Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE IMPROVISATORE, by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE IMPROVISATORE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: What are the words?
Last Line: And that is next to best!
Subject(s): Beaumont, Francis (1584-1616); Burns, Robert (1759-1796); Dramatists; Fletcher, John (1579-1625); Moore, Thomas (1779-1852); Plays & Playwrights ; Poetry & Poets; Dramatists


Scene -- A spacious drawing-room, with music-room adjoining.

Katharine. What are the words?
Eliza. Ask our friend, the Improvisatore; here he comes. Kate has a favour to ask of you,
Sir; it is that you will repeat the ballad that Mr ------- sang so sweetly.
Friend. It is in Moore's Irish Melodies; but I do not recollect the words distinctly. The
moral of them, however, I take to be this: --

Love would remain the same if true,
When we were neither young nor new;
Yea, and in all within the will that came,
By the same proofs would show itself the same.

Eliz. What are the lines you repeated from Beaumont and Fletcher, which my mother admired so
much? It begins with something about two vines so close that their tendrils intermingle.
Fri. You mean Charles' speech to Angelina, in 'The Elder Brother.'

We'll live together, like two neighbour vines,
Circling our souls and loves in one another!
We'll spring together, and we'll bear one fruit;
One joy shall make us smile, and one grief mourn;
One age go with us, and one hour of death
Shall close our eyes, and one grave make us happy.

Kath. A precious boon, that would go far to reconcile one to old age -- this love -- if true!
But is there any such true love?
Fri. I hope so.
Kath. But do you believe it?
Eliz. (eagerly). I am sure he does.
Fri. From a man turned of fifty, Katharine, I imagine, expects a less confident answer.
Kath. A more sincere one, perhaps.
Fri. Even though he should have obtained the nick-name of Improvisatore, by perpetrating
charades and extempore verses at Christmas times?
Eliz. Nay, but be serious.
Fri. Serious! Doubtless. A grave personage of my years giving a love-lecture to two young
ladies, cannot well be otherwise. The difficulty, I suspect, would be for them to remain so.
It will be asked whether I am not the 'elderly gentleman' who sate 'despairing beside a clear
stream', with a willow for his wig-block.
Eliz. Say another word, and we will call it downright affectation.
Kath. No! we will be affronted, drop a courtesy, and ask pardon for our presumption in
expecting that Mr ------- would waste his sense on two insignificant girls.
Fri. Well, well, I will be serious. Hem! Now then commences the discourse; Mr Moore's song
being the text. Love, as distinguished from Friendship, on the one hand, and from the passion
that too often usurps its name, on the other --
Lucius (Eliza's brother, who had just joined the trio, in a whisper to the Friend). But is not
Love the union of both?
Fri. (aside to Lucius). He never loved who thinks so.
Eliz. Brother, we don't want you. There! Mrs H. cannot arrange the flower-vase without you.
Thank you, Mrs Hartman.
Luc. I'll have my revenge! I know what I will say!
Eliz. Off! off! Now, dear sir, -- Love, you were saying --
Fri. Hush! Preaching, you mean, Eliza.
Eliz. (impatiently). Pshaw!
Fri. Well then, I was saying that love, truly such, is itself not the most common thing in the
world: and mutual love still less so. But that enduring personal attachment, so beautifully
delineated by Erin's sweet melodist, and still more touchingly, perhaps, in the well-known
ballad, 'John Anderson, my Jo, John', in addition to a depth and constancy of character of no
every-day occurrence, supposes a peculiar sensibility and tenderness of nature; a
constitutional communicativeness and ut
Eliz. There is something here (pointing to her heart) that seems to understand you, but
wants the word that would make it understand itself.
Kath. I, too, seem to feel what you mean. Interpret the feeling for us.
fri. -- I mean that willing sense of the unsufficingness of the self for itself, which
predisposes a generous nature to see, in the total being of another, the supplement and
completion of its own; -- that quiet perpetual seeking which the presence of the beloved
object modulates, not suspends, where the heart momently finds, and, finding, again seeks on;
-- lastly, when 'life's changeful orb has pass'd the full,' a confirmed faith in the nobleness
of humanity, thus brought home and pressed
by right of love appropriates it, can call Goodness its playfellow; and dares make sport of time
and infirmity, while, in the person of a thousand-foldly endeared partner, we feel for aged
virtue the caressing fondness that belongs to the innocence of childhood, and repeat the same
attentions and tender courtesies which had been dictated by the same affection to the same
object when attired in feminine loveliness or in manly beauty.
Eliz. What a soothing -- what an elevating thought!
Kath. If it be not only a mere fancy.
Fri. At all events, these qualities which I have enumerated, are rarely found united in a
single individual. How much more rare must it be, that two such individuals should meet
together in this wide world under circumstances that admit of their union as Husband and Wife.
A person may be highly estimable on the whole, nay, amiable as neighbour, friend, housemate --
in short, in all the concentric circles of attachment save only the last and inmost; and yet
from how many causes be estrange
paws of its own self-importance. And as this high sense, or rather sensation of their own value
is, for the most part, grounded on negative qualities, so they have no better means of
preserving the same but by negatives -- that is, by not doing or saying any thing, that might
be put down for fond, silly, or nonsensical; -- or (to use their own phrase) by never
forgetting themselves, which some of their acquaintance are uncharitable enough to think the
most worthless object they could be employe
Eliz. (in answer to a whisper from Katharine). To a hair! He must have sate for it himself.
Save me from such folks! But they are out of the question.
Fri. True! but the same effect is produced in thousands by the too general insensibility to a
very important truth; this, namely, that the misery of human life is made up of large massses,
each separated from the other by certain intervals. One year, the death of a child; years
after, a failure in trade; after another longer or shorter interval, a daughter may have
married unhappily; -- in all but the singularly unfortunate, the integral parts that compose
the sum total of the unhappiness
Kath. Well, Sir; you have said quite enough to make me despair of finding a 'John Anderson, my
Jo, John', with whom to totter down the hill of life.
Fri. Not so! Good men are not, I trust, so much scarcer than good women, but that what
another would find in you, you may hope to find in another. But well, however, may that boon
be rare, the possession of which would be more than an adequate reward for the rarest virtue.
Eliz. Surely, he, who has described it so well, must have possessed it?
Fri. If he were worthy to have possessed it, and had believingly anticipated and not found it,
how bitter the disappointment! (Then, after a pause of a few minutes),

