Gaily from thy mother stalk
Wert thou danced and wafted high;
Soon on this unsheltered walk,
Flung to fade, and rot, and die!
[Footnote 1: The Skylark.]
Cottle subjected the two poems to severe criticism, and Coleridge
replied:
LETTER 53. TO COTTLE
Wednesday morning, 10 o'clock.
(January, 1797.)
My dearest Cottle,
* * * "Ill besped" is indeed a sad blotch; but after having tried at
least a hundred ways, before I sent the Poem to you, and often since, I
find it incurable. This first Poem is but a so so composition. I wonder
I could have been so blinded by the ardour of recent composition, as to
see anything in it.
Your remarks are "perfectly just" on the "Allegorical lines", except
that, in this district, corn is as often cut with a scythe, as with a
hook. However, for ""Scythes-man"" read "Rustic". For ""poor fond
thing"," read "foolish thing", and for ""flung to fade, and rot, and
die"," read "flung to wither and to die".
* * * * *
Milton (the carrier) waits impatiently.
S. T. C. [1]
[Footnote 1: Letters LXXI-LXXII follow Letter 53.]
Only the second poem was included in the second edition. The next
letter, which contains an unrealized prophecy regarding Southey, speaks
of the joint partnership of the volume of 1797.
LETTER 54. TO COTTLE
Stowey,--(Feby.
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