PREFATORY NOTE

TO THE WANDERINGS OF CAIN.

A PROSE Composition, one not in metre at least, seems prima facie to require explanation or apology. It was written in the year 1798, near Nether Stowey in Somersetshire, at which place (sanctum et amabile nomen! rich by so many associations and recollections) the Author had taken up his residence in order to enjoy the society and close neighbourhood of a dear and honoured friend, T. Poole, Esq. The work was to have been written in concert with another, whose name is too venerable within the precincts of genius to be unnecessarily brought into connection with such a trifle, and who was then residing at a small distance from Nether Stowey. The title and subject were suggested by myself, who likewise drew out the scheme and the contents for each of the three books or cantos, of which the work was to consist, and which, the reader is to be informed, was to have been finished in one night! My partner undertook the first canto: I the second and which ever had done first, was to set about the third. Almost thirty years have passed by; yet at this moment I cannot without something more than a smile moot the question which of the two things was the more impracticable, for a mind so eminently original to compose another man's thoughts and fancies, or for a taste so austerely pure and simple to imitate the Death of Abel? Methinks I see his grand

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and noble countenance as at the moment when having dispatched my own portion of the task at full finger-speed, I hastened to him with my manuscript-that look of humourous despondency fixed on his almost blank sheet of paper, and then its silent mockpiteous admission of failure struggling with the sense of the exceeding ridiculousness of the whole scheme-which broke up in a laugh and the Ancient Mariner was written instead.

Years afterward, however, the draft of the Plan and proposed Incidents, and the portion executed, obtained favour in the eyes of more than one person, whose judgment on a poetic work could not but have weighed with me, even though no parental partiality had been thrown into the same scale, as a make-weight: and I determined on commencing anew, and composing the whole in stanzas, and made some progress in realizing this intention, when adverse gales drove my bark off the "Fortunate Isles" of the Muses: and then other and more momentous interests prompted a different voyage, to firmer anchorage and a securer port. I have in vain tried to recover the lines from the Palimpsest tablet of my memory and I can only offer the introductory stanza, which had been committed to writing for the purpose of procuring a friend's judgment on the metre, as a specimen.

:

Encinctured with a twine of leaves,

That leafy twine his only dress!
A lovely Boy was plucking fruits,
By moonlight, in a wilderness.

The morn was bright, the air was free,
And fruits and flowers together grew
On many a shrub and many a tree:

And all put on a gentle hue,
Hanging in the shadowy air
Like a picture rich and rare.

It was a climate where, they say,
The night is more belov'd than day.
But who that beauteous Boy beguil'd,
That beauteous Boy to linger here?
Alone, by night, a little child,

In place so silent and so wild

Has he no friend, no loving Mother near?

I have here given the birth, parentage, and premature decease of the " Wanderings of Cain, a poem,”—intreating, however, my Readers not to think so meanly of my judgment as to suppose that I either regard or offer it as any excuse for the publication of the following fragment, (and I may add, of one or two others in its neighbourhood) in its primitive crudity. But I should find still greater difficulty in forgiving myself, were I to record pro tædio publico a set of petty mishaps and annoyances which I myself wish to forget. I must be content therefore with assuring the friendly Reader, that the less he attributes its appearance to the Author's will, choice, or judgment, the nearer to the truth he will be.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

THE WANDERINGS OF CAIN.

CANTO II.

"A LITTLE further, O my father, yet a little further, and we shall come into the open moonlight." Their road was through a forest of fir-trees; at its entrance the trees stood at distances from each other, and the path was broad, and the moonlight, and the moonlight shadows reposed upon it, and appeared quietly to inhabit that solitude. But soon the path winded and became narrow; the sun at high noon sometimes speckled, but never illumined it, and now it was dark as a cavern.

"It is dark, O my father!" said Enos, "but the path under our feet is smooth and soft, and we shall soon come out into the open moonlight."

"Lead on, my child!" said Cain: “ guide me, little child!" And the innocent little child clasped a finger of the hand which had murdered the righteous Abel, and he guided his father. "The fir branches drip

upon thee, my son."

"Yea, pleasantly, father, for

I ran fast and eagerly to bring thee the

pitcher and How happy the squirrels are that feed on these fir trees! they leap from bough to bough, and the old squirrels play round their young ones in the nest. I clomb a tree yesterday at noon, O my father, that I'might play with them, but they leapt away from the branches, even to the slender twigs did they leap, and in a moment I beheld them on another tree. Why, O my father, would they not play with me? I would be good to them as thou art good to me: and I groaned to them even as thou groanest when thou givest me to eat, and when thou coverest me at evening, and as often as I stand at thy knee and thine eyes look at me?" Then Cain stopped, and stifling his groans he sank to the earth, and the child Enos stood in the darkness beside him.

the cake, and my body is not yet cool.

And Cain lifted up his voice and cried bitterly, and said, "The Mighty One that persecuteth me is on this side and on that; he pursueth my soul like the wind, like the sand-blast he passeth through me; he is around me even as the air! O that I might be utterly no more! I desire to die-yea, the things that never had life, neither move they upon the earth -behold! they seem precious to mine eyes. O that a man might live without the breath of his nostrils.