The Madman and the Lethargist

Samuel Taylor Coleridge * Track #212 On The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Vol I

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Madman and the Lethargist by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Madman and the Lethargist Annotated

Quoth Dick to me, as once at College
We argued on the use of knowledge;—
'In old King Olim's reign, I've read,
There lay two patients in one bed.
The one in fat lethargic trance,
Lay wan and motionless as lead:
The other, (like the Folks in France),
Possess'd a different disposition—
In short, the plain truth to confess,
The man was madder than Mad Bess!
But both diseases, none disputed,
Were unmedicinably rooted;
Yet, so it chanc'd, by Heaven's permission,
Each prov'd the other's true physician.

'Fighting with a ghostly stare
Troops of Despots in the air,
Obstreperously Jacobinical,
The madman froth'd, and foam'd, and roar'd:
The other, snoring octaves cynical,
Like good John Bull, in posture clinical,
Seem'd living only when he snor'd.
The Citizen enraged to see
This fat Insensibility,
Or, tir'd with solitary labour,
Determin'd to convert his neighbour;
So up he sprang and to 't he fell,
Like devil piping hot from hell,
With indefatigable fist
Belabr'ing the poor Lethargist;
Till his own limbs were stiff and sore,
And sweat-drops roll'd from every pore:—
Yet, still, with flying fingers fleet,
Duly accompanied by feet,
With some short intervals of biting,
He executes the self-same strain,
Till the Slumberer woke for pain,
And half-prepared himself for fighting—
That moment that his mad Colleague
Sunk down and slept thro' pure fatigue.
So both were cur'd—and this example
Gives demonstration full and ample—
That Chance may bring a thing to bear,
Where Art sits down in blank despair.'

'That's true enough, Dick,' answer'd I,
'But as for the Example, 'tis a lie.'

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