BARTRAM'S INFLUENCE ON LITERATURE 135 



The thick black cloud was cleft, and still 

 The Moon was at its side; 

 Like waters shot from some high crag, 

 The lightning fell with never a jag, 

 A river steep and wide,^'' 



was influenced by Bartram's description of a tempest: 



How purple and fiery appeared the tumultious(sic) clouds! swiftly 

 ascending or darting from the horizo7i upwards ; they seemed to oppose 

 and dash against each other, the skies appeared streaked with blood or 

 purple flame overhead, and flaming lightning streaming and darting 

 about in every direction around, seems to fill the world tvith fire ; whilst 

 the heavy thunder keeps the earth in a constant tremor.^^ 



" Strike out the clouds and the thunder," says Professor Lowes, 

 " and that is an uncommonly vivid and typical description of an 

 aurora." ^^ Of course the images in the stanza are not all from 

 Bartram; they are a merging of what he read in Bartram and 

 in other books,^° as well as what he had observed himself, such 

 as the rays of light from his fire-place in his library at Keswick 

 reflected in the garden, " that seemed burning in the bushes or 

 between the trees." ^^ In other words, " Bartram's lightning, 

 falling like a river," ^^ played its part in the confluence of 

 associations in Coleridge's mind which gave birth to the stanza. 

 All this becomes more certain when the stanzas immediately 

 preceding the one quoted are examined. Here we find " And 

 the coming wind did roar more loud," " And the rain poured 

 down from one black cloud," " And soon I heard a roaring 

 wind " and '" But with its sound it shook the sails." In the 



^'' LI. 322-26. The italics are Professor Lowes's. 



^* Travels, 14 1. The italics are Professor Lowes's. 



" Xanadu, p. 187. 



'"' Professor Lowes cites Samuel Hearne's A Journey from Prince of Wales's 

 Fort in Hudson's Bay, to the Northern Ocean. London, 1795; De Maupertuis's 

 The Figure of the Earth, Determined from Observations Made by Order of the 

 French King, at the Polar Circle. London, 1738; David Crantz's The History 

 of Greenland . . . London, 1767; and Frederick Martens's Voyage into Spitz- 

 bergen and Greenland. . . . 1694. For a note on auroras in Coleridge, Words- 

 worth and Byron, see Lane Cooper, " A Dissertation upon Northern Lights." 

 Modern Language Notes, XXI, 44-46. 



" Works, Shedd ed., 1854, II, 135. 



"Xanadu, p. 188. 



