Myrtle Memories
Another Song from STC
Through veiled in spires of myrtle-wreath,
Love is a sword which cuts its sheath,
And through the clefts itself has made
We spy the flashes of the blade!
But through the clefts itself has made
We likewise see Love’s flashing blade,
By rust consumed, or snapped in twain;
Only hilt and stump remain.
Something tells me that besides being so opium addled he was repeating himself, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was slightly bitter regarding marriage. The myrtle-wreath wasn’t kind to him. I prefer the epigram he used as preface for love poems in his collected works: “Love, always a talkative companion.”
In many ways does the full heart reveal
The presence of the love it would conceal;
But in far more th’ estranged heart lets know
The absence of love, which yet it fain would shew.
The ironic tension between the title and the epigram speaks volumes regarding the problem of conjugal desire. Silence (as anyone who has ever been married can tell you) does speak with intense volume. It occurs to me that I was living on Myrtle Street in Bakersfield, California, when it blew my mind.
