Coleridge: "LOVE"

Updated May 6, 2020 | Infoplease Staff

"LOVE"

From the second edition of "Lyrical Ballads," 1800. It was planned by Coleridge as an introduction to the ballad of "The Dark Ladie," which was never completed, but of which some fifteen stanzas were printed in the 1834 edition of his "Poetical Works." Its composition cannot be accurately dated. It is conceived in the general spirit of the ballads but is simpler, more purely a poem of sentiment, than either "Christabel" or "The Ancient Mariner," and makes no use of the supernatural. Its simplicity and absolute purity of tone are, however, something more than a negative virtue. Coleridge himself declared of it and "The Ancient Mariner" that they might be excelled, but could not be imitated.

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