And I am not tall nor strong.
My clothes are wet, and my teeth are set,
And the way was hard and long.
I have wandered over the fruitful earth,
But I never came here before.
Oh, lift me over the threshold, and let me in at the door!
I dare not stand in the blast.
My hands are stone, and my voice a groan,
And the worst of death is past.
I am but a little maiden still,
My little white feet are sore.
Oh, lift me over the threshold, and let me in at the door!
Who plead for their heart's desire.
She came—she came—and the quivering flame
Sunk and died in the fire.
It never was lit again on my hearth
Since I hurried across the floor,
To lift her over the threshold, and let her in at the door.
Thunder-smoke-and a spark.
Whither will the wild thing fly?
Rending her gloom in its flight/
Where is it the wild thing seeks?
Them that are fain to stay.
Lovers and friends that roam.
The world is a little place.
You are one.
Above the mountains high.
The stormy sun was going down
In a stormy sky.
And hold your breath between?
In all the ages this can never be
As if it had not been.
I sat before my glass one day,
And conjured up a vision bare,
Unlike the aspects glad and gay,
That erst were found reflected there -
The vision of a woman, wild
With more than womanly despair.
Her hair stood back on either side
A face bereft of loveliness.
It had no envy now to hide
What once no man on earth could guess.
It formed the thorny aureole
Of hard, unsanctified distress.
Her lips were open - not a sound
Came though the parted lines of red,
Whate'er it was, the hideous wound
In silence and secret bled.
No sigh relieved her speechless woe,
She had no voice to speak her dread.
And in her lurid eyes there shone
The dying flame of life's desire,
Made mad because its hope was gone,
And kindled at the leaping fire
Of jealousy and fierce revenge,
And strength that could not change nor tire.
Shade of a shadow in the glass,
O set the crystal surface free!
Pass - as the fairer visions pass -
Nor ever more return, to be
The ghost of a distracted hour,
That heard me whisper: - 'I am she!'
The Contents of an Ink-bottle
Full of flattery and reviling,
Ah, what mischief hast thou wrought
Out of what was airy thought,
What beginnings and what ends,
Making and dividing friends!
In thy tint of ebony;
Many a fancy have I found
Bright upon that sombre ground;
Cupid plays along the edge,
Skimming o'er it like a midge;
Niobe in turn appears,
Thinning it with crystal tears.
Falsest lays and roundelays!
One thing, one alone, I think,
Never yet was found in ink; —
Truth lies not, the truth to tell,
At the bottom of this well!
Or kindly turn away to hide a smile.
My brimming granaries cover many a mile;
How should you know that all my corn is chaff?
Leave me alone! my tears would make you laugh.
I only smile at all that you hold dear;
I only laugh at that which most you fear;
I see the shallows where you sound the deep.
Leave me alone! my mirth would make you weep.
O’er it, as I looked, there flew
Across the waters, cold and still,
A bird whose wings were palest blue.
The sky above was blue at last,
The sky beneath me blue in blue,
A moment, ere the bird had passed,
It caught his image as he flew.
And the door stood open at our feast,
When there passed us a woman with the West in her eyes,
And a man with his back to the East.
O, still grew the hearts that were beating so fast,
The loudest voice was still.
The jest died away on our lips as thy passed,
And the rays of July struck chill.
The cups of red wine turned pale on the board,
The white bread black as soot.
The hound forgot the hand of her lord,
She fell down at his foot.
Low let me lie, where the dead dog lies,
Ere I sit me down again at a feast,
When there passes a woman with the West in her eyes,
And a man with his back to the East.
Our last upon each other, for no sign
Was made when we the linkèd chain unhooked
And broke the level line.
And here we dwell together, side by side,
Our places fixed for life upon the chart.
Two islands that the roaring seas divide
Are not more far apart.
Many a bird for me will sing.
Never heard I so sweet a singer,
Never saw I so fair a thing.
She is a flower, a flower that sings;
And I a flower when I behold her,
And when I hear her, I have wings.
Down by the ford.’
‘Is it even so?’ said my lady.
‘Even so!’ said my lord.
‘The leaves are set too thick together
For the point of a sword.
No light between!
You wedded one of those that see unseen.’
‘Is it even so?’ said the King’s Majesty.
‘Even so!’ said the Queen.
