New manuscript found in Bodleian - bad enough to be by Coleridge

Another manuscript has been found by Krzystof Mistrz, a Polish plumber, while working on the ablutions in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.


It appears to be an anonymous (and deservedly so) XIXth century draft of a Romantic or Gothic poem in the style of R. H. Barham on an off-day, or Coleridge at his worst. With apologies I reproduce it below.




Warty Nell


Down in a deep, dark dungeon
Beneath the castle keep,
Where many souls lie starving,
A soulless ragged heap
Of skin and bone,
An aged crone,
Lies brooding while men sleep


Her aged cat and broomstick
Prove she is born of Hell,
And e'en black-hearted Satan
Would fain not guard her cell.
A devil's crew
From evil brew
Concocted Warty Nell.


Any reasonably able child of 9 could have written this: competent, certainly, but jejune.


By way of comparison, I append the opening stanzas of Coleridge's Christabel, of which even a 9 year old would have cause to be ashamed.

CHRISTABEL Part the First

'T is the middle of the night by the castle clock,
And the owls have awakened the crowing cock;
Tu--whit! --Tu--whoo!
And hark, again! the crowing cock,
How drowsily it crew.

Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,
Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;
From her kennel beneath the rock
She maketh answer to the clock,
Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour
Ever and aye, by shine and shower,
Sixteen short howls, not over loud;
Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.

Is the night chilly and dark?
The night is chilly, but not dark.
The thin gray cloud is spread on high,
It covers but not hides the sky.
The moon is behind, and at the full;
And yet she looks both small and dull.
The night is chill, the cloud is gray:
'T is a month before the month of May,
And the Spring comes slowly up this way.

-- SAMUEL COLERIDGE