About The Nightingale

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

From a letter from STC to Wordsworth after writing The Nightingale:

     In stale blank verse a subject stale
     I send per post my Nightingale;
     And like an honest bard, dear Wordsworth,
     You'll tell me what you think, my Bird's worth.
     My own opinion's briefly this--
     His bill he opens not amiss;
     And when he has sung a stave or so,
     His breast, & some small space below,
     So throbs & swells, that you might swear
     No vulgar music's working there.
     So far, so good; but then, 'od rot him!
     There's something falls off at his bottom.
     Yet, sure, no wonder it should breed,
     That my Bird's Tail's a tail indeed
     And makes it's own inglorious harmony
     olio crepit, non carmine.

Next 10 Poems

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Aeolian Harp, The
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Aplolgia Pro Vita Sua
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge : As Some Vast Tropic Tree, Itself A Wood ( Fragment )
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Blossing Of The Solitary Date-tree, The
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Brockley Coomb
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Christabel
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Cologne
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Come, Come Thou Bleak December Wind ( Fragment )
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Constancy To An Ideal Object
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Dejection: An Ode

Previous 10 Poems

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge : A Tombless Epitaph
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge : A Soliloquy Of The Full Moon, She Being In A Mad Passion
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge : A Mathematical Problem
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge : A Christmas Carol
• Arthur Hugh Clough : Ye Flags Of Picadilly
• Arthur Hugh Clough : With Whom Is No Variableness, Neither Shadow Of Turning
• Arthur Hugh Clough : Where Lies The Land To Which The Ship Would Go
• Arthur Hugh Clough : To Spend Uncounted Years Of Pain
• Arthur Hugh Clough : Through A Glass Darkly
• Arthur Hugh Clough : There Is No God, The Wicked Sayeth