She wooed my from the day that I was born;
She stole my playthings first, the jealous thief,
And left me there forlorn.
She scared away with her unending moan;
She slew my lovers too when I was young,
And left me there alone.
To hate thy name I am no longer free;
Caught in thy bony arms and prisoned fast,
I love no love but thee.
I could hear his merry voice upon the wind,
Crying, "e;Fairest, shut your eyes, for see you should not.
Love is blind!"
With a joyous laugh he quieted my fears,
Whispering, "Fairest, hearken not, for hear you may not.
Hath Love ears?"
Blind and deaf is she that doth not bid me come!"
All my heart said murmuring, "Dearest, can I speak it?
Love is dumb
No more alone sleeping, no more alone waking,
Thy dreams divided, thy prayers in twain;
Thy merry sisters tonight forsaking,
Never shall we see, maiden, again.
Never shall we see thee, thine eyes glancing.
Flashing with laughter and wild in glee,
Under the mistletoe kissing and dancing,
Wantonly free.
There shall come a matron walking sedately,
Low-voiced, gentle, wise in reply.
Tell me, O tell me, can I love her greatly?
All for her sake must the maiden die!
Good Friday in my heart
Good Friday in my heart! Fear and affright!
My thoughts are the Disciples when they fled,
My words the words that priest and soldier said,
My deed the spear to desecrate the dead.
And day, Thy death therein, is changed to night.
Then Easter in my heart sends up the sun.
My thoughts are Mary, when she turned to see.
My words are Peter, answering, ‘Lov’st thou Me?’
My deeds are all Thine own drawn close to Thee,
And night and day, since Thou dost rise, are one.
To Memory
Strange Power, I know not what thou art,
Murderer or mistress of my heart.
I know I'd rather meet the blow
Of my most unrelenting foe
Than live---as now I live---to be
Slain twenty times a day by thee.
Yet, when I would command thee hence,
Thou mockest at the vain pretence,
Murmuring in mine ear a song
Once loved, alas! forgotten long;
And on my brow I feel a kiss
That I would rather die than miss
An Insincere Wish Addressed to a Beggar
We are not near enough to love,
I can but pity all your woe;
For wealth has lifted me above,
And falsehood set you down below.
If you were true, we still might be
Brothers in something more than name;
And were I poor, your love to me
Would make our differing bonds the same.
But golden gates between us stretch,
Truth opens her forbidding eyes;
You can't forget that I am rich,
Nor I that you are telling lies.
Love never comes but at love's call,
And pity asks for him in vain;
Because I cannot give you all,
You give me nothing back again.
And you are right with all your wrong,
For less than all is nothing too;
May Heaven beggar me ere long,
And Truth reveal herself to you!
When the short night fell,
Beside his web sat the weaver,
Weaving a twisted spell.
Mary and the Saints deliver
My soul from the nethermost Hell!
It grew not dark at all,
For day dawned over the bushes
Before the night could fall.
Where now the torrent rushes,
The brook ran thin and small.
Was set with jewels fair;
There did a vine clamber
Along the clambering stair,
And grapes that shone like amber
Hung at the windows there.
Will the house never be still?
Is never a horseman stirring
Out and about on the hill?
Was it the cat purring?
Did someone knock at the sill?
Was bound to come that night.
A cup of sheeny cider
Stood ready for his delight.
And like a great black spider,
The weaver watched on the right.
I came when the short night fell.
I broke the web for ever,
I broke my heart as well.
Michael and the Saints deliver
My soul from the nethermost Hell!
And the rain beats on the floor;
There's no glass in the window,
There's no wood in the door;
The heather grows behind the house,
And the sand lies before.
The walls are grey and bare;
The boats upon the sea sail by,
Nor ever tarry there.
No beast of the field comes nigh,
Nor any bird of the air
Down a-down the deeps of though;
Greece is fallen and Troy town,
Glorious Rome hath lost her crown,
Venice' pride is nought.
Fleeting, unsubstantial, vain,
Shadowy as the shadows seemed,
Airy nothing, as they deemed,
These remain.
Fell and foul of face was he.
He left the path by the cross-roads three,
And stood in the shadow of the door.
I never hated any man so.
He said he could not say me No.
He sat in the seat of my own dear lord.
"Else may I neither eat nor drink.
