One evening he came to me with a grave face, and said, Wordsworth, I have seen the volume that Coleridge and you are about to publish. ![]() The said Jem got a sight of the Lyrical Ballads as it was going through the press at Bristol, during which time I was residing in that city. He was the brother of the dramatist, and this reminds me of an anecdote which it may be worth while here to notice. I objected to the rhyme, dear brother Jem, as being ludicrous, but we all enjoyed the joke of hitching in our friend, James T-'s name, who was familiarly called Jem. ![]() I mentioned in substance what I wished to be expressed, and Coleridge immediately threw off the stanza thus:. Coleridge and my sister, and said, A prefatory stanza must be added, and I should sit down to our little tea-meal with greater pleasure if my task were finished. When it was all but finished, I came in and recited it to Mr. My friends will not deem it too trifling to relate that while walking to and fro I composed the last stanza first, having begun with the last line. To return to We are Seven, the piece that called forth this note, I composed it while walking in the grove of Alfoxden. Accordingly I wrote The Idiot Boy, Her Eyes are wild, etc., We are Seven, The Thorn, and some others. Coleridge has told the world, of poems chiefly on supernatural subjects taken from common life, but looked at, as much as might be, through an imaginative medium. The Ancient Mariner grew and grew till it became too important for our first object, which was limited to our expectation of five pounds, and we began to talk of a Volume which was to consist, as Mr. We returned after a few days from a delightful tour, of which I have many pleasant, and some of them droll-enough, recollections. As we endeavored to proceed conjointly (I speak of the same evening) our respective manners proved so widely different that it would have been quite presumptuous in me to do anything but separate from an undertaking upon which I could only have been a clog. has with unnecessary scrupulosity recorded) slipt out of his mind as they well might. These trifling contributions, all but one (which Mr. I furnished two or three lines at the beginning of the poem, in particular:. We began the composition together on that, to me, memorable evening. The Gloss with which it was subsequently accompanied was not thought of by either of us at the time at least, not a hint of it was given to me, and I have no doubt it was a gratuitous after-thought. I also suggested the navigation of the ship by the dead men, but do not recollect that I had anything more to do with the scheme of the poem. The incident was thought fit for the purpose and adopted accordingly. Suppose, said I, you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the South Sea, and that the tutelary Spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime. I had been reading in Shelvock's Voyages a day or two before that while doubling Cape Horn they frequently saw Albatrosses in that latitude, the largest sort of sea-fowl, some extending their wings twelve or fifteen feet. Coleridge's invention but certain parts I myself suggested: - for example, some crime was to be committed which should bring upon the old Navigator, as Coleridge afterwards delighted to call him, the spectral persecution, as a consequence of that crime, and his own wanderings. Much the greatest part of the story was Mr. Accordingly we set off and proceeded along the Quantock Hills towards Watchet, and in the course of this walk was planned the poem of the Ancient Mariner, founded on a dream, as Mr. In the spring of the year 1798, he, my sister, and myself, started from Alfoxden pretty late in the afternoon, with a view to visit Lenton and the valley of Stones near to it and as our united funds were very small, we agreed to defray the expense of the tour by writing a poem, to be sent to the New Monthly Magazine set up by Phillips the Bookseller, and edited by Dr. In reference to this Poem I will here mention one of the most remarkable facts in my own poetic history and that of Mr. Having left the Isle of Wight, and crossed Salisbury Plain, as mentioned in the preface to Guilt and Sorrow, I proceeded by Bristol up the Wye, and so on to North Wales, to the Vale of Clwydd, where I spent my summer under the roof of the father of my friend, Robert Jones. The little girl who is the heroine, I met within the area of Goderich Castle in the year 1793. ![]() Written at Alfoxden in the spring of 1798, under circumstances somewhat remarkable. "Twelve steps or more from my mother's door, Their graves are green, they may be seen,
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