ANSWER, ex improviso

Yes, yes! that boon, life's richest treat,
He had, or fancied that he had;
Say, 'twas but in his own conceit --
The fancy made him glad!
Crown of his cup, and garnish of his dish,
The boon, prefigured in his earliest wish,
The fair fulfilment of his poesy,
When his young heart first yearn'd for sympathy!

But e'en the meteor offspring of the brain
Unnourished wane;
Faith asks her daily bread,
And Fancy must be fed.
Now so it chanced -- from wet or dry,
It boots not how -- I know not why --
She missed her wonted food; and quickly
Poor Fancy stagger'd and grew sickly.
Then came a restless state, 'twixt yea and nay,
His faith was fix'd, his heart all ebb and flow;
Or like a bark, in some half-shelter'd bay,
Above its anchor driving to and fro.

That boon, which but to have possest
In a belief, gave life a zest --
Uncertain both what it had been,
And if by error lost, or luck;
And what it was; -- an evergreen
Which some insidious blight had struck,
Or annual flower, which, past its blow,
No vernal spell shall e'er revive;
Uncertain, and afraid to know,
Doubts toss'd him to and fro:
Hope keeping Love, Love Hope alive,
Like babes bewildered in the snow,
That cling and huddle from the cold
In hollow tree or ruin'd fold.

Those sparkling colours, once his boast
Fading, one by one away,
Thin and hueless as a ghost,
Poor Fancy on her sick bed lay;
Ill at distance, worse when near,
Telling her dreams to jealous Fear!
Where was it then, the sociable sprite
That crown'd the Poet's cup and deck'd his dish!
Poor shadow cast from an unsteady wish,
Itself a substance by no other right
But that it intercepted Reason's light;
It dimm'd his eye, it darken'd on his brow,
A peevish mood, a tedious time, I trow!
Thank Heaven! 'tis not so now.

O bliss of blissful hours!
The boon of Heaven's decreeing,
While yet in Eden's bowers
Dwelt the first husband and his sinless mate!
The one sweet plant, which, piteous Heaven agreeing,
They bore with them thro' Eden's closing gate!
Of life's gay summer tide the sovran rose!
Late autumn's amaranth, that more fragrant blows
When passion's flowers all fall or fade;
If this were ever his, in outward being,
Or but his own true love's projected shade,
Now that at length by certain proof he knows,
That whether real or a magic show,
Whate'er it was, it is no longer so;
Though heart be lonesome, hope laid low,
Yet, Lady! deem him not unblest:
The certainty that struck hope dead,
Hath left contentment in her stead:
And that is next to best!





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