< Sibylline Leaves (Coleridge)
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MELANCHOLY.[1]

A FRAGMENT.

Stretch'd on a moulder'd Abbey's broadest wall,
⁠Where ruining ivies propt the ruins steep—
Her folded arms wrapping her tatter'd pall,
⁠Had Melancholy mus'd herself to sleep.
⁠The fern was press'd beneath her hair,
⁠The dark green Adder's Tongue[2] was there;
And still as past the flagging sea-gale weak,
The long lank leaf bow'd fluttering o'er her cheek.

That pallid cheek was flush'd: her eager look
⁠Beam'd eloquent in slumber! Inly wrought,
⁠Imperfect sounds her moving lips forsook,
⁠And her bent forehead work'd with troubled thought.
⁠Strange was the dream that fill'd her soul,
⁠Nor did not whispering spirits roll
A mystic tumult, and a fateful rhyme
Mixt with wild shapings of the unborn time.

  1. ↑ First published in the Morning Chronicle, in the year 1794.
  2. ↑ A botanical mistake. The plant, I meant, is called the Hart's Tongue; but this would unluckily spoil the poetical effect. Cedat
     ergo Botanice.
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