Sisters in blood, yet each with each intwined
More close by sisterhood of heart and mind!
Me disinherited in form and face

By nature, and mishap of outward grace;
Who, soul and body, through one guiltless fault
Waste daily with the poison of sad thought,
Me did you soothe, when solace hoped I none !
And as on unthaw'd ice the winter sun,

Though stern the frost, though brief the genial day,
You bless my heart with many a cheerful ray ;
For gratitude suspends the heart's despair,
Reflecting bright though cold your image there.
Nay more! its music by some sweeter strain
Makes us live o'er our happiest hours again,
Hope re-appearing dim in memory's guise-
Even thus did you call up before mine eyes
Two dear, dear Sisters, prized all price above,
Sisters, like you, with more than sisters' love;
So like you they, and so in you were seen
Their relative statures, tempers, looks, and mien,
That oft, dear ladies! you have been to me
At once a vision and reality.

Sight seem'd a sort of memory, and amaze
Mingled a trouble with affection's gaze.

Oft to my eager soul I whisper blame,

A Stranger bid it feel the Stranger's shame-
My eager soul, impatient of the name,

No strangeness owns, no Stranger's form descries:
The chidden heart spreads trembling on the eyes.

10

15

20

30

abbreviated and altered version was included in P. W., 1834, 1844, and 1852, with the heading 'On taking Leave of 1817' :

To know, to esteem, to love-and then to part,
Makes up life's tale to many a feeling heart!

O for some dear abiding-place of Love,

O'er which my spirit, like the mother dove

Might brood with warming wings!-O fair as kind,
Were but one sisterhood with you combined,
(Your very image they in shape and mind)
Far rather would I sit in solitude,

The forms of memory all my mental food,

And dream of you, sweet sisters, (ah, not mine!)
And only dream of you (ah dream and pine!)
Than have the presence, and partake the pride,
And shine in the eye of all the world beside!

First-seen I gazed, as I would look you thro'!
My best-beloved regain'd their youth in you,-
And still I ask, though now familiar grown,
Are you for their sakes dear, or for your own?
O doubly dear! may Quiet with you dwell!

In Grief I love you, yet I love you well!
Hope long is dead to me! an orphan's tear
Love wept despairing o'er his nurse's bier.
Yet still she flutters o'er her grave's green slope :
For Love's despair is but the ghost of Hope!

Sweet Sisters! were you placed around one hearth
With those, your other selves in shape and worth,
Far rather would I sit in solitude,
Fond recollections all my fond heart's food,
And dream of you, sweet Sisters! (ah! not mine!)
And only dream of you (ah! dream and pine!)
Than boast the presence and partake the pride,
And shine in the eye, of all the world beside.

1807.

35

40

45

50

PSYCHE1

THE butterfly the ancient Grecians made
The soul's fair emblem, and its only name-
But of the soul, escaped the slavish trade
Of mortal life!-For in this earthly frame

2

Ours is the reptile's lot, much toil, much blame,
Manifold motions making little speed,

And to deform and kill the things whereon we feed.

1808.

5

First published with a prefatory note:-The fact that in Greek Psyche is the common name for the soul, and the butterfly, is thus alluded to in the following stanzas from an unpublished poem of the Author', in the Biographia Literaria, 1817, i. 82, n.: included (as No. II of 'Three Scraps') in Amulet, 1833: Lit. Rem., 1836, i. 53. First collected in 1844. In Lit. Rem. and 1844 the poem is dated 1808.

2 Psyche means both Butterfly and Soul. Amulet, 1833.

In some instances the Symbolic and Onomastic are united as in Psyche Anima et papilio. MS. S. T. C. (Hence the word 'name' was italicised in the MS.)

Title] The Butterfly Amulet, 1833, 1877-81, 1893.

4 Of earthly life. For in this fleshly frame MS. S. T. C. Of earthly life! For, in this mortal frame Amulet, 1833, 1893.

A TOMBLESS EPITAPH1

"TIs true, Idoloclastes Satyrane!

(So call him, for so mingling blame with praise,
And smiles with anxious looks, his earliest friends,
Masking his birth-name, wont to character
His wild-wood fancy and impetuous zeal,)
"Tis true that, passionate for ancient truths,
And honouring with religious love the Great
Of elder times, he hated to excess,

With an unquiet and intolerant scorn,
The hollow Puppets of a hollow Age,
Ever idolatrous, and changing ever

Its worthless Idols! Learning, Power, and Time,
(Too much of all) thus wasting in vain war
Of fervid colloquy. Sickness, 'tis true,
Whole years of weary days, besieged him close,
Even to the gates and inlets of his life!
But it is true, no less, that strenuous, firm,
And with a natural gladness, he maintained
The citadel unconquered, and in joy

