Lines To Thomas Poole

[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.

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TO A WELL-KNOWN MUSICAL CRITIC, REMARKABLE FOR HIS EARS STICKING THROUGH HIS HAIR.

O ----! O ----! of you we complain For exposing those ears to the wind and the rain. Thy face, a huge whitlow just come to a head, Ill agrees with those ears so raw and so red.

A Musical Critic of old fell a-pouting When he saw how his asinine honours were sprouting; But he hid 'em quite snug, in a full friz of hair, And the Barber alone smoked his donkeys [so] rare.

Thy judgment much worse, and thy perkers as ample, O give heed to King Midas, and take his example. Thus to publish your fate is as useless as wrong-- You but prove by your ears, what we guessed from your tongue. LABERIUS.

First published in the Morning Post, January 4, 1798. First collected P. and D. W., 1877-80, ii. 370.

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