Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Sea-Mew

Sea-ward, white gleaming thro' the busy scud
With arching Wings, the sea-mew o'er my head
Posts on, as bent on speed, now passaging
Edges the stiffer Breeze, now, yielding, drifts,
Now floats upon the air, and sends from afar
A wildly-wailing Note.


A fragment written in 1795-96, a year or so before the miracle year of "Kubla Khan" and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". Richard Holmes, Coleridge's latest biographer, sees his use of birds - flying or caged - as constant emblems of the poet's situation. The fourth line, with its four commas in succession, cleverly evokes a bird's erratic slow-motion weaving on air currents. Perhaps Coleridge left this fragment undeveloped because he didn't want to make the theme over-explicit.