The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume I Part 160

Quae linquam, aut nihil, aut nihili, aut vix sunt mea. Sordes Do Morti: reddo caetera, Christe! tibi.

1826.

???? ?e? ???????? ?ta????[462:2]

In many ways does the full heart reveal The presence of the love it would conceal; But in far more th' estranged heart lets know The absence of the love, which yet it fain would shew.

1826.

FOOTNOTES:

[462:1] First published in _Literary Souvenir_ of 1827, as footnote to t.i.tle of the _Lines Suggested by the Last Words of Berengarius_: included in _Literary Remains_, 1836, i. 60: first collected in 1844.

[462:2] This quatrain was prefixed as a motto to 'Prose in Rhyme; and Epigrams, Moralities, and Things without a Name', the concluding section of 'Poems' in the edition of 1828, 1829, vol. ii, pp. 75-117. It was prefixed to 'Miscellaneous Poems' in 1834, vol. ii, pp. 55-152, and to 'Poems written in Later Life', 1852, pp. 319-78.

LINENOTES:

t.i.tle] ?????F??? ????G?????? L. R., 1844: ?p??a????] ?p?da???? L. S.

The emendation ?p??a???? (i. e. moribund) was suggested by the Reader of Macmillan's edition of 1893. Other alternatives, e. g. ?p?de???? (the lacking), to the word as misprinted in the Literary Souvenir have been suggested, but there can be no doubt that what Coleridge intended to imply was that he was near his end.

Greek motto: ???? ?e? ????? MS. S. T. C.

[1-4]

In many ways I own do we reveal.

The Presence of the Love we would conceal, But in how many more do we let know The absence of the Love we found would show.

MS. S. T. C.

THE IMPROVISATORE[462:3]

OR, 'JOHN ANDERSON, MY JO, JOHN'

_Scene--A s.p.a.cious drawing-room, with music-room adjoining._

_Katharine._ What are the words?

_Eliza._ Ask our friend, the Improvisatore; here he comes. Kate has a favour to ask of you, Sir; it is that you will repeat the ballad[463:1]

that Mr. ---- sang so sweetly.

_Friend._ It is in Moore's Irish Melodies; but I do not recollect the words distinctly. The moral of them, however, I take to be this:--

Love would remain the same if true, When we were neither young nor new; Yea, and in all within the will that came, By the same proofs would show itself the same.

_Eliz._ What are the lines you repeated from Beaumont and Fletcher, which my mother admired so much? It begins with something about two vines so close that their tendrils intermingle.

_Fri._ You mean Charles' speech to Angelina, in _The Elder Brother_[463:2].

We'll live together, like two neighbour vines, Circling our souls and loves in one another!

We'll spring together, and we'll bear one fruit; One joy shall make us smile, and one grief mourn; One age go with us, and one hour of death Shall close our eyes, and one grave make us happy.

_Kath._ A precious boon, that would go far to reconcile one to old age--this love--_if_ true! But is there any such true love?

_Fri._ I hope so.

_Kath._ But do you believe it?

_Eliz._ (_eagerly_). I am sure he does.

_Fri._ From a man turned of fifty, Katharine, I imagine, expects a less confident answer.

_Kath._ A more sincere one, perhaps.

_Fri._ Even though he should have obtained the nick-name of Improvisatore, by perpetrating charades and extempore verses at Christmas times?

_Eliz._ Nay, but be serious.

_Fri._ Serious! Doubtless. A grave personage of my years giving a Love-lecture to two young ladies, cannot well be otherwise. The difficulty, I suspect, would be for them to remain so. It will be asked whether I am not the 'elderly gentleman' who sate 'despairing beside a clear stream', with a willow for his wig-block.

_Eliz._ Say another word, and we will call it downright affectation.

_Kath._ No! we will be affronted, drop a courtesy, and ask pardon for our presumption in expecting that Mr. ---- would waste his sense on two insignificant girls.

_Fri._ Well, well, I will be serious. Hem! Now then commences the discourse; Mr. Moore's song being the text. Love, as distinguished from Friends.h.i.+p, on the one hand, and from the pa.s.sion that too often usurps its name, on the other--

_Lucius_ (_Eliza's brother, who had just joined the trio, in a whisper to the Friend_). But is not Love the union of both?

_Fri._ (_aside to Lucius_). He never loved who thinks so.

_Eliz._ Brother, we don't want _you_. There! Mrs. H. cannot arrange the flower vase without you. Thank you, Mrs. Hartman.

_Luc._ I'll have my revenge! I know what I will say!

_Eliz._ Off! Off! Now, dear Sir,--Love, you were saying--

_Fri._ Hus.h.!.+ _Preaching_, you mean, Eliza.

_Eliz._ (_impatiently_). Pshaw!

_Fri._ Well then, I was _saying_ that Love, truly such, is itself not the most common thing in the world: and mutual love still less so. But that enduring personal attachment, so beautifully delineated by Erin's sweet melodist, and still more touchingly, perhaps, in the well-known ballad, 'John Anderson, my Jo, John,' in addition to a depth and constancy of character of no every-day occurrence, supposes a peculiar sensibility and tenderness of nature; a const.i.tutional communicativeness and _utterancy_ of heart and soul; a delight in the detail of sympathy, in the outward and visible signs of the sacrament within--to count, as it were, the pulses of the life of love. But above all, it supposes a soul which, even in the pride and summer-tide of life--even in the l.u.s.tihood of health and strength, had felt oftenest and prized highest that which age cannot take away and which, in all our lovings, is _the_ Love;--