You would not have me starve, I think."
He ate the offerings of the dead.
"My bed is yours — but light the way!"
I might not turn aside nor stay;
I showed him where we twain did lie.
He said: "Sweet love, a long farewell!
You have kissed a citizen of Hell,
And a soul was doomed when you were born.
Him may you never meet above.
The gifts that Love hath given to Love,
Love gives away to Fear."
She took from her head the golden crown
Worn by right of her royal birth.
Her purple robe she cast aside,
And the scarlet vestures of her pride,
That was the pride of the earth.
In her nakedness was she
Queen of the world, herself and me.
Her crown more radiant than the light,
The rubies gleaming out of the gold.
She donned her robe of purple rare,
And did a deed that none may dare,
That makes the blood run cold.
And in her bravery is she
Queen of herself, the world and me.
'Tis not Love that is dead
'Tis not Love that is dead,
But Hope, his sister fair.
They breathed the self-same air,
On the same food they fed.
The soul of Love with awful strength was filled
By Passion — but his sister, Hope, was killed.
While the sun was going down,
There arose a fairy town.
Not the town I saw by day,
Cheerless, joyless, dull, and gray,
But a far, fantastic place,
Builded with ethereal grace,
Shimmering in a tender mist
That the slanting rays had kissed
Ere they let their latest fire
Touch with gold each slender spire.
There no men and women be:
Mermen, maidens of the sea,
Combing out their tangled locks,
Sit and sing among the rocks.
As their ruddy harps they sound,
With the seaweed twisted round,
In the shining sand below
See the city downward go!
Are the dead as calm as those
They leave behind them, friends or foes?
However a man may love or fight
Calm he falls asleep at night!
Fast the living sleeps and well;
But the spirits — who can tell?
Are they as a rushing flame
For the Sun from whence it came,
Driven on from star to star,
Where the other dead men are?
After Reading Certain Books
It's a great deal better to lose than win,
And virtue is nothing compared to sin,
And to get out of Heaven's the way to get in,
Said the Devil.
For the narrow way, as we know full well,
Is the way that leads a saint to Hell,
And who can rise that never fell?
Said the Devil.
And if God forgave, not when you would,
But whenever you did the best you could,
What room would there be for God to be good?
Said the Devil.
A Clever Woman
You thought I had the strength of men,
Because with men I dared to speak,
And courted science now and then,
And studied Latin for a week;
But woman's woman, even when
She reads her Ethics in the Greek.
You thought me wiser than my kind;
You thought me "more than common tall'
You thought because I had a mind,
That I could have no heart at all;
But woman's woman you will find,
Whether she be great or small.
And then you needs must die--ah, well!
I knew you not, you loved not me.
'Twas not because that darkness fell,
You saw not what there was to see.
But I that saw and could not tell--
O evil Angel, set me free!
The Buddhist
There never was a face as fair as yours,
A heart as true, a love as pure and keen.
These things endure, if anything endures.
But, in this jungle, what high heaven immures
Us in its silence, the supreme serene
Crowning the dagoba, what destined die
Rings on the table, what resistless dart
Strike me I love you; can you satisfy
The hunger of my heart!
Nay; not in love, or faith, or hope is hidden
The drug that heals my life; I know too well
How all things lawful, and all things forbidden
Alike disclose no pearl upon the midden,
Offer no key to unlock the gate of Hell.
There is no escape from the eternal round,
No hope in love, or victory, or art.
There is no plumb-line long enough to sound
The abysses of my heart!
There no dawn breaks; no sunlight penetrates
Its blackness; no moon shines, nor any star.
For its own horror of itself creates
Malignant fate from all benignant fates,
Of its own spite drives its own angel afar.
Nay; this is the great import of the curse
That the whole world is sick, and not a part.
Conterminous with its own universe
the horror of my heart!
Eyes
Eyes , what are they? Coloured glass,
Where reflections come and pass.
Open windows—by them sit
Beauty, Learning, Love, and Wit.
Searching cross-examiners;
Comfort's holy ministers.
Starry silences of soul,
Music past the lips' control.
Fountains of unearthly light;
Prisons of the infinite.
But in That Sleep of Death What Dreams May Come?
O Grant me darkness! Let no gleam
—Recall the visionary ray!
Give me to sleep without a dream.
