I have spent the last three hours searching for this freaking poem, going through scrapbooks and albums and journals and trying to find it online through the dimmest memories of certain words and phrases from it. Had the poem, in the book where I originally found it about twenty-six years ago, been titled “To Coleridge” instead of “To _________,” my search would have been made a lot easier.
Now that I’ve found it, I’m putting it here so at least the next time I want it, I’ll have a sensible place to look. Other than that, I have nothing to say about it, except this is one of my favorite poems of all time. Oh, and that if I could find that poem by Erica Jong that I barely remember, and my wooden lion pushpuppet from the fourth grade, and my friend Bobby, all the gears of my universe would be meshing properly.
To Coleridge
Oh! there are spirits of the air,
And genii of the evening breeze,
And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair
As star-beams among twilight trees:
Such lovely ministers to meet
Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.
With mountain winds, and babbling springs,
And moonlight seas, that are the voice
Of these inexplicable things,
Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice
When they did answer thee, but they
Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away.
And thou hast sought in starry eyes
Beams that were never meant for thine,
Another’s wealth: tame sacrifice
To a fond faith! still dost thou pine?
Still dost thou hope that greeting hands,
Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands?
Ah! wherefore didst thou build thine hope
On the false earth’s inconstancy?
Did thine own mind afford no scope
Of love, or moving thoughts to thee?
That natural scenes or human smiles
Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles?
Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled
Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted;
The glory of the moon is dead;
Night’s ghosts and dreams have now departed;
Thine own soul still is true to thee,
But changed to a foul fiend through misery.
This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever
Beside thee like thy shadow hangs,
Dream not to chase: the mad endeavour
Would scourge thee to severer pangs.
Be as thou art. Thy settled fate,
Dark as it is, all change would aggravate.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1816
Oh, great! Yeah, I’ve began putting more stuff on my computer whenever possible because it’s usually easier to find that some scrap of paper that I can’t remember where the hell I put it.
Regarding my journals as well as stories and poems I’ve written over–er, a lot of years, I have a large plastic bin full of them in the back of my tiny closet, so they’re not easy to get to. Which is fine, ’cause I don’t need to be putting excerpts from my eighth grade diary on LJ.
You’re right, the computer’s also great for all those things people tell you in passing, like “Get this CD!” or “You have to read this book!” I keep finding stuff like that on scraps of paper in old purses and book bags.
It’s amazing how computers have changed our lives. Nowadays, it seems like computers are just about as common as TVs in our homes. My niece is nine, so she’s never known a world without an internet, which blows my mind. I often wonder how different kids lives are than people like us who grew up without access to the internet, or cellphones, etc.
Somewhere, Bobby is reciting an Erica Jong poem while having a wooden lion pushpuppet extracted from his ass.
Oh, you’re just saying that to make me feel better.
What part of the Erica Jong poem do you remember? If you give me some hints, I’ll ask Erica if she can tell us which one it is, and which book it is in. (By the way, she’s working on her next book of poems right now — they’re terrific!).
The only thing I remember is the line, “No one could ever love her enough.”