The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume II Part 178

First published in _Morning Post_, September 25, 1801. Included in _Essays, &c._, iii. 966-7. First collected _P. and D. W._, 1877, ii.

168.

7

THE WILLS OF THE WISP

A SAPPHIC

_Vix ea nostra voco_

Lunatic Witch-fires! Ghosts of Light and Motion!

Fearless I see you weave your wanton dances Near me, far off me; you, that tempt the traveller Onward and onward.

Wooing, retreating, till the swamp beneath him Groans--and 'tis dark!--This woman's wile--I know it!

Learnt it from _thee_, from _thy_ perfidious glances!

Black-ey'd Rebecca!

First published in _Morning Post_, December 1, 1801. First collected _P.

and D. W._, 1877, ii. 169.

8

TO CAPTAIN FINDLAY

When the squalls were flitting and fleering And the vessel was tacking and veering; Bravo! Captain Findlay, Who foretold a fair wind Of a constant mind; For he knew which way the wind lay, Bravo! Captain Findlay.

A Health to Captain Findlay, Bravo! Captain Findlay!

When we made but ill speed with the Speedwell, Neither poets nor sheep could feed well: Now grief rotted the Liver, Yet Malta, dear Malta, as far off as ever!

Bravo! Captain Findlay, Foretold a fair wind, Of a constant mind, For he knew which way the wind lay!

May 4, 1804.

Now first published from a Notebook. The rhymes are inserted between the following entries:--'Thursday night--Wind chopped about and about, once fairly to the west, for a minute or two--but now, 1/2 past 9, the Captain comes down and promises a fair wind for to-morrow. We shall see.' 'Well, and we have got a wind the right way at last!'

9

ON DONNE'S POEM 'TO A FLEA'

Be proud as Spaniards! Leap for pride ye Fleas!

Henceforth in Nature's mimic World grandees.

In Phbus' archives registered are ye, And this your patent of n.o.bility.

No skip-Jacks now, nor civiller skip-Johns, Dread Anthropophagi! specks of living bronze, I hail you one and all, sans Pros or Cons, Descendants from a n.o.ble race of Dons.

What tho' that great ancestral Flea be gone, Immortal with immortalising Donne, His earthly spots bleached off a Papist's gloze, In purgatory fire on Bardolph's nose.

1811.

Now first published from an MS.

10

[EX LIBRIS S. T. C.][981:1]

This, Hannah Scollock! may have been the case; Your writing therefore I will not erase.

But now this Book, once yours, belongs to me, The _Morning Post's_ and _Courier's_ S. T. C.;-- Elsewhere in College, knowledge, wit and scholarage To Friends and Public known as S. T. Coleridge.

Witness hereto my hand, on Ashley Green, One thousand, twice four hundred, and fourteen Year of our Lord--and of the month November The fifteenth day, if right I do remember.

15th Nov. 1814. Ashley, Box, Bath.

First published in _Lit. Rem._, iii. 57. First collected _P. and D. W._, 1877, ii. 387.

11

?GO????????

The following burlesque on the Fichtean Egoismus may, perhaps, be amusing to the few who have studied the system, and to those who are unacquainted with it, may convey as tolerable a likeness of Fichte's idealism as can be expected from an avowed caricature. [S. T. C.]

The Categorical Imperative, or the annunciation of the New Teutonic G.o.d, ?GO????????: a dithyrambic Ode, by QUERKOPF VON KLUBSTICK, Grammarian, and Subrector in Gymnasio. . . .

_Eu! Dei vices gerens, ipse Divus_, (Speak English, Friend!) the G.o.d Imperativus, Here on this market-cross aloud I cry: 'I, I, I! I itself I!

The form and the substance, the what and the why, The when and the where, and the low and the high, The inside and outside, the earth and the sky, I, you, and he, and he, you and I, All souls and all bodies are I itself I!

All I itself I!

(Fools! a truce with this starting!) All my I! all my I!

He's a heretic dog who but adds Betty Martin!'

Thus cried the G.o.d with high imperial tone: In robe of stiffest state, that scoff'd at beauty, A p.r.o.noun-verb imperative he shone-- Then substantive and plural-singular grown, He thus spake on:--'Behold in I alone (For Ethics boast a syntax of their own) Or if in ye, yet as I doth depute ye, In O! I, you, the vocative of duty!

I of the world's whole Lexicon the root!

Of the whole universe of touch, sound, sight, The genitive and ablative to boot: The accusative of wrong, the nom'native of right, And in all cases the case absolute!

Self-construed, I all other moods decline: Imperative, from nothing we derive us; Yet as a super-postulate of mine, Unconstrued antecedence I a.s.sign, To X Y Z, the G.o.d Infinitivus!'

1815.

First published in _Biographia Literaria_, 1817, i. 148_n._ First collected _P. and D. W._, 1877, ii. 370.

12

THE BRIDGE STREET COMMITTEE

Jack Snipe Eats Tripe: It is therefore credible That tripe is edible.

And therefore, perforce, It follows, of course, That the Devil will gripe All who do not eat Tripe.

And as Nic is too slow To fetch 'em below: And Gifford, the attorney, Won't quicken their journey; The Bridge-Street Committee That colleague without pity, To imprison and hang Carlile and his gang, Is the pride of the City, And 'tis a.s.sociation That, alone, saves the Nation From Death and d.a.m.nation.

First published in _Letters and Conversations, &c._, 1836, i. 90, 91.