Coleridge on a visit by his old friend the essayist Charles Lamb, July 1797

So, Charles, you’ve visited us at last!
Exchanging the drab round of clerking
And the noisy halls of East India House
For the airy spaces of our hills.

And when you come, what happens?
Sara spills boiling milk over my foot.
Carried here to Poole’s on the back of a wagon,
I howled in pain!

I longed to show you this paradise of hills!
Yet here I sit nursing my foot,
Locked in Poole’s green-leaved bower.
No heady aromas of gorse for me,
Only the rank stench of his tannery—
Yet charmed and entranced
By the filmy light
Flickering through leaf and stem.

Are you relishing the change of air?
Pausing for a glass at the ale house
Among Stowey’s copper miners
With William and Dorothy?
Or peering over the cascading falls
Into Holford’s ‘roaring dell’?
How different to the smoke of Leadenhall Street!

As you climb past Quantock beeches
To the heights of Longstone,
I pray you’ll forget for a few blessed moments
The tragic death of your mother,
Stabbed by your poor sister, Mary.

A bat wheels by the tannery pits.
Swifts scream past bound for their roosts,
Black wings scoring the dusky air.
Though disappointed I cannot share your joy,
I know we must keep our hearts alive
To Nature’s truth and beauty,
No matter where we find it!

‘Gentle-hearted’ Charles,
Beloved friend since Christ’s Hospital,
My heart goes out to you.