Is sweetest! moments for their own sake hailed
And more desired, more precious for thy song,
95 In silence listening, like a devout child,
My soul lay passive, by thy various strain
Driven as in surges now beneath the stars,
With momentary stars of my own birth,
Fair constellated foam, still darting off
IOO Into the darkness; now a tranquil sea, Outspread and bright, yet swelling to the moon.
And when?O Friend! my comforter and guide!
Strong in thyself, and powerful to give strength!?
Thy long sustained Song finally closed,
105 And thy deep voice had ceased?yet thou thyself
Wert still before my eyes, and round us both
That happy vision of beloved faces?
Scarce conscious, and yet conscious of its close
I sate, my being blended in one thought
110 (Thought was it? or aspiration? or resolve?)
Absorbed, yet hanging still upon the sound?
And when I rose, I found myself in prayer. 1807 1817
Epitaph1
Stop, Christian Passer-by!?Stop, child of God,
And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod
A poet lies, or that which once seem'd he.?
O, lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C.;
5 That he who many a year with toil of breath
Found death in life, may here find life in death!
Mercy for praise?to be forgiven for2 fame
He ask'd, and hoped, through Christ. Do thou the same! 1833 1834
5. I.e., during the early association between the One version that he sent in a letter had as a title: two poets (1797-98). 'Epitaph on a Poet little known, yet better known
6. A fabled bird, able to calm the sea where it by the Initials of his name than by the Name nested in winter. Itself.'
7. The evenings during which Wordsworth read 2. 'For' in the sense of 'instead of' [Coleridge's his poem aloud. note].
1. Written by Coleridge the year before he died.
.
474 / SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Biographia Literaria In March 1815 Coleridge was preparing a collected edition of his poems and planned to include 'a general preface .. . on the principles of philosophic and genial criticism.' As was typical for Coleridge, the materials developed as he worked on them until, on July 29, he declared that the preface had expanded to become a book in its own right, an 'Autobiographia Literaria.' In a characteristic Romantic reinvention of autobiography, the work merged personal experience with philosophical speculation, as well as with what Coleridge identified as 'digression and anecdotes.' It was to consist of two main parts, 'my literary life and opinions, as far as poetry and poetical criticism [are] concerned' and a critique of Wordsworth's theory of poetic diction. This work was ready by September 17,1815, but the Biographia Literaria, in two volumes, was not published until July 1817. The delay was caused by a series of miscalculations by his printer, which forced Coleridge to add 150 pages of miscellaneous materials to pad out the length of the second volume.
Coleridge had been planning a detailed critique of Wordsworth's theory of poetic diction ever since 1802, when he had detected 'a radical difference in our theoretical opinions respecting poetry.' In the selection from chapter 17, Coleridge agrees with Wordsworth's general aim of reforming the artifices of current poetic diction, but he sharply denies Wordsworth's claim that there is no essential difference between the language of poetry and the language spoken by people in real life. The other selections printed here are devoted mainly to the central principle of Coleridge's own critical theory, the distinction between the mechanical 'fancy' and the organic imagination, which is tersely summarized in the conclusion to chapter 13. The definition of poetry at the end of chapter 14, develops at greater length the nature of the 'synthetic and magical power .. . of imagination,' which, for Coleridge, has the capacity to dissolve the divisions (between, for instance, the perceiving human subject and his or her objects of perception) that characterize human beings' fallen state.
From Biographia Literaria From Chapter 4
[MR. WORDSWORTH'S EARLIER POEMS]
* * * During the last year of my residence at Cambridge, I became
