Epitaph (1833)

 

Mays notes: ‘the first version of C.’s epitaph’ consisted of the lines 3-6 only; but that the full version ‘may be dated from 27-8 Oct to 9 Nov 1833’, adding: ‘the poem was included in the Poetical Works (1834) as the last poem in the sequence, a position it occupies in many subsequent editions’. At the head of this post is a scan of that first appearance, on the volume's last page. 

Morton Paley considers it ‘the last important poem to be written by Coleridge … the culmination of a lifelong interest [in] epitaphs and epitaph-like poems, both for himself and for others.’ [Morton Paley, Coleridge’s Later Poetry (Oxford 1999) 114].

The opening phrase, ‘Stop, Christian Passer-by!’ is a standard opening for Latin funerary and epitaphic inscription: siste christiane viator! For example, here’s the first part of the epitaph in Paris of the Abbé de Chandenier (1646), the nephew of the Cardinal de la Rochefoucault:

Click to embiggen. You can see how conventional much of Coleridge's own epitaph is, with its emphasis on his humility, his salvation through Christ and so on. (‘An address to the presumed wayfarer, viator, is to be found in most of these epitaphs ... in some epitaphs, the wayfarer is addressed as viator Christiane’ [Iiro Kajanto, ‘Studies in the Latin Epitaphs of Medieval and Renaissance Rome’, Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae series B (1980), 35]). 

The second part of the opening line may glance at Ovid, though, I think: ‘siste puer’ [Ovid Fasti 1:365]. The ‘death-in-life’ and ‘life-in-death’ will tend to make us think of the Ancient Mariner, but Paley suggests instead John 12:25, ‘He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.’ This is certainly possible, although I think it's more likely Coleridge is thinking of the old Gregorian chant, Vita in morte media sumus, which of course works its way into the Book of Common Prayer: ‘in the midst of life we be in death: of whom may we seek for succor but of thee, O Lord?’

Some more, rather fanciful, speculations on this little epigraph here.