It was in 1795, just a quarter of a century after Chatterton's death, that Southey and Coleridge were married in St. Mary Redcliffe's Church to the Misses Edith and Sara Fricker. Coleridge was greatly interested in Chatterton. In his "Lines on