Poetry Codex

Victorian

Mary E. Coleridge

1861–1907

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861–1907) was born in London into the family of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to whom she was related as a great-great-niece. She wrote novels, essays and reviews, but her poems, which she published only anonymously or under the pseudonym Anodos ("Wanderer", taken from George MacDonald's Phantastes), are what last. They first appeared in Fancy's Following (1896, a private-press edition of 125 copies) and Fancy's Guerdon (1897).

She wished her verse to stay unsigned during her lifetime, fearing to tarnish a famous name. After her death Henry Newbolt gathered the seventy-seven pieces already printed, together with the rest of her uncollected work, in Poems (1908). The book shows her in the short lyric: terse, musical and intimate, with an eye for the strange and the uncanny. Robert Bridges, who knew her, was among her early admirers.

Poems (237)

  1. To Memory
  2. Larghetto
  3. Slowly
  4. Gone
  5. A Moment
  6. There Was No Place Found
  7. Morning Dreams
  8. Come Home!
  9. The Other Side of a Mirror
  10. A Difference
  11. I have forged me in sevenfold heats
  12. Every Man for His Own Hand
  13. In the Brera
  14. Regina
  15. At First
  16. An Anniversary
  17. Over the Hills and Far Away
  18. Eyes
  19. Gifts
  20. Master and Guest
  21. Two Songs
  22. Horror
  23. He Came unto His Own, and His Own Received Him Not
  24. One and All
  25. Mortal Combat
  26. St. Andrew's
  27. Winged Words
  28. True to myself am I, and false to all
  29. Go!
  30. Not Yet
  31. Blue and White
  32. Our Lady
  33. He Knoweth Not That the Dead Are Thine
  34. The Devil's Funeral
  35. Armida's Garden
  36. Confidence
  37. Burial
  38. Mandragora
  39. For a Picture by Burne Jones, called "The Merciful Knight"
  40. Invocation
  41. Doubt
  42. On the Hearthrug
  43. At Dead of Night
  44. Song
  45. The Witch
  46. A Huguenot
  47. Eleanor
  48. Self-question
  49. A Day-dream
  50. I ask of thee, love, nothing but relief
  51. Sun and Storm
  52. L'oiseau Bleu
  53. Jealousy
  54. Shadow
  55. Prosperity
  56. News
  57. Awake
  58. Song
  59. Fair as a Dream!
  60. Marriage
  61. To a Piano
  62. On a Bas-relief of Pelops and Hippodameia
  63. In Dispraise of the Moon
  64. The Witches' Wood
  65. Wilderspin
  66. Unwelcome
  67. The Lady of Trees
  68. February, 1900
  69. Dumb
  70. When Mary Thro' the Garden Went
  71. High Wind
  72. Whither Away?
  73. Beware !
  74. The King's Guard
  75. Renaissance Gentlemen
  76. The White Women
  77. Lines to a Tree
  78. Other men may never care
  79. Night is fallen within, without
  80. I saw a stable, low and very bare
  81. Death
  82. 'Tis not Love that is dead
  83. Bamborough
  84. I chanced to see, upon a day
  85. Come back to me my swallow
  86. Thistledown
  87. Pride
  88. Sun and Wind
  89. Affection
  90. Goodness
  91. Wanderers
  92. Depart from me. I know Thee not
  93. At a Friends' Meeting
  94. Knowledge
  95. Unity
  96. Wasted
  97. The fire, the lamp, and I, were alone together
  98. A Witness
  99. Veneta
  100. The Train
  101. Flowers of the Field
  102. Companionship
  103. On the Arrival of a Visitor
  104. Lo, when the house is empty come the dead
  105. Street Lanterns
  106. Where a Roman Villa Stood, Above Freiburg
  107. Deep Calleth unto Deep
  108. Imagination
  109. September
  110. O Earth, my mother ! not upon thy breast
  111. Love went a-riding over the earth
  112. Friends — with a Difference
  113. Thee have I sought, divine Humility
  114. Dear builder of the Bridge, with thee I stood
