Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Nightingale [squib]

In stale blank verse a subject stale
I send per post my Nightingale;
And like an honest bard, dear Wordsworth,
You'll tell me what you think, my Bird's worth.

My own opinion's briefly this –

His bill he opens not amiss;
And when he has sung a stave or so,
His breast, & some small space below,
So throbs & swells, that you might swear
No vulgar music's working there.
So far, so good; but then, 'od rot him!
There's something falls off at his bottom...


I'm trying not to repeat poets but I've just come across Coleridge's doggerel satire of his own "The Nightingale", in a 1798 letter to Wordsworth. Aside from all the metaphysics Coleridge not only had a brilliant sense of humour, but was able to bring out Wordsworth's own sense of humour, no small achievement.