Sibylline Leaves (Coleridge)/Melancholy

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

MELANCHOLY.^[1]

A FRAGMENT.

 

Stretch'd on a moulder'd Abbey's broadest wall,
Where ruining ivies propt the ruins steep—
Her folded arms wrapping her tatter'd pall,
Had Melancholy mus'd herself to sleep.
The fern was press'd beneath her hair,
The dark green Adder's Tongue^[2] was there;
And still as past the flagging sea-gale weak,
The long lank leaf bow'd fluttering o'er her cheek.

That pallid cheek was flush'd: her eager look
Beam'd eloquent in slumber! Inly wrought,
Imperfect sounds her moving lips forsook,
And her bent forehead work'd with troubled thought.
Strange was the dream that fill'd her soul,
Nor did not whispering spirits roll
A mystic tumult, and a fateful rhyme
Mixt with wild shapings of the unborn time.

1. First published in the Morning Chronicle, in the year 1794.
2. A botanical mistake. The plant, I meant, is called the Hart's Tongue; but this would unluckily spoil the poetical effect. Cedat ergo Botanice.