At his work late and early, The light-hearted churl, he Sang merrily, greeting the eve and the morn. I hated his mirth-'twas too much to be borne To see him so merry both early and late. And his note must be changed or I forsworn. And he gave to his lust dominion: But Mammon, the rogue, he soon was gone,- 'Twas faery gold, and he thought "All's well;" Grace cast off him, and he cast off shame, On the bare beach I found him howling away, And hark what said the hope-lorn elf:— 66 False witch, false ocean's daughter, Thou gavest me gold,-thou shalt have myself!" So plunged in the salt water. STATIUS, LIB. I. 493. OBTUTU gelida ora premit, lætusque per artus His chilly lips hard closing at the sight, His every member grueing with delight, At once by tokens manifest he spies That they are here, whom quaintly twisted plies Inspired by Phoebus, named his sons-in-law, In form of beasts foreshown. With palms outspread The king illumined: Thou, whose compass dread Both heaven and earth, and all their woe and pain; Aid but the work, and make the omen sure, PEAN OF ARIPHOON THE SICYONIAN. HOLIEST and first of all the happy powers, In riches, offering, or high place Which, in the hidden nets of Aphrodite, That from the gods poor man obtains Blossoms every pleasant thing: With thee the Graces spend their spring; But without thee No living thing can happy be. PROMETHEUS. A FRAGMENT. ADVERTISEMENT. THIS fragment, which, if regarded as a dramatic scene, may be read as a whole, was written in or about the year 1820, when it was shown by the author to his father, who was much pleased with the commencement, and took great interest in the work. This may, however, have operated as a virtual discouragement. The elder Coleridge saw in the fable of Prometheus, as treated by Eschylus, a profound and complex philosopheme, which the unsphered spirit of Plato might have been taxed to unfold. Fully to master the idea, required a tension of mind which, it may be, the younger poet did not bring to the task. To work up such stern materials into poetry might have seemed to him impracticable, or at least foreign to his own genius; and indeed, whoever will cast his eye over the disquisition on this subject, in the second volume of “Coleridge's Literary Remains,” will not be surprised that the youthful Telemachus shrunk from the attempt to bend his father's bow. As the poetry in these volumes is by no means intended exclusively for scholars, it may not be amiss to give a short analysis of the Æschylean drama, from which the following VOL. II. S |