Like some poor nigh-related guest, 1823-1832. THE REPROOF AND REPLY1 Or, The Flower-Thief's Apology, for a robbery committed in Mr. and Mrs. -'s garden, on Sunday morning, 25th of May, 1823, between the hours of eleven and twelve. "FIE, Mr. Coleridge!-and can this be you? Break two commandments? and in church-time too! Such sounds of late, accusing fancy brought 5 10 15 1 First published in Friendship's Offering for 1834, as the first of four 'Lightheartednesses in Rhyme'. A motto was prefixed:-'I expect no sense, worth listening to, from the man who never does talk nonsense.'— Anon. In F. O., 1834, Chisholm was printed C in line 14, C—m in lines 35, 56, and 60, C-m's in line 43. In 1834, 1844 the name was omitted altogether. The text of the present edition follows the MS. First collected in P. W., 1834. A MS. version is in the possession of Miss Edith Coleridge. These lines were included in 1844, but omitted from 1852, 1863, and 1870. 49 Two lines were added in 1832 :- O might Life cease! and Selfless Mind, Whose total Being is Act, alone remain behind. The Reproof, &c.-Title] The Reproof and Reply (the alternative title is omitted) 1834. "Fair dame! a visionary wight, Hard by your hill-side mansion sparkling white, 20 But when, as if to settle the concern, A Nymph too he beheld, in many a turn, Guiding the sweet rill from its fontal urn, Could blame a bard, that he thus inly stirr'd; Say, can you blame?-No! none that saw and heard A muse beholding in each fervent trait, "Thus all conspir'd-each power of eye and ear, Thus, long accustom'd on the twy-fork'd hill,'. 25 30 35 40 45 50 The English Parnassus is remarkable for its two summits of unequal height, the lower denominated Hampstead, the higher Highgate. 31 Mary H-] Mary - 1831, 1844. wild F. O. 1884. 38 Did lure the] Lured the With autocratic hand at once repealing 55 For Chisholm speaks, 'Poor youth! he's but a waif! 60 The Eighth Commandment was not made for Bards!'" 1823. 1 FIRST ADVENT OF LOVE 2 O FAIR is Love's first hope to gentle mind! ? 1824. 5 THE DELINQUENT TRAVELLERS 3 SOME are home-sick-some two or three, Compare The Eighth Commandment was not made for Love', 1. 16 of Elegy I of The Love Elegies of Abel Shufflebottom, by R. Southey. 2 First published in 1834. In a MS. note, dated September 1827, it is included in 'Relics of my School-boy Muse: i. e. fragments of poems composed before my fifteenth year', P. W., 1852, Notes, p. 379; but in an entry in a notebook dated 1824, Coleridge writes: 'Apretty unintended couplet in the prose of Sidney's Arcadia : 'And, sweeter than a gentle south-west wind O'er flowery fields and shadowed waters creeping In summer's extreme heat.' The passage which Coleridge versified is to be found in the Arcadia :'Her breath is more sweet than a gentle south-west wind, which comes creeping over flowing fields and shadowed waters in the heat of summer.' 3 From an hitherto unpublished MS., formerly in the possession of Coleridge's friend and amanuensis Joseph Henry Green. First Advent of Love-Title] Love's First Hopo 1893. Brave Captain Lyon tells us so Nay! tho' contented to abide, You should prefer your own fireside; Yet since grim War has ceas'd its madding, You've spent your last five years in jail!' Keep moving! Steam, or Gas, or Stage, 5 10 15 20 25 30 Yet while your well-greased wheels keep spinning, The traveller's honoured name you're winning, And, snug as Jonas in the Whale, You may loll back and dream a tale. 35 Move, or be moved-there's no protection, First put the whirring in her head,) 1 The Private Journal of Captain G. F. Lyon of the Mt. Hecla, during the recent voyage of discovery under Captain Parry, was published by John Murray in 1824. In a letter dated May, 1823, Lucy Caroline Lamb writes to Murray:-'If there is yet time, do tell Captain Lyon, that I, and others far better than I am, are enchanted with his book. Memoirs... of John Murray, 1891, i. 145. 40 A planet She, and can't endure Must graze at home! to yawn and bray And when she's seated to her mind, And since this outward I, you know, Must stay because he cannot go, Rogues, rascals, sharpers, blanks and prizes, Fraudulent bankrupts, Knights burglarious, And demireps of means precarious All whom Law thwarted, Arms or Arts, All hail! No compliments, I pray, 1 A coast village near Ramsgate. Coleridge passed some weeks at Ramsgate in the late autumn of 1824. |