Was strong to follow the delightful Muse.
For not a hidden path, that to the shades
Of the beloved Parnassian forest leads,
Lurked undiscovered by him; not a rill
There issues from the fount of Hippocrene,
But he had traced it upward to its source,

Through open glade, dark glen, and secret dell,

Knew the gay wild flowers on its banks, and culled
Its med'cinable herbs. Yea, oft alone,

Piercing the long-neglected holy cave,

5

1Ο

15

20

25

1 First published in The Friend, No. XIV, November 28, 1809. There is no title or heading to the poem, which occupies the first page of the number, but a footnote is appended :-'Imitated, though in the movements rather than the thoughts, from the viith, of Gli Epitafi of Chiabrera : Fu ver, che Ambrosio Salinero a torto Si pose in pena d'odiose liti,' &c.

Included in Sibylline Leaves, 1817, 1828, 1829, 1834. Sir Satyrane, 'A Satyres son yborne in forrest wylde' (Spenser's Faery Queene, Bk. I, C. vi, 1. 21) rescues Una from the violence of Sarazin. Coleridge may have regarded Satyrane as the anonymn of Luther. Idoloclast, as he explains in the preface to 'Satyrane's Letters', is a 'breaker of idols'.

10 a] an Friend, 1809, S. L. 1828, 1829.

16 inlets] outlets Friend, 1809.

The haunt obscure of old Philosophy,
He bade with lifted torch its starry walls
Sparkle, as erst they sparkled to the flame
Of odorous lamps tended by Saint and Sage.
O framed for calmer times and nobler hearts!
O studious Poet, eloquent for truth!
Philosopher! contemning wealth and death,
Yet docile, childlike, full of Life and Love!
Here, rather than on monumental stone,
This record of thy worth thy Friend inscribes,
Thoughtful, with quiet tears upon his cheek.

? 1809.

30

35

40

FOR A MARKET-CLOCK1

(IMPROMPTU)

WHAT NOW, O Man! thou dost or mean'st to do
Will help to give thee peace, or make thee rue,
When hovering o'er the Dot this hand shall tell
The moment that secures thee Heaven or Hell!
1809.

THE MADMAN AND THE LETHARGIST 2

AN EXAMPLE

QUOTH Dick to me, as once at College
We argued on the use of knowledge;-

Sent in a letter to T. Poole, October 9, 1809, and transferred to one of Coleridge's Notebooks with the heading Inscription proposed on a Clock in a market place': included in 'Omniana' of 1809-16 (Literary Remains, 1836, i. 347) with the erroneous title 'Inscription on a Clock in Cheapside'. First collected in 1893.

What now thou do'st, or art about to do,

Will help to give thee peace, or make thee rue;
When hov'ring o'er the line this hand will tell
The last dread moment-'twill be heaven or hell.
Read for the last two lines:-

When wav'ring o'er the dot this hand shall tell
The moment that secures thee Heaven or Hell.

MS. Lit. Rem.

2 Now published for the first time from one of Coleridge's Notebooks. The use of the party catchword 'Citizen' and the allusion to 'Folks in France' would suggest 1796-7 as a probable date, but the point

37 Life] light The Friend, 1809.

In old King Olim's reign, I've read,
There lay two patients in one bed.
The one in fat lethargic trance,
Lay wan and motionless as lead:
The other, (like the Folks in France),
Possess'd a different disposition-
In short, the plain truth to confess,
The man was madder than Mad Bess!
But both diseases, none disputed,
Were unmedicinably rooted;

Yet, so it chanc'd, by Heaven's permission,
Each prov'd the other's true physician.

'Fighting with a ghostly stare

Troops of Despots in the air,

Obstreperously Jacobinical,

The madman froth'd, and foam'd, and roar'd:

The other, snoring octaves cynical,

Like good John Bull, in posture clinical,

Seem'd living only when he snor'd.

The Citizen enraged to see

This fat Insensibility,

Or, tir'd with solitary labour,

Determin'd to convert his neighbour;

So up he sprang and to 't he fell,

Like devil piping hot from hell,

Till his own limbs were stiff and sore,

30

And sweat-drops roll'd from every pore:

Yet, still, with flying fingers fleet,

Duly accompanied by feet,

With some short intervals of biting,
He executes the self-same strain,

35

Till the Slumberer woke for pain,

And half-prepared himself for fighting

That moment that his mad Colleague

Sunk down and slept thro' pure fatigue.

or interpretation of the Example' was certainly in Coleridge's mind when he put together the first number of The Friend, published June 1, 1809:-Though all men are in error, they are not all in the same error, nor at the same time... each therefore may possibly heal the other... even as two or more physicians, all diseased in their general health, yet under the immediate action of the disease on different days, may remove or alleviate the complaints of each other.'