And dogs and boys, a gladsome crowd, Her soft blue eye was made for thee! I would, I would that she were here!" Then ancient Skiddaw, stern and proud, In sullen majesty replying, Thus spake from out his helm of cloud (His voice was like an echo dying !) :— "She dwells belike in* scenes more fair, And scorns a mount so bleak and bare." I only sigh'd when this I heard, No laughter wrinkled on† my cheek, But ancient Skiddaw green and high "Nay, but thou dost not know her might, The pinions of her soul how strong! But many a stranger in my height Hath sung to me her magic song, Sending forth his ecstasy In her divinest melody, And hence I know her soul is free, Now to the haunted beach' can fly, Beside the threshold scourged with waves, Now where the maniac wildly raves,* The honour of her song and witching melody, Soft, various, and sublime, Exempt from wrongs of Time!" Thus spake the mighty Mount, and I *Now to the maniac while he raves-1801. 161 TO MR. PYE* On his Carmen Seculare (a title which has by various persons who have heard it, been thus translated, "A Poem an age long”). Your Poem must eternal be, Eternal! it can't fail, For 'tis incomprehensible, And without head or tail! † *Morning Post, Jan. 24, 1800. "The following anecdote will not be wholly out of place here, and may perhaps amuse the reader. An amateur performer in verse expressed to a common friend, a strong desire to be introduced to me, but hesitated in accepting my friend's immediate offer, on the score that "he was, he must acknowledge, the author of a confounded severe epigram on my Ancient Mariner, which had given me great pain. I assured my friend that if the epigram was a good one, it would only increase my desire to become acquainted with the author, and begged to hear it recited: when, to my no less surprise than amusement, it proved to be one which I had myself some time before written and inserted in the Morning Post. To the author of the Ancient Mariner. Your poem must eternal be, Dear sir! it cannot fail, And without head or tail." -Biographia Literaria, Lond. 1817, vol. i. p. 28. It would seem, however, from the above that it was an afterthought on the author's part to apply this epigram to himself and his Ancient Mariner.-ED. |