Lines To Thomas Poole

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Title:     Lines To Thomas Poole
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge [More Titles by Coleridge]

[Quoted in a letter from Coleridge to John Thelwall, dated Dec. 17, 1796.]

. . . . Joking apart, I would to God we could sit by a fire-side and joke _vivâ voce_, face to face--Stella [Mrs. Thelwall] and Sara [Mrs. S. T. Coleridge], Jack Thelwall and I!--as I once wrote to my dear _friend_ T. Poole,--

Repeating
Such verse as Bowles, heart honour'd Poet sang,
That wakes the Tear, yet steals away the Pang,
Then, or with Berkeley, or with Hobbes romance it,
Dissecting Truth with metaphysic lancet.
Or, drawn from up these dark unfathom'd wells,
In wiser folly chink the Cap and Bells.
How many tales we told! what jokes we made,
Conundrum, Crambo, Rebus, or Charade;
Ænigmas that had driven the Theban mad,
And Puns, these best when exquisitely bad;
And I, if aught of archer vein I hit,
With my own laughter stifled my own wit.

1796. First published in 1893.

[The end]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem: Lines To Thomas Poole

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