(1798) ‘The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere’

Coleridge read Percy’s Reliques and was ‘deeply interested in the Englishand Scottish popular ballads’ (Lowes, The Road to Xanadu). The influence of these ballads comes through in the meter, word choice, and spelling in ‘The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere’, especially in the first version in Lyrical Ballads (1798). In ‘Rime’ as in ‘Spens’, the moon is a powerful image evoking the power and unpredictailiby of nature. The moon serves as an omen in both works and is frequently the object of supernatural beliefs among the mariners who experience hardships at sea under its glow.
Links: Internet Archive; Poets.org; GoogleBooks; RPO

[Excerpt from Part II]

We listened and looked sideways up!
Fear at my heart, as at a cup,
My life-blood seemed to sip!
The stars were dim, and thick the night,
The steersman’s face by his lamp gleamed white;
From the sails the dew did drip–
Till clomb above the eastern bar
The horn’ed Moon, with one bright star
Within the nether tip.

One after one, by the star-dogged Moon,
Too quick for groan or sigh,
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,
And cursed me with his eye.

Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.

[Excerpt from Part V]
And the coming wind did roar more loud,
And the sails did sigh like sedge;
And the rain poured down from one black cloud;
The Moon was at its edge.

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.

The loud wind never reached the ship,
Yet now the ship moved on!
Beneath the lightning and the Moon
The dead men gave a groan.

They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To have seen those dead men rise…

(ca 1802) ‘Dejection: An Ode’

Using ‘Spens’ as an epigraph, Coleridge exhibits both the influence of the ballad and its moon imagery on his work.

Selected Criticism:

Fiona Stafford, ‘The Grand Old Ballad in Coleridge’s “Dejection”‘. Starting Lines in Scottish, Irish, and English Poetry: from Burns to Heany. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). pp. 91-141.

R.A. Benthall, ‘New Moons, Old Ballads, and Prophetic Dialogues in Coleridge’s “Dejection: An Ode”‘. Studies in Romanticism, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Boston University: Winter, 1998), pp. 591-614. JSTOR

John Livingston Lowes, The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the Imagination. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927), pp. 172-333.

Charles Wharton Stork, ‘The Influence of the Popular Ballad on Wordsworth and Coleridge’, PMLA, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Modern Language Association: 1914), pp. 299-326. JSTOR

Links: Internet Archive; GoogleBooks; PoemHunter

[Excerpt from Dejection: An Ode]

Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,
With the old Moon in her arms ;
And I fear, I fear, My Master dear !
We shall have a deadly storm.

Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence
———————————————

I
Well! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made
The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,
This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence
Unroused by winds, that ply a busier trade
Than those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes,
Or the dull sobbing draft, that moans and rakes
Upon the strings of this Æolian lute,
Which better far were mute.
For lo! the New-moon winter-bright!
And overspread with phantom light,
(With swimming phantom light o’erspread
But rimmed and circled by a silver thread)
I see the old Moon in her lap, foretelling
The coming-on of rain and squally blast.
And oh ! that even now the gust were swelling,
And the slant night-shower driving loud and fast !
Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awed,
And sent my soul abroad,
Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give,
Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live!

1824 (posthumous) ‘The Triumph of Life’

In ‘The Triumph of Life’ the image of the new moon foreshadows an impending storm. Perhaps this image came from ‘Spens’ or indirectly through Coleridge, whose influence is evident elsewhere in Shelley’s verse.

