That hang above us in an arborous roof,

Stirr'd by the faint gale of departing May

Send their loose blossoms slanting o'er our heads!

Nor dost not thou sometimes recall those hours,
When with the joy of hope thou gav'st thine ear
To my wild firstling lays. Since then my song
Hath sounded deeper notes, such as beseem
Or that sad wisdom, folly leaves behind;

Or the high raptures of prophetic Faith;

Or such, as tun'd to these tumultuous times

Cope with the tempest's swell!

These various songs,

Which I have fram'd in many a various mood,

Accept my BROTHER! and (for some perchance

Will strike discordant on thy milder mind)

If aught of Error or intemperate Truth

Should meet thine ear, think thou that riper Age

Will calm it down, and let thy Love forgive it !

May 26th, 1797.

Nether-Stowey, Somerset.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

PREFACE

To the FIRST EDITION.

COMPOSITIONS resembling those of the present volume are not unfrequently condemned for their querulous Egotism. But Egotism is to be condemned then only when it offends against Time and Place, as in an History or an Epic Poem. To censure it in a Monody or Sonnet is almost as absurd as to dislike a circle for being round. Why then write Sonnets or Monodies? Because they give me pleasure when perhaps nothing else could. After the more violent emotions of Sorrow, the mind demands amusement, and can find it in employment alone; but full of its late sufferings, it can endure no employment not in some measure connected with them. Forcibly to turn away our attention to general subjects is a painful and most often an unavailing effort:

But O! how grateful to a wounded heart
The tale of Misery to impart-

From others' eyes bid artless sorrows flow,
And raise esteem upon the base of Woe!

SHAW.

The communicativeness of our Nature leads us to describe our own sorrows ; in the endeavour to describe them, intellectual activity is exerted; and from intellectual activity there results a pleasure, which is gradually associated, and mingles as a corrective, with the painful subject of the description. "True!" (it may be answered)" but how are the PUBLIC interested in your Sorrows or your Description?" We are for ever attributing personal Unities to imaginary Aggregates. What is the PUBLIC, but a term for a number of scattered Individuals? Of whom as many will be interested in these sorrows, as have experienced the same or similar.

"Holy be the lay Which mourning soothes the mourner on his way." If I could judge of others by myself, I should not hesitate to affirm, that the moft interesting . passages in our most interesting Poems are those, in which the Author developes his own feelings.

The sweet voice of * Cona never sounds so sweetly, as when it speaks of itself; and I should almost suspect that man of an unkindly heart, who could read the opening of the third book of the Paradise Lost without peculiar emotion. By a law of our Nature, he, who labours under a strong feeling, is impelled to seek for sympathy; but a Poet's feelings are all strong.-Quicquid amet valde amat.-Akenside therefore speaks with philosophical accuracy, when he classes Love and Poetry, as producing the same effects:

"Love and the wish of Poets when their tongue Would teach to others' bosoms, what so charms Their own."

PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION.

There is one species of Egotism which is truly disgusting; not that which leads us to cont municate our feelings to others, but that which would reduce the feelings of others to an identity with our own. The Atheist, who exclaims, "pshaw !" when he glances his eye on the praises of Deity, is an Egotist: an old man, when he speaks contemptuously of Love

* Ossian.