—Too often have I dreamt by day.
The dreams of day are all too strong;
Give me undreaming sleep, and long.
If blackest night be of the stuff
—Whereof sun-woven days are made,
I that have dreamed, and dreamed enough
—Tremble, of dreamier dreams afraid.
Give to the heart Thy dreams have blest
The dark unconsciousness of rest!
More
Poems : Poetry nook
*************************
Biography
Mary
Elizabeth Coleridge was born in London, England on 23 September 1861. Her
great-great uncle was the Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834),
and her great aunt was Sara Coleridge (1802-1852), author of Phantasmion
(1837). Mary's father, Arthur Duke Coleridge was one of the prime movers behind
the formation of the London Bach Choir in 1875. Arthur was a talented tenor,
and had considered a career as an opera singer. However, he rejected it as a
full-time profession on moral grounds and instead became a Clerk to the
Assizes, working on the Midlands Circuit for fifty-four years. Nevertheless,
there was much of the performer in Arthur Coleridge, and in her collection of
Mary Coleridge's poems (1954), Theresa Whistler paints a vivid picture of the
head of the Coleridge household. Arthur was, 'a genial, magnificent figure with
a face that would look well on a Roman coin, his shock of wavy grey hair poked
forward over his open brow [ . . . ]' (26).
Mary's mother, Mary Anne Jameson, was a member of the famous Jameson Whiskey family, and a cousin of Gugliemo Marconi, the inventor of the oscillating aerial, which enabled the first transatlantic wireless broadcast to take place between England and Canada in 1901. Mary Anne's marriage to Arthur took place in Galway in August 1860. Soon after, they moved to London and Mary was born in the following year and their younger daughter, Florence, on 29th June 1865. Florence was musical, inheriting her talents from her parents. For a short while she attended the Royal Academy of Music which was close to the Coleridge home in Kensington. Mary and Florence were extremely disparate in terms of their personalities, but they remained devoted to each other until Mary's early death.
The Coleridge family was impressively well connected and several evenings a week the door would be opened perhaps to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, or the artists, Holman Hunt and Sir John Everett Millais. Likewise, it may have been the actress, Fanny Kemble paying a visit, or the singer Jenny Lind, with her husband, the conductor, Otto Goldschmidt. In Mary's collection of essays, Non Sequitur (1900), she describes her feelings when she first saw Robert Browning step through her front door: 'I should like to think of another girl — as gay, as full of bold ambition and not so shy [ . . . ] I hope she will see the greatest man in the world come in, as I saw Robert Browning come through the door one evening, his hat under his arm' (201).
Mary was a shy child, scared of the dark and its shadows, but she had a naturally enquiring mind. At the age of twelve she became fascinated with the shape of Hebrew lettering and asked her father to teach her the language. She quickly became fluent in Hebrew as well as in French, German and Italian. In her mid twenties, she would read Greek nude the tutelage of William Cory, who had been Master at Eton when her father was a student there.
Nonetheless, it was literature, and Browning in particular, which took possession of Mary Coleridge from a very early age. After reading 'On A Balcony,' she wrote, 'I think it passed into my blood' (Coleridge, Collected Poems, 31). In the late 1880's, Mary and a group of friends began to meet weekly at her home in Cromwell Place, London. They would discuss literature and read each other's poems and compositions. They became known as 'The Settee'. Joining Mary every Thursday would be, Ella Coltman, Margaret Newbolt and her husband, Henry Newbolt, later author of the poemsDrake's Drum and Vitae Lampada. It was at one of these gatherings that Mary gave the first public reading of seven of her own poems. After hearing them, Newbolt remarked: 'I had no inkling of such a gift as this, and these poor verses f mine have lived in complete retirement ever since' (Newbolt, My World as in My Time, 179).
Mary Coleridge had been a published writer since the early 1880s when she began to write drama reviews and essays under a nom de plume for a publication called The Theatre. One of her earliest published works for this magazine was an essay called 'Her Grace, the Duchess, in 1884. She also produced items for the Times Literary Supplement and short stories and essays for magazines such as The Cornhill. However, Mary's first major literary publications came in the mid to late 1890s. In 1893, her first novel, The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus was published by Chatto and Windus. Set in Germany, it is a dark tale of secret societies, literary rebellion, romance, disguise and brotherhood. The Seven Sleeperslaid the foundations for Mary's future novels, with its secret and interchangeable identities. It was well received on publication and was praised by Robert Louis Stevenson.
