Where, Ramsgate and Broadstairs between,
Rude caves and grated doors are seen:
And here I'll watch till break of day,
(For Fancy in her magic might
Can turn broad noon to starless night!)
When lo! methinks a sudden band

Of smock-clad smugglers round me stand.
Denials, oaths, in vain I try,

At once they gag me for a spy,
And stow me in the boat hard by.
Suppose us fairly now afloat,

Till Boulogne mouth receives our Boat.
But, bless us! what a numerous band
Of cockneys anglicise the strand!
Delinquent bankrupts, leg-bail'd debtors,
Some for the news, and some for letters-
With hungry look and tarnished dress,
French shrugs and British surliness.
Sick of the country for their sake

Of them and France French leave I take-
And lo! a transport comes in view
I hear the merry motley crew,
Well skill'd in pocket to make entry,
Of Dieman's Land the elected Gentry,
And founders of Australian Races.
The Rogues! I see it in their faces!
Receive me, Lads! I'll go with you,
Hunt the black swan and kangaroo,
And that New Holland we'll presume
Old England with some elbow-room.
Across the mountains we will roam,
And each man make himself a home:
Or, if old hàbits ne'er forsaking,
Like clock-work of the Devil's making,
Ourselves inveterate rogues should be,
We'll have a virtuous progeny;
And on the dunghill of our vices
Raise human pine-apples and spices.
Of all the children of John Bull
With empty heads and bellies full,
Who ramble East, West, North and South,
With leaky purse and open mouth,

In search of varieties exotic

The usefullest and most patriotic,

1824.

And merriest, too, believe me, Sirs!
Are your Delinquent Travellers!

WORK WITHOUT HOPE'

LINES COMPOSED 21ST FEBRUARY 1825

ALL Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair-
The bees are stirring-birds are on the wing-”
And Winter slumbering in the open air,

Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,

Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

5

Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow, Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow. Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may, For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away! With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll: And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul? Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, And Hope without an object cannot live.

1825.

1 First printed in the Bijou for 1828: included in 1828, 1829, and 1834. These lines, as published in the Bijou for 1828, were an excerpt from an entry in a notebook, dated Feb. 21, 1825. They were preceded by a prose introduction, now for the first time printed, and followed by a metrical interpretation or afterthought which was first published in the Notes to the Edition of 1893.

2 Compare the last stanza of George Herbert's Praise :—

O raise me thus! Poor Bees that work all day,

Sting my delay,

Who have a work as well as they,

And much, much more.

Work Without Hope-Title] Lines composed on a day in February. By S. T. Coleridge, Esq. Bijou : Lines composed on the 21st of February, 1827 1828, 1829, 1834,

1 Slugs] Snails erased MS. S. T. C.: Stags 1828, 1829, 1885.

II

With unmoist lip and wreathless brow I stroll

With lips unmoisten'd wreathless brow I stroll MS. S. T. C.

SANCTI DOMINICI PALLIUM1

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN POET AND FRIEND

FOUND WRITTEN ON THE BLANK LEAF AT THE BEGINNING OF BUTLER'S 6 BOOK OF THE CHURCH' (1825)

POET

I NOTE the moods and feelings men betray,
And heed them more than aught they do or say;
The lingering ghosts of many a secret deed
Still-born or haply strangled in its birth;

These best reveal the smooth man's inward creed!
These mark the spot where lies the treasure-Worth!

9

Milner, made up of impudence and trick, With cloven tongue prepared to hiss and lick, Rome's Brazen Serpent-boldly dares discuss The roasting of thy heart, O brave John Huss! And with grim triumph and a truculent glee3 Absolves anew the Pope-wrought perfidy,

