Songs of the Pixies

Last updated

Songs of the Pixies was composed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge during 1793. The poem describes Coleridge's summer vacation and his childhood home. It also incorporates Coleridge's own view of himself as a young poet.

Contents

Background

During Coleridge's 1793 summer vacation from Christ's Hospital, he stayed with his family members in Ottery St Mary, Devon. [1] Both "Songs of the Pixies" and the smaller "To Miss Dashwood Bacon", written during this time, refer to The Pixies' Parlour, a place near Ottery and to events taking place during Coleridge's vacation: the locals during that time dubbed Miss Boutflower as "fairy queen", an event recorded by Ann Bacon. The "Songs of Pixies" was printed multiple times, including in Coleridge's 1796 edition of Poems on Various Subjects . [2] However, Coleridge was opposed to the poem as years passed and said "Neither ["Monody on the Death of Chatterton"] or the Pixies' Parlour would have been in the second Edition, but for dear Cottle's solicitous importunity". [3]

Poem

The poem begins with a note that explains the connection between pixies and his home: [4] "At a small distance from a village in that county [Devonshire], half-way up a wood-cover'd Hill, is an Excavation, called the Pixies' Parlour [...] To this place the Author conducted a party of young Ladies during the summer months of the year, 1793—one of whom (of stature elegantly small, and of complexion colourless yet clear) was proclaimed the Fairy Queen—on which occasion the following Irregular Ode was written". [5]

The fourth stanza connects Coleridge with a "youthful Bard": [6]

  By Indolence and Fancy brought,
  A youthful Bard, "unknown to Fame,"
  Wooes the Queen of Solemn Thought,
And heaves the gentle misery of a sigh
  Gazing with tearful eye,
  As round our sandy grot appear
  Many a rudely-sculptur'd name
  To pensive Memory dear!
Weaving gay dreams of sunny-tinctur'd hue,
  We glance before his view:
O'er his hush'd soul our soothing witcheries shed
And twine the future garland round his head. [7]

— lines 35–46

The poem then describes how the pixies spent their time in Ottery: [8]

Then with quaint music hymn the parting gleam
By lonely Otter's sleep-persuading stream;
Or where his wave with loud unquiet song
Dash'd o'er the rocky channel froths along;
Or where, his silver waters smooth'd to rest,
The tall tree's shadow sleeps upon his breast. [7]

— lines 67–72

Themes

The poem borrows from many other poems. In particular, Coleridge included lines connected to A Midsummer Night's Dream , the works of John Milton, Collins, Bowles, Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad , and Gray's elegies among others. [9] Coleridge's Songs of the Pixies is unique to his poems in that he focuses on fairies in a manner similar to Milton's Comus and images found within Milton's Allegro and Il Penseroso. [10] In the poem, Coleridge is self-described as a bard in regard to his poetic status. After Coleridge met William Wordsworth, he began to praise his fellow poet and assigned the title bard to his new friend. He was to also change from describing himself in the poem to being crowned with laurels to crowning others with laurels in his later poetry. [11]

Critical response

A 1796 review within the Analytical Review reviewed Coleridge's collection of poems and stated "The general character of the composition is rather that of splendour than of simplicity; and the reader is left more strongly impressed with an idea of the strength of the writer's genius, than of the correctness of his taste. As a pleasing example of Mr. C.'s inventive powers, we shall quote two or three stanzas from a piece which he entitles, 'Songs of the Pixies'". [12] A review by John Aikin in the Monthly Review in 1796 was to say only that "The next piece of moderate length is entitled 'Songs of the Pixies': which are, it seems, in the rustic superstition of Devonshire, a kind of fairies, harmless or friendly to man. Ariel, Oberon, and the Sylphs, have contributed to form the pleasing imagery of which the two following stanzas will give a specimen". [13]

During the 19th-century, Alois Brandl pointed out that, in regard to the similarities to Milton's poetry, "All these coincidences taken separately prove but little, but considered together they are highly characteristic of Coleridge's method of study". [10] Near the end of the century, H. D. Traill wrote:

It is only in the region of the fantastic and supernatural that Coleridge's imagination, as he was destined to show by a far more splendid example two years afterwards, seems to acquire true poetic distinction. It is in the Songs of the Pixies that the young man 'heaves the gentle misery of a sigh,' and the sympathetic interest of the reader of today is chilled by the too frequent intrusion of certain abstract ladies [...] one cannot but feel that the Songs of the Pixies was the offspring not of a mere abundant and picturesque vocabular but of a true poetic fancy. It is worth far more as an earnest of future achievement than the very unequal Monody on the Death of Chatterton [...] and certainly than anything which could be quoted from the Effusions [14]

