Читать книгу Anima Poetæ - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Страница 7

1797-1801

On the Greta, over the bridge by Mr. Edmundson's father-in-law, the ashes—their leaves of that light yellow which autumn gives them, cast a reflection on the river like a painter's sunshine.

October 20, 1801

My birthday. The snow fell on Skiddaw and Grysdale Pike for the first time.

[A life-long mistake. He was born October 21, 1772.]

Tuesday evening, 1/2 past 6, October 22, 1801

All the mountains black and tremendously obscure, except Swinside. At this time I saw, one after the other, nearly in the same place, two perfect moon-rainbows, the one foot in the field below my garden, the other in the field nearest but two to the church. It was grey-moonlight-mist-colour. Friday morning, Mary Hutchinson arrives.

The art in a great man, and of evidently superior faculties, to be often obliged to people, often his inferiors—in this way the enthusiasm of affection may be excited. Pity where we can help and our help is accepted with gratitude, conjoined with admiration, breeds an enthusiastic affection. The same pity conjoined with admiration, where neither our help is accepted nor efficient, breeds dyspathy and fear.

Nota bene to make a detailed comparison, in the manner of Jeremy Taylor, between the searching for the first cause of a thing and the seeking the fountains of the Nile—so many streams, each with its particular fountain—and, at last, it all comes to a name!

The soul a mummy embalmed by Hope in the catacombs.

To write a series of love poems truly Sapphic, save that they shall have a large interfusion of moral sentiment and calm imagery—love in all the moods of mind, philosophic, fantastic—in moods of high enthusiasm, of simple feeling, of mysticism, of religion—comprise in it all the practice and all the philosophy of love!

Ὁ μυριονους—hyperbole from Naucratius' panegyric of Theodoras Chersites. Shakspere, item, ὁ πολλτος και πολυειδης τη ποικιλοστροφω σοφια. Ὁ μεγαλοφρωνοτατος της αληθειας κηρυξ.—Lord Bacon.

[Compare Biographia Literaria, cap. xv., "our myriad-minded Shakspere" and footnote. Ανηρ μυριονους a phrase which I have borrowed from a Greek monk, who applies it to a Patriarch of Constantinople. I might have said that I have reclaimed rather than borrowed it; for it seems to belong to Shakspere, de jure singulari, et ex privilegio naturæ. Coleridge's Works, iii. 375.]