- Source: Lewti
"Lewti, or the Circassian Love-chaunt" is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798.
Publication
This poem was first published in the Morning Post (under the signature Nicias Erythraeus), on 18 April 1798: and was included in the Annual Anthology, 1800; and Sibylline Leaves, 1817, 1828, 1829, and 1834. In the Morning Post the poem was originally entitled "Lewti; or the Circassian's Love Chant".
"Lewti" was to have been included in the Lyrical Ballads of 1798, but at the last moment the sheets containing it were cancelled and "The Nightingale" substituted. A copy which belonged to Southey, with the new Table of Contents and "The Nightingale" bound up with the text as at first printed, is in the British Library. Another copy is extant which contains the first Table of Contents only, and Lewti without the addition of "The Nightingale". In the Morning Post the following note accompanies the poem:
It is not amongst the least pleasing of our recollections, that we have been the means of gratifying the public taste with some exquisite pieces of Original Poetry. For many of them we have been indebted to the author of the Circassian's Love Chant. Amidst images of war and woe, amidst scenes of carnage and horror of devastation and dismay, it may afford the mind a temporary relief to wander to the magic haunts of the Muses, to bowers and fountains which the despoiling powers of war have never visited, and where the lover pours forth his complaint, or receives the recompense of his constancy. The whole of the subsequent Love Chant is in a warm and impassioned strain. The fifth and last stanzas are, we think, the best.
Text
Gallery
See also
Circassian beauty
Circassian music
Orientalism
Notes
References
Sources
Coleridge, Ernest Hartley, ed. (1912). The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 253–56, 1049–62. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
Further reading
Joughin, G. Louis (1943). "Coleridge's "Lewti": The Biography of a Poem". Studies in English. 23: 66–93.
Mays, J. C. C. (1996). "The Intersection of Rhythmic and Cultural Meaning in Coleridge's 'Lewti'". Romanticism. 2 (2): 164–187.
Raysor, Thomas M. (1953). "Notes on Coleridge's "Lewti"". Philological Quarterly. 32: 207.
External links
Roberts, Adam (14 June 2016). "'Lewti, or the Circassian Love-Chant' (1798)". Samuel Taylor Bloggeridge. Blogger. Retrieved 23 June 2023.