Social Commentaries

On Donne's Poem 'to a Flea'

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772–1834

From Complete Poetical Works, ed. E. H. Coleridge (1912)

Social Commentaries

Be proud as Spaniards! Leap for pride ye Fleas!
Henceforth in Nature's mimic World grandees.
In Phoebus' archives registered are ye,
And this your patent of Nobility.
No skip-Jacks now, nor civiller skip-Johns,
Dread Anthropophagi! specks of living bronze,
I hail you one and all, sans Pros or Cons,
Descendants from a noble race of Dons.
What tho' that great ancestral Flea be gone,
Immortal with immortalising Donne,
His earthly spots bleached off a Papist's gloze,
In purgatory fire on Bardolph's nose.

✦ ✦ ✦

1811

MLA

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “On Donne's Poem 'to a Flea'.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/coleridge/374/.

Chicago

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “On Donne's Poem 'to a Flea'.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/coleridge/374/.

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