At the beginning of the 20th-century, Arthur Salmon argued that "Among his earlier poems there is a 'Song of the Pixies,' which proves that he had not forgotten native superstitions, but there is little of the true Devonshire spirit in this rather stilted ode." [8] In 1975 when describing Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects (1796), Samuel Chew and Richard Altick wrote, "One or two small poems, such as the Song of the Pixies, show a timid venturing into the realms of the glamorous where Coleridge was soon to be at home." [15] At the end of the 20th-century, Rosemary Ashton believes, in regard to Song of the Pixies, that the "high point is in the fourth stanza" and "Though not good, the verse is interesting for more than one reason. First it acknowledges that for this young poet success in poetry is yet to come [...] Moreover, Coleridge shows signs of learning to control the strong rhythms and irregular line length of the ode form." [16]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Ashton 1997 pp. 38–39
  2. ↑ Mays 2001 pp. 106–108
  3. ↑ Mays 2001 qtd. p. 108
  4. ↑ Salmon 1906 p. 22
  5. ↑ Mays 2001 qtd. pp. 108–109
  6. ↑ Ashton 1997 p. 39
  7. 1 2 Coleridge 1921 pp. 40-44
  8. 1 2 Salmon 1906 p. 21
  9. ↑ Mays 2001 p. 108
  10. 1 2 Brandl 1887 p. 84
  11. ↑ Paley 2000 pp. 15–16
  12. ↑ Jackson 1996 qtd. p. 33
  13. ↑ Jackson 1996 qtd. p. 37
  14. ↑ Traill 1898 pp. 25–26
  15. ↑ Chew and Altick 1975 p. 7
  16. ↑ Ashton 1997 pp. 39–40

Related Research Articles

<i>Kubla Khan</i> Poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Kubla Khan is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in 1816. It is sometimes given the subtitles "A Vision in a Dream" and "A Fragment." According to Coleridge's preface to Kubla Khan, the poem was composed one night after he experienced an opium-influenced dream after reading a work describing Shangdu, the summer capital of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China founded by Kublai Khan. Upon waking, he set about writing lines of poetry that came to him from the dream until he was interrupted by "a person from Porlock". The poem could not be completed according to its original 200–300 line plan as the interruption caused him to forget the lines. He left it unpublished and kept it for private readings for his friends until 1816 when, at the prompting of Lord Byron, it was published.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pixie</span> Mythical creature of British folklore

A pixie is a mythical creature of British folklore. Pixies are considered to be particularly concentrated in the high moorland areas around Devon and Cornwall, and in the New Forest area of Dorset and Hampshire.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772. The youngest of 14 children, he was educated after his father's death and excelled in classics. He attended Christ's Hospital and Jesus College, Cambridge. While attending college, he befriended two other Romanticists, Charles Lamb and Robert Southey, the latter causing him to eventually drop out of college and pursue both poetic and political ambitions.

"Monody on the Death of Chatterton" was composed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1790 and was rewritten throughout his lifetime. The poem deals with the idea of Thomas Chatterton, a poet who committed suicide, as representing the poetic struggle.

The Destruction of the Bastile was composed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1789. The poem describes Coleridge's feelings of hopes for the French Revolution as a catalyst for political change.

Lines Written at Shurton Bars was composed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1795. The poem incorporates a reflection on Coleridge's engagement and his understanding of marriage. It also compares nature to an ideal understanding of reality and discusses isolation from others.

Religious Musings was composed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1794 and finished by 1796. It is one of his first poems of critical merit and contains many of his early feelings about religion and politics.

The Eolian Harp is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1795 and published in his 1796 poetry collection. It is one of the early conversation poems and discusses Coleridge's anticipation of a marriage with Sara Fricker along with the pleasure of conjugal love. However, The Eolian Harp is not a love poem and instead focuses on man's relationship with nature. The central images of the poem is an Aeolian harp, an item that represents both order and wildness in nature. Along with the harp is a series of oppositional ideas that are reconciled with each other. The Eolian Harp also contains a discussion on "One Life", Coleridge's idea that humanity and nature are united along with his desire to try to find the divine within nature. The poem was well received for both its discussion of nature and its aesthetic qualities.

Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement is a poem written by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1796. Like his earlier poem The Eolian Harp, it discusses Coleridge's understanding of nature and his married life, which was suffering from problems that developed after the previous poem. Overall, the poem focuses on humanity's relationship with nature in its various aspects, ranging from experiencing an Edenic state to having to abandon a unity with nature in order to fulfill a moral obligation to humanity. The discussion of man's obligation to each other leads into a discussion on the difference between the life of a philosopher and the life of a poet. By the end of the poem, the narrator follows the philosophical path in a manner similar to what Coleridge sought to do. The response to the poem from critics was mostly positive, with many of them emphasizing the religious aspects of the work in their analysis.

