Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Tale of The Dark Ladie

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

(1772-1834)

 

Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie

The following poem is intended as the introduction to a somewhat longer one. The use of the old ballad word ‘Ladie’ for Lady, is the only piece of obsoleteness in it; and as it is professedly a tale of ancient times, I trust that the affectionate lovers of venerable antiquity, as Camden says, will grant me their pardon, and perhaps may be induced to admit a force and propriety in it. A heavier objection may be adduced against the author, that in these times of fear and expectation, when novelties explode around us in all directions, he should presume to offer to the public a silly tale of old-fashioned love: and five years ago, I own I should have allowed and felt the force of this objection. But alas! explosion has succeeded explosion so rapidly, that novelty itself ceases to appear new; and it is possible that now, even a simple story, wholly uninspired with politics or personality, may find some attention amid the hubbub of revolutions, as to those who have remained a long time by the falls of Niagara, the lowest whispering becomes distinctly audible (1799).

 

O leave the lily on its stem;

O leave the rose upon the spray;

O leave the elder-bloom, fair maids!

And listen to my lay.

 

A cypress and a myrtle-bough

This morn around my harp you twin’d,

Because it fashion’d mournfully

Its murmurs in the wind.

 

And now a tale of love and woe,

A woful tale of love I sing;

Hark, gentle maidens, hark! it sighs

And trembles on the string.

 

But most, my own dear Genevieve,

It sighs and trembles most for thee!

O come and hear the cruel wrongs

Befell the Dark Ladie!

 

And now once more a tale of woe,

A woful tale of love I sing;

For thee, my Genevieve! it sighs,

And trembles on the string.

 

When last I sang the cruel scorn

That craz’d this bold and lovely knight,

And how he roam’d the mountain-woods,

Nor rested day or night;

 

I promised thee a sister tale

Of man’s perfidious cruelty;

Come, then, and hear what cruel wrong

Befell the Dark Ladie.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

The Tale of The Dark Ladie

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