she sends her little page Up the castled mountain's breast, 10 If he might find the Knight that wears The Griffin for his crest.

The sun was sloping down the sky, And she had linger'd there all day, Counting moments, dreaming fears-- 15 Oh wherefore can he stay?

She hears a rustling o'er the brook, She sees far off a swinging bough!

'Tis He! 'Tis my betrothed Knight!

Lord Falkland, it is Thou!' 20

She springs, she clasps him round the neck, She sobs a thousand hopes and fears, Her kisses glowing on his cheeks She quenches with her tears.

'My friends with rude ungentle words 25 They scoff and bid me fly to thee!

O give me shelter in thy breast!

O shield and shelter me!

'My Henry, I have given thee much, I gave what I can ne'er recall, 30 I gave my heart, I gave my peace, O Heaven! I gave thee all.'

The Knight made answer to the Maid, While to his heart he held her hand, 'Nine castles hath my n.o.ble sire, 35 None statelier in the land.

'The fairest one shall be my love's, The fairest castle of the nine!

Wait only till the stars peep out, The fairest shall be thine: 40

'Wait only till the hand of eve Hath wholly closed yon western bars, And through the dark we two will steal Beneath the twinkling stars!'--

'The dark? the dark? No! not the dark? 45 The twinkling stars? How, Henry? How?'

O G.o.d! 'twas in the eye of noon He pledged his sacred vow!

And in the eye of noon my love Shall lead me from my mother's door, 50 Sweet boys and girls all clothed in white Strewing flowers before:

But first the nodding minstrels go With music meet for lordly bowers, The children next in snow-white vests, 55 Strewing buds and flowers!

And then my love and I shall pace.

My jet black hair in pearly braids, Between our comely bachelors And blushing bridal maids. 60

1798.

FOOTNOTES:

[293:1] First published in 1834. 'In a ma.n.u.script list (undated) of the poems drawn up by Coleridge appear these items together: _Love_ 96 lines . . . _The Black Ladie_ 190 lines.' _Note_ to _P. W._, 1893, p. 614. A MS. of the three last stanzas is extant. In Chapter XIV of the _Biographia Literaria_, 1817, ii. 3 Coleridge synchronizes the _Dark Ladie_ (a poem which he was 'preparing' with the _Christabel_). It would seem probable that it belongs to the spring or early summer of 1798, and that it was anterior to _Love_, which was first published in the _Morning Post_, December 21, 1799, under the heading 'Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie'. If the MS. List of Poems is the record of poems actually written, two-thirds of the _Dark Ladie_ must have perished long before 1817, when _Sibylline Leaves_ was pa.s.sing through the press, and it was found necessary to swell the Contents with 'two School-boy Poems' and 'with a song modernized with some additions from one of our elder poets'.

LINENOTES:

[53-6]

And first the nodding Minstrels go With music fit for lovely Bowers, The children then in snowy robes, Strewing Buds and Flowers.

MS. S. T. C.

[57] pace] go MS. S. T. C.

KUBLA KHAN[295:1]:

OR, A VISION IN A DREAM. A FRAGMENT.

The following fragment is here published at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity [Lord Byron], and, as far as the Author's own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the ground of any supposed _poetic_ merits. 5