Frost at Midnight is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in February 1798. Part of the conversation poems, the poem discusses Coleridge's childhood experience in a negative manner and emphasizes the need to be raised in the countryside. The poem expresses hope that Coleridge's son, Hartley, would be able to experience a childhood that his father could not and become a true "child of nature". The view of nature within the poem has a strong Christian element in that Coleridge believed that nature represents a physical presence of God's word and that the poem is steeped in Coleridge's understanding of Neoplatonism. Frost at Midnight has been well received by critics, and is seen as the best of the conversation poems.

"Dejection: An Ode" is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1802. The poem in its original form was written to Sara Hutchinson, a woman who was not his wife, and discusses his feelings of love for her. The various versions of the poem describe Coleridge's inability to write poetry and living in a state of paralysis, but published editions remove his personal feelings and mention of Hutchinson.

Sonnets on Eminent Characters or Sonnets on Eminent Contemporaries is an 11-part sonnet series created by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and printed in the Morning Chronicle between 1 December 1794 and 31 January 1795. Although Coleridge promised to have at least 16 poems within the series, only one addition poem, "To Lord Stanhope", was published.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">To Erskine</span>

"To Erskine" or "To the Hon Mr Erskine" was written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in November 1794. The subject of the poem is Thomas Erskine, a lawyer and member of the Whig party, who successfully served in the defense of three political radicals during the 1794 Treason Trials. Coleridge admired Erskine's defense and praised his refusal to accept money for his service. The poem was published in the 1 December 1794 Morning Chronicle as part of the Sonnets on Eminent Characters series. It was later included in various collections of Coleridge's poetry published later.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">To Priestley</span>

"To Priestley" is a sonnet by Samuel Taylor Coleridge first published in the 11 December 1794 Morning Chronicle. Like most of the Sonnets on Eminent Characters, "To Priestley" addresses an individual Coleridge particularly admired; Joseph Priestley held many political and theological beliefs that Coleridge adopted during this time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">To Pitt</span>

"To Pitt" is a political poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and published in the 26 December 1794 Morning Chronicle as part of the Sonnets on Eminent Characters series. Describing William Pitt the Younger and his role as Prime Minister of Great Britain, the poem is one of the few in the series that is not about a hero of Coleridge. Instead, Pitt is described as Judas, the betrayer of Christ, because of, among other issues, his treatment of political dissidents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">To Godwin</span>

"To Godwin" or "To William Godwin" was written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and published in the 10 January 1795 Morning Chronicle as part of the Sonnets on Eminent Characters series. William Godwin was admired by Coleridge for his political beliefs. However, Coleridge did not support Godwin's atheistic views, which caused tension between the two. Although the poem praises Godwin, it invokes an argument that the two shared over theological matters. After the poem was written, the relationship between Coleridge and Godwin cooled and the poem was not reprinted.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">To Southey</span>

"To Southey" or "To Robert Southey" was written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and published in the 14 January 1795 Morning Chronicle as part of his Sonnets on Eminent Characters series. Robert Southey became a close friend of Coleridge during the summer of 1794 and the two originally formed a plan to start an ideal community together. Although the plan fell apart, Coleridge dedicated the poem to his friend and emphasized Southey's poetic abilities. Following the poem, Coleridge further drifted from Southey and the poem was not republished.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">To Sheridan</span>

"To Sheridan" or "To Richard Brinsley Sheridan" was written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and published in the 29 January 1795 Morning Chronicle. As the last poem running as part of the Sonnets on Eminent Characters series, it describes Coleridge's appreciation of Richard Brinsley Sheridan and his theatre talents. Coleridge, unlike most, preferred Sheridan's somber works over his comedies and emphasizes them within the poem. Coleridge also respects Sheridan's political actions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">To Lord Stanhope</span>

"To Lord Stanhope" is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was published in his 1796 collection of poems. The subject, Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope, had originally shared political views with Coleridge, but as time passed, Coleridge's views gradually shifted. By 1803, Coleridge was claiming that he did not want the poem published anymore and that it was originally intended to mock those who held the beliefs which Coleridge had held years earlier. It is part of the Sonnets on Eminent Characters series, although it was not published in the Morning Chronicle unlike the others in the series. There is, however, a possible predecessor sonnet to the 1796 version that some editors have attributed to Coleridge.

<i>Poems on Various Subjects</i>

Poems on Various Subjects (1796) was the first collection by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, including also a few sonnets by Charles Lamb. A second edition in 1797 added many more poems by Lamb and by Charles Lloyd, and a third edition appeared in 1803 with Coleridge's works only. All three editions included poems in Coleridge's early Miltonic style, such as his Religious Musings and Monody on the Death of Chatterton, alongside lyrics and some of his first conversation poems, such as The Eolian Harp, in a style suggested by the works of William Cowper. The book was on the whole well received by reviewers; modern critics value it more for its shorter and lighter poems than for its formal set-pieces.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.