Selected Criticism:

Donald H. Reiman, Shelley’s ‘The Triumph of Life’: A Critical Study (Urbana, University of Illinois Press: 1965), p. 129. JSTOR

Joseph Raben, ‘Coleridge as The Prototype of The Poet in Shelley’s Alastor.’ The Review of English Studies. Vol. 17, No. 67 (1966), p. 291. Oxford Journals

Links: PoemHunter; GoogleBooks

[Excerpt]

When the South wind shakes the extinguished day.–
And a cold glare, intenser than the noon
But icy cold, obscured with [[blank]] light
The Sun as he the stars. Like the young moon

When on the sunlit limits of the night
Her white shell trembles amid crimson air
And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might

Doth, as a herald of its coming, bear
The ghost of her dead Mother, whose dim form
Bends in dark ether from her infant’s chair,
So came a chariot on the silent storm

1852 (posthumous) ‘The Old Seaport (Culross, Perthshire)’

Poets of the Victorian period had little doubt as to Spen’s heroism. They were the first poets to draw on this aspect of the ballad. In, ‘The Old Seaport’, David Moir, a Scottish poet, essayist, and doctor, places Spens on the level of Sir Aubrey Barton, the Scottish High Admiral and privateer:

Links: University of Virginia Library; GoogleBooks

[Excerpt]

It spake of swart grey-headed men,
Now dust within their graves,
Who sailed with Barton or with Spens,
To breast the trampling waves;
And how, in shallops picturesque,
Unawed they drifted forth,
Directed by the one bright star,
That points the stormy North.

1839 ‘The Wreck of Hesperus’

Most likely the first afterlife work to occur outside of Britain, this poem was originally titled, ‘The Ballad of Schooner Hesperus’. This ballad features moon imagery as well as exact phrases and patterns that appear in Percy’s version of Spens. Longfellow even includes a sailor who warns the captain of a winter storm that will kill them all.

Selected Criticism

Martin B. Ostrofsky, ‘Longfellow’s “The Wreck of the Hesperus”: A Folkloric Analysis’. Kentucky Folklore Record. (1984).

Charles C. Calhoun, Longfellow: a rediscovered life. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004). pp. 138-139.

Samuel Longfellow, The Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with excerpts from his journal and correspondence. Vol I of II. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1891 [1886]). pp. 297, 353-355.

Sources: Poetry-Online; About.com; GoogleBooks

[Excerpt]

Then up and spake an old Sailòr,
Had sailed to the Spanish Main,
‘I pray thee, put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.

‘Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!’
The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.

1884 ‘Robert Bruces’s Heart’; or, ‘The Last of the Crusaders’

Aubrey Thomas De Vere, an Irish poet greatly influenced by Coleridge, also depicts Spens as a hero in this poem. De Vere refers to Spens as ‘that sea-warrior grey’. His poem recounts the skipper’s death on the return from delivering a bride to Norway, similar to a few versions of the ballad. The spirit of Spens then sails with Sir James Douglas on his way to deliver Bruce’s heart to the Holy Land, thus placing Spens’s death on par with Douglas’s journey and demise; both occur because of loyalty to a Scottish king. In the case of Douglas, however, his devotion is to a king whom he respects and wishes to honour.

The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere. Vol. VI. (Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1884) ; Mediaeval Records and Sonnets, (Macmillan & Co., 1893). GoogleBooks

Stories from Famous Ballads; For Children. (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1885), pp. 109-117. GoogleBooks

(1887) “The Unfathomable Sea”

In 1887 Stevenson published ‘To N.V. de G.S.: The Unfathomable Sea’.

THE unfathomable sea, and time, and tears,
The deeds of heroes and the crimes of kings
Dispart us;

This is a poem about a love that could have been—one separated by a metaphorical sea. Surprisingly, in ‘The English Admirals’ (1881), an essay about sea captains, heroism, and their connection to narratives, Stevenson does not mention ‘Spens’ at all.

Excerpts from: Robert Louis Stevenson, Ballads and Other Poems of Robert Louis Stevenson. (New York: Charles Schribner’s Sons, 1895). GoogleBooks

(1896) Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes.

Stevenson certainly knew of the ballad because he mentions the ballad by lamenting all the mariners who died in the North Sea, that ‘dear road for Sir Patrick Spens and his Scots Lords’. He points out Aberdour as Spens’s departure and quotes a stanza about the women waiting for the captain and the others to return. He then writes: ‘Since Sir Patrick sailed from Aberdour, what a multitude have gone down in the North Sea!’

Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes. (New York: Macmillian and Co.,1896). p. 90. GoogleBooks

(1850) White Jacket

Though Melville purchased a copy of Child’s English and Scottish Ballads in 1859, he likely read the ballad earlier or heard it sung during his years at sea, because he references a musical version of ‘Spens’ in his novel White Jacket (1850). Agnes Cannon writes: ‘The evidence would seem to indicate that Melville learned most of the songs referred to in his novels during his years at sea either from hearing them sung by his fellow sailors or from the little books known as songsters which were so popular during the nineteenth century’. In White Jacket a sailor named Jack Chase sings many ‘salt sea ballads and ditties’, including ‘Spens’. Melville inserts two lines of the ballad into the text of the novel: ‘Sir Patrick Spens was the best sailor/That ever sailed the sea’.

Selected Criticism:

Merton M. Sealts, Jr., Melville’s Reading, Revised and enlarged edition. (University of South Carolina Press: 1988) [1948]. p. 108.

Agnes Dicken Cannon ‘Melville’s Use of Sea Ballads and Songs’, Western Folklore, Vol. 23, No. 1, Western States Folklore Society.(Jan., 1964), pp. 1-16. JSTOR

Links: InternetArchive; GoogleBooks; Online-Literature; OpenLibrary

1860-1885 “The Admiral of the White”

Henning Cohen writes: ‘What Melville seems to be attempting [in “The Admiral of the White”] was a sea ballad in the tradition of “Sir Patrick Spens”’. William Stein writes that the ending was a ‘muffled allusion to the ballad of “Sir Patrick Spens”’.

[Excerpt]

Like a baron bold from his mountain-hold,
At night looks the Admiral forth:
Heavy the clouds, and thick and dun,
They slant from the sullen North.

[…]

Pale, pale, but proud, “neath the billows loud,
The Admiral sleeps to night;
Pale, pale, but proud, in his sea-weed shroud,—
The Admiral of the White:
And by their gun the dutiful ones,
Who had fought, bravely fought the good fight.

Melville does not state that the admiral and sailors die because of the direct command of a foolish ruler ashore, but the men are bringing a prize home when they are caught in a storm. They wreck on the rocks because the store of seized metal arms brought on board flipped their compass. These mariners are involved in a war that was started and encouraged by superiors ashore.

Sources: GoogleBooks

1888 ‘The Haglets’

Melville draws on ‘Spens’ more thoroughly in ‘The Haglets’ (1888), a narrative poem about a fleet of captured Spanish ships that runs aground in rough weather on their return home with a prize. Melville’s protagonist is the Admiral of the Royal Navy, in charge of leading the fleet. (In a few versions of ‘Spens’ the skipper’s name is replaced with the actual Scottish admiral Sir Andrew Wood.) Melville begins ‘The Haglets’ by focusing on his admiral below the water, long after the shipwreck: ‘decayed and coral-mossed,/ a form recumbent, swords at feet.’ Melville repeats ‘swords are at feet’ in the next stanza. Later in the poem he describes the moon, on the wane, which foretells the death of all hands. After narrating the details of the tragedy, Melville ends the poem by returning to the image of the Admiral dead on the ocean floor:

[Excerpt]

Imbedded deep with shells
And drifted treasure deep,
Forever he sinks deeper in
Unfathomable sleep—
His cannon round him thrown,
His sailors at his feet,
The wizard sea enchanting them
Where never haglets beat.

Haglets appear throughout the poem, as birds indifferent to the death of these men and also as a pun for small hags, i.e. the three Fates themselves. Robert Madison argues convincingly that haglets are shearwaters (Puffinus sp.) a pelagic long-winged seabird. One possible interpretation, though unlikely, is that Melville wanted to connect these birds with storm petrels (Thalassidroma pelagica), smaller grey birds, which are common offshore in rough weather. In parts of Scotland in the nineteenth century, this bird was known as a ‘spencie’ or ‘spensie’. In supernatural belief and folklore, seabirds often represent the souls of dead sailors, so it is possible that this nickname for the storm petrel has a connection to ‘Sir Patrick Spens’, though no evidence has yet been found to support this.

