140 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



a bright green snake 

 Coiled round its wings and neck (594-50) 



came out of a passage, which also gave rise to 



the huge 

 serpent often hissed there beneath the talons of the vulture, and the 

 vulture screamed, his wings imprisoned within the coils of the serpent 

 (" The Wanderings of Cain," 11. 78-81) 



and to 



Or, like an eagle, whose strong wings press up 



Against a coiling serpent's folds, can I 



Strike but for mockery, and with restless beak 



Gore my own breast? . . . ("Zapolya", 89-92) ^^ 



The Bartram passage reads: 



The high road being here open and spacious ... I observed a large 

 hawk on the ground in the middle of the road: he seemed to be in 

 distress endeavoring to rise; when, coming up near him, I found him 

 closely bound up by a very long coach-whip snake, that had wreathed 

 himself several times round the hawk's body, who had but one of his 

 wings at liberty. ... I suppose the hawk had been the aggressor . . . 

 and that the snake dexterously and luckily threw himself in coils round 

 his body (pp. 218-19) ^« 



Coleridge used three different birds in his three poems, to suit 

 his respective needs or moods, but they are clearly all derived 

 from Bartram's hawk. The details of the conflict between the 

 dove and the snake in " Christabel " support this view: 



Close by the dove its head it crouched; 

 And with the dove it heaves and stirs, 

 Swelling its neck as she swells hers! (551-54) 



If we accept the premise that Bartram was fresh in Cole- 

 ridge's mind at the time he wrote " Christabel," a premise highly 

 justified, in view of the parallels pointed out above, Bersch's 



'" Georg Bersch in his Inaugural-Dissertation, 5. T. Coleridges Naturschilder- 

 ungen in seinen Gedtchten (Marburg, 1909) was, I believe, the first to point 

 to these three instances (p. 101) of the same episode and to relate them to 

 Bartram. 



"* Quoted also in Ernest Hartley Coleridge's facsimile edition of " Christabel " 

 for the Royal Society of Literature, London, 1907, p. 91. E. H. Coleridge's quo- 

 tation is from the 1794 edition of the Travels, pp. 216-17. 



