LETTER 31

CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE [About September 20, 1797.]

WRITTEN A TWELVEMONTH AFTER THE EVENTS

[_Friday next, Coleridge, is the day on which my mother died._]

Alas! how am I changed! where be the tears, The sobs and forced suspensions of the breath, And all the dull desertions of the heart With which I hung o'er my dear mother's corse? Where be the blest subsidings of the storm Within; the sweet resignedness of hope Drawn heavenward, and strength of filial love, In which I bow'd me to my Father's will? My God and my Redeemer, keep not thou My heart in brute and sensual thanklessness Seal'd up, oblivious ever of that dear grace, And health restor'd to my long-loved friend.

Long loved, and worthy known! Thou didst not keep Her soul in death. O keep not now, my Lord, Thy servants in far worse--in spiritual death And darkness--blacker than those feared shadows O' the valley all must tread. Lend us thy balms, Thou dear Physician of the sin-sick soul, And heal our cleansed bosoms of the wounds With which the world hath pierc'd us thro' and thro'! Give us new flesh, new birth; Elect of heaven May we become, in thine election sure Contain'd, and to one purpose steadfast drawn-- Our souls' salvation.

Thou and I, dear friend, With filial recognition sweet, shall know One day the face of our dear mother in heaven, And her remember'd looks of love shall greet With answering looks of love, her placid smiles Meet with a smile as placid, and her hand With drops of fondness wet, nor fear repulse.

Be witness for me, Lord, I do not ask Those days of vanity to return again, (Nor fitting me to ask, nor thee to give), Vain loves, and "wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid;" (Child of the dust as I am), who so long My foolish heart steep'd in idolatry, And creature-loves. Forgive it, O my Maker! If in a mood of grief, I sin almost In sometimes brooding on the days long past, (And from the grave of time wishing them back), Days of a mother's fondness to her child-- Her little one! Oh, where be now those sports And infant play-games? Where the joyous troops Of children, and the haunts I did so love? 0 my companions! O ye loved names Of friend, or playmate dear, gone are ye now. Gone divers ways; to honour and credit some: And some, I fear, to ignominy and shame! I only am left, with unavailing grief One parent dead to mourn, and see one live Of all life's joys bereft, and desolate: Am left, with a few friends, and one above The rest, found faithful in a length of years, Contented as I may, to bear me on, T' the not unpeaceful evening of a day Made black by morning storms.

The following I wrote when I had returned from C. Lloyd, leaving him behind at Burton with Southey. To understand some of it, you must remember that at that time he was very much perplexed in mind.

A stranger and alone, I past those scenes We past so late together; and my heart Felt something like desertion, as I look'd Around me, and the pleasant voice of friend Was absent, and the cordial look was there No more, to smile on me. I thought on Lloyd-- All he had been to me! And now I go Again to mingle with a world impure; With men who make a mock of holy things, Mistaken, and of man's best hope think scorn. The world does much to warp the heart of man; And I may sometimes join its idiot laugh: Of this I now complain not. Deal with me, Omniscient Father, as Thou judgest best, And in _Thy_ season soften thou my heart. I pray not for myself: I pray for him Whose soul is sore perplexed. Shine thou on him, Father of Lights! and in the difficult paths Make plain his way before him: his own thoughts May he not think--his own ends not pursue-- So shall he best perform Thy will on earth. Greatest and Best, Thy will be ever ours!

The former of these poems I wrote with unusual celerity t'other morning at office. I expect you to like it better than anything of mine; Lloyd does, and I do myself.

You use Lloyd very ill, never writing to him. I tell you again that his is not a mind with which you should play tricks. He deserves more tenderness from you.

For myself, I must spoil a little passage of Beaumont and Fletcher to adapt it to my feelings:--

"I am prouder That I was once your friend, tho' now forgot, Than to have had another true to me."

If you don't write to me now, as I told Lloyd, I shall get angry, and call you hard names--Manchineel and I don't know what else. I wish you would send me my great-coat. The snow and the rain season is at hand, and I have but a wretched old coat, once my father's, to keep 'em off, and that is transitory.

"When time drives flocks from field to fold, When ways grow foul and blood gets cold,"

I shall remember where I left my coat. Meet emblem wilt thou be, old Winter, of a friend's neglect--cold, cold, cold! Remembrance where remembrance is due.

C. LAMB.

[The two poems included in this letter were printed in _Blank Verse_, a volume which Lamb and Lloyd issued in 1798.

Coleridge had written to Lloyd, we know, as late as July, because he sent him a version of the poem "This Lime-tree Bower, my Prison;" but a coolness that was to ripen into positive hostility had already begun. Of this we shall see more later.

The passage from Beaumont and Fletcher is in "The Maid's Tragedy" (Act II., Scene I), where Aspatia says to Amintor:--

Thus I wind myself Into this willow garland, and am prouder That I was once your love (though now refus'd) Than to have had another true to me.

The scene is in Lamb's _Dramatic Specimens_.

The reference to Manchineel is explained by a passage in Coleridge's dedication of his 1797 volume, then just published, to his brother, the Rev. George Coleridge, where, speaking of the friends he had known, he says:--

and some most false, False and fair-foliag'd as the Manchineel, Have tempted me to slumber in their shade

--the manchineel being a poisonous West Indian tree.

Between this and the next letter probably came correspondence that has now been lost.]