Selected Criticism:

Robert D. Madison, ‘Mellville’s Haglets’, Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies 5.2 (Oct. 2003) pp. 79-83. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118900427/PDFSTART

William Bysshe Stein, ‘The Old Man and the Triple Goddess: Melville’s “The Haglets”‘, ELH, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Mar., 1958, Johns Hopkins University Press), pp. 43-59. JSTOR

Sources: GoogleBooks

(1924 posthumous) ‘Billy in the Darbies,’ from Billy Budd, Sailor

In this novella one of the sailors writes ‘Billy in the Darbies’, a broadside ballad that serves as an epilogue to the story. The sailor recounts how when out at sea the officers executed his shipmate Billy. The moon shines in through the porthole as the skilled, handsome Billy imagines himself ‘fathoms down, fathoms down’. The final words of the ballad are:

‘I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist’.

Melville’s dedication to Billy Budd is to Jack Chase, an actual friend to Melville and the same fictional sailor in White Jacket who sings ‘Spens’. Scholars believe Melville began the writing of Billy Budd after his creation of ‘Billy in the Darbies’, written apparently in the same year as ‘The Haglets’.

Still another possible connection to ‘Spens’ in Billy Budd is in regards to when Melville digresses to give historic background about mutinies in the Royal Navy. He writes of the Nore Mutiny and again puts forth the image of the skilled sailor who suffers because of his devotion to royalty:

‘The event converted into irony for a time those spirited strains of Dibdin—as a song-writer no mean auxiliary to the English government at that European conjuncture—strains celebrating, among other things, the patriotic devotion of the British tar: “And as for my life, ’tis the King’s!”’.

Links to text:GoogleBooks (poem); Virginia.edu (novella)

Penelope’s Progress: being such extracts from the commonplace book of Penelope Hamilton as relate to her experiences in Scotland. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1898 [1897]), pp. 168-181. GoogleBooks; OpenLibrary; InternetArchive

1900 ‘A Literature Lesson. Sir Patrick Spens in the Eighteenth Century Manner’

Raleigh’s poem ‘A Literature Lesson. Sir Patrick Spens in the Eighteenth Century Manner’ (1900) makes fun of the verbosity of some eighteenth-century poets, thus backwardly praising the tight storytelling of the popular ballad. Raleigh uses ‘Spens’ as the example which need not be tampered. He humourously expands the four-line opening of ‘Spens’ into twenty-two lines. His king expounds on his own leadership and evokes the Greek and Roman Gods for guidance. What is simply in ‘Spens’:

The king sits in Dumferling toune,
Drinking the blude-reid wine:
O quhar will I get guid sailòr,
To sail this schip of mine?

Raleigh expands, in part, to this:

In a famed town of Caledonia’s land,
A prosperous port contiguous to the strand,
A monarch feasted in right royal state;
But care still dogs the pleasures of the Great,
And well his faithful servants could surmise
From his distracted looks and broken sighs
That though the purple bowl was circling free,
His mind was prey to black perplexity.

Raleigh recognizes that the strength of the ballad form, its emotional force, is in its direct unadorned narrative. Through parody he shows how the more loquacious verse of the eighteenth century loses this quality. Raleigh’s poem ends:

Verse II

He spake: and straightway, rising from his side
An ancient senator, of reverend pride,
Unsealed his lips, and uttered from his soul
Great store of flatulence and rigmarole;
—All fled the Court, which shades of night invest,
And Pope and Gay and Prior told the rest.

Sources: ‘A Literature Lesson. Sir Patrick Spens In the Eighteenth Century Manner’, in Laughter from a Cloud, foreword by Hilary Raleigh (London: Constable, 1923), 207-08. PoemHunter; Univ.of Toronto