  115. Forgive ? O yes ! How lightly, lightly said
  116. On a day, and on a day
  117. Whether I live, or whether I die
  118. Thou that canst sit in silence hour by hour
  119. One Day in Every Year
  120. A Dedication
  121. Egypt's might is tumbled down
  122. An Insincere Wish Addressed to a Beggar
  123. Remember Not Our Iniquities
  124. O mighty Spirit, whither art thou fled
  125. Ah, I have striven, I have striven
  126. Weary was I of toil and strife
  127. We were not made for refuges of lies
  128. Sounds
  129. To a Bullying Wind That Rose at Sunset
  130. No Newspapers
  131. There with two lives before me did I choose
  132. O tell me not that years will give
  133. They served with Nelson, and with Nelson died
  134. O Darkness gather round
  135. No longer live
  136. Wind
  137. The song of nightingales
  138. I shall forget you, O my dead
  139. Two Heavens
  140. Death and the Lady
  141. The Contents of an Ink-bottle
  142. Chillingham
  143. Guy's Cliffe at Night
  144. New Year's Eve
  145. On a Soldier Who Died of Illness
  146. Lilies and Doves (May, 1902)
  147. On Such a Day
  148. Evening
  149. Arm thee ! Arm thee ! Forth upon the road
  150. Her face, for utter stillness, hath no peer
  151. Blind
  152. Good Friday in my heart ! Fear and affright
  153. Lord of the winds, I cry to Thee
  154. To C. E. G. on Her Birthday
  155. The Singing of the Children for Theo
  156. Gibberish
  157. In London Town
  158. The sum of loss I have not reckoned yet
  159. Are the dead as calm as those
  160. Nicodemus
  161. Three Aspects
  162. Low-flying swallow, tho' the sky be fair
  163. The Haven
  164. Cut It Down
  165. Change
  166. Hail and Farewell
  167. Broken Friendship
  168. In That Sleep of Death What Dreams May Come?
  169. The Maiden
  170. January the First
  171. Gold
  172. O let me be in loving nice
  173. Youth's Dying
  174. Three Helpers in Battle
  175. Praise
  176. Joy in Joy
  177. Two
  178. As I went singing over the earth
  179. Ingrato Cor
  180. After St. Augustine
  181. At Evening Time It Shall Be Light
  182. Fighting would I have you die
  183. Two differing sorrows made these eyes grow dim
  184. The King
  185. The Second Time
  186. Love, the immortal thing, by Time constrained
  187. Hush
  188. A Mother to a Baby
  189. On a Sudden Departure
  190. Say This
  191. To me realities but seem
  192. Sleep
  193. Contradictions
  194. Astrology
  195. A Child's Day
  196. Wind and Sea
  197. Mistaken
  198. Marah
  199. My True Love Hath My Heart and I Have His
  200. The Deserted House
  201. There
  202. Song
  203. Useless
  204. Christ's Friends
  205. All One
  206. A Clever Woman
  207. Friends and Foes
  208. Poet and Sculptor
  209. Why is she set so far, so far above me
  210. Alcestis to Admetus
  211. I know not how it is with me — the light
  212. Furness Abbey
  213. Helpless
  214. I envy not the dead that rest
  215. From My Window
  216. After Reading Certain Books
  217. The Finding of Lord Strathmore (1715)
  218. Impromptu
  219. In a Volume of Austin Dobson
  220. Ghosts
  221. At the Madeleine
  222. The poet's heart without his gift of song
  223. Solo
  224. Tired of the daily round
  225. Life and Joy
  226. He who has lived in sunshine all day long
  227. Now
  228. That this should be the common grief of all
  229. Not as I am thou art— and yet thou art
  230. Love, whereof purest light the shadow is
  231. Only a little shall we speak of thee
  232. Nel Mezzo Del Cammin
  233. Sadness
  234. Nonsense
  235. Therefore I wrote it, not that men should buy
  236. Words
  237. Some in a child would live, some in a book

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