The publication of Mary's poems came about when a friend plotted to have them read by a wider audience. Violet Hodgkin's cousin was married to the poet Robert Bridges. Violet arranged for the small white book of poems that Mary had copied out for her to be left where Bridges would see them, knowing that he would be unable to resist giving an opinion. He did so and insisted upon meeting Mary to give her advice prior to publishing the small collection. Mary, initially reluctant, eventually agreed to publication, but only if she could use a pseudonym. She chose 'Anodos', meaning 'Wanderer', the name of the hero in George MacDonald's 1858 novel, Phantastes. Bridges advised her to make alterations to most of her poems, but diffident though she was, Mary only accepted those changes which she thought would improve her work. Fancy's Following was published privately by the Daniel Press in 1896. In 1897, several of the poems were then re-printed along with some unseen works in Fancy's Guerdon.
Mary's second novel, The King with Two Faces was also published in 1897. It was an immediate success and earned its author £900 in royalties. It focussed upon the life and death of the controversial King Gustav of Sweden, who reigned between 1792 and 1809. It is a story replete with masks and theatrical imagery. There is also the hint of a homoerotic subtext running through the story. Coleridge was influenced by the work of Sir Walter Scott and her first three novels are very much in his style of historical adventure stories. The Fiery Dawn was the last of this type of story. Yet again, it had a real-life historical figure as its main protagonist, focussing upon the rebellion in France in 1832, led by Caroline, Duchess of Berry (1798 - 1890).
Coleridge's fourth novel, The Shadow on the Wall, was published in 1904, and pastiches Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Murder, mystery, art and homoerotic pursuit are all brought together in this occasionally mischievous retort to Wilde. In 1900, Coleridge produced her collection of essays, Non Sequitur, a fascinating collection of personal reminiscences and views on art and literature. Even today, these essays resonate with wit and humour. In 1906, The Lady on the Drawing Room Floor became Coleridge's last published novel. It is a gentle tale of two lovers who swear to meet again after being separated for many years.
In 1907, Coleridge continued to write poetry and was working upon a medieval romance, which she titled Becq. She was also writing a short biography of the artist Holman Hunt, at the personal request of Hunt himself. In the summer of 1907, the Coleridges travelled to Harrogate in the north of England, a place Mary disliked, for their annual holiday. During their stay there, Mary was taken ill with appendicitis. An operation to remove her appendix took place, but Mary contracted blood poisoning and died on 25th August 1907. Unusually for the time, she was cremated and her ashes buried in the cemetery just around the corner from where she died. Her grave is still there, inscribed with her dates and a short quotation from St. Paul, which reads simply, 'Pure love'.
The
female Doppelgänger is in hiding. Critical studies of literary Doppelgängers
focus almost entirely on male doubles from Frankenstein to Fight Club,
suggesting that this motif more aptly describes a distinctly male duality. Yet
throughout the nineteenth century, women writers from Mary Shelley to Mary
Elizabeth Coleridge used Gothic doubling to critique assumptions about gender
essentialism, the Angel in the House, and competing roles of wife, mother, and
professional writer. Shelley’s Frankenstein (1816), for example, highlights the
dichotomies between Creator and Creature, father and son, Self and Other, but
stops short of creating a female double to share in the Creature’s isolation.
Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Poor Clare (1856) presents a female Doppelgänger
through the filter of the unnamed male narrator who attempts to save Gaskell’s
Lucy from her own demonic double. Most notably, Mary E. Coleridge confronts
female duality and otherness directly in moments of intimate self-reflection
and Gothic dread. Many of her poems, novels, and essays offer a perspective
missing from traditionally masculine Doppelgänger tales such as R. L.
Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) and Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Sharer
(1910) . Coleridge’s androgynous, often duplicitous narrators challenge the
notion that literary Doppelgängers embody secrets hidden deep within a male
psyche. Rather, her work actively rejects the belief that Victorian women were
incapable of compelling duplicities all their own.
Mary E.
Coleridge, Androgyny, And The Spectral Doppelgänger. By Heather Braun. Parlour,
Ohio University, September 21, 2016.
No comments:
Post a Comment