Page:The Earliest English Translations of Bürger's Lenore - A Study in English and German Romanticism - Emerson (1915).djvu/71

 doubt Coleridge was remembering, with the apologies of a later time, the period of intense interest in the German tale of wonder and horror, as it became known to him through the Taylor translations. Incidentally, too, the stanza structure of the Three Graves and the earliest form of the Ancient Mariner are the same, only two variations of the ballad measure occurring in each.

One may reasonably suggest another likeness between the Three Graves and Bürger's Lenore. Coleridge closes his introduction to the fragment when printed in the Friend by the following paragraph:

There is thus a direct parallelism between the punishment for blasphemy in Lenore and in the Three Graves, together with the same emphasis of the divine mercy.

The line of Kubla Khan cited by Brandl may be a reminiscence of Bürger. Certainly the extravagance of the poem connects it closely with the other poems of this period. Yet the influence of Taylor's translation of Lenore is most marked upon the next poem which Coleridge wrote, the much greater Ancient Mariner. Here, too, it is important to remember that both poems were considerably altered in later versions, so that comparison must be made with the first forms of both. In this poem Brandl pointed only to the sinking of the ship, an alteration of the story of Paulinus in which the ship came into the harbor safely, as due to direct Lenore influence. The wedding-guest he thought taken from Lewis's Alonzo the Brave, and therefore only indirectly from Bürger.

Besides these, however, there are several important likenesses between Coleridge and Taylor. Not only is Coleridge's use of the ballad meter apparently due to Taylor's use of that form in so serious and effective a manner, but the archaic spelling of the first form of the Ancient Mariner is probably directly due to Taylor's