1 First published in the Evening Standard, May 21, 1827. The poem signed ETHEE appeared likewise in the St. James's Chronicle.' See Letter of S. T. C. to J. Blanco White, dated Nov. 28, 1827. Life, 1845, i. 439, 440. First collected in 1834. I have amended the text of 1834 in lines 7, 17, 34, 39 in accordance with a MS. in the possession of the poet's granddaughter, Miss Edith Coleridge. The poem as published in 1834 and every subsequent edition (except 1907) is meaningless. Southey's Book of the Church, 1825, was answered by Charles Butler's Book of the Roman Catholic Church, 1825, and in an anonymous pamphlet by the Vicar Apostolic, Dr. John Milner, entitled Merlin's Strictures. Southey retaliated in his Vindiciae Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1826. In the latter work he addresses Butler as an honourable and courteous opponent'-and contrasts his 'habitual urbanity' with the malignant and scurrilous attacks of that 'ill-mannered man', Dr. Milner. In the 'Dialogue' the poet reminds his 'Friend' Southey that Rome is Rome, a 'brazen serpent', charm she never so wisely. In the Vindiciae Southey devotes pp. 470-506 to an excursus on 'The Rosary'-the invention of St. Dominic. Hence the title- 'Saneti Dominici Pallium '.

2 These lines were written before this Prelate's decease. Standard, 1827. 3 Truculent: a tribrach as the isochronous substitute for the Trochee N. B. If our accent, a quality of sound were actually equivalent to the Quantity in the Greek --, or dactyl at least. But it is not so, accent shortens syllables: thus Spirit, sprite; Höněy, mõněy, nŏbòdy, &c. MS. S. T. C.

Sancti Dominici Pallium, &c. Title]-A dialogue written on a Blank Page of Butler's Book of the Roman Catholic Church. Sd. 1827.

7 Milner] 1834, 1852: Butler 1893.

That made an empire's plighted faith a lie,
And fix'd a broad stare on the Devil's eye-
(Pleas'd with the guilt, yet envy-stung at heart
To stand outmaster'd in his own black art!)
Yet Milner-

FRIEND

Enough of Milner! we're agreed,
Who now defends would then have done the deed.
But who not feels persuasion's gentle sway,
Who but must meet the proffered hand half way
When courteous Butler-

POET (aside)

(Rome's smooth go-between!)

FRIEND

Laments the advice that soured a milky queen

(For 'bloody' all enlightened men confess

An antiquated error of the press :)

15

20

Who rapt by zeal beyond her sex's bounds,

25

With actual cautery staunched the Church's wounds!

And tho' he deems, that with too broad a blur
We damn the French and Irish massacre,

Yet blames them both-and thinks the Pope might err!

What think you now? Boots it with spear and shield
Against such gentle foes to take the field

30

Whose beckoning hands the mild Caduceus wield?

POET

What think I now? Even what I thought before;What Milner boasts though Butler may deplore,

Still I repeat, words lead me not astray

When the shown feeling points a different way.

Smooth Butler can say grace at slander's feast,'

-35

And bless each haut-gout cook'd by monk or priest;

1 Smooth Butler.' See the Rev. Blanco White's Letter to C. Butler, Esq. MS. S. T. C., Sd. 1827.

Leaves the full lie on Milner's gong to swell,
Content with half-truths that do just as well;
But duly decks his mitred comrade's flanks,1
And with him shares the Irish nation's thanks!

So much for you, my friend! who own a Church,
And would not leave your mother in the lurch!
But when a Liberal asks me what I think-
Scared by the blood and soot of Cobbett's ink,
And Jeffrey's glairy phlegm and Connor's foam,
In search of some safe parable I roam-
An emblem sometimes may comprise a tome!

Disclaimant of his uncaught grandsire's mood,

I see a tiger lapping kitten's food:

And who shall blame him that he purs applause,
When brother Brindle pleads the good old cause;

And frisks his pretty tail, and half unsheathes his claws!
Yet not the less, for modern lights unapt,

I trust the bolts and cross-bars of the laws

More than the Protestant milk all newly lapt, Impearling a tame wild-cat's whisker'd jaws! 1825, or 1826.

40

45

50

55

SONG 2

THOUGH veiled in spires of myrtle-wreath,
Love is a sword which cuts its sheath,
And through the clefts itself has made,
We spy the flashes of the blade!

1 'Your coadjutor the Titular Bishop Milner'-Bishop of Castabala I had called him, till I learnt from the present pamphlet that he had been translated to the see of Billingsgate.' Vind. Ecl. Angl. 1826, p. 228,

note.

2 First published in 1828: included in 1852, 1885, and 1893. A MS. version (undated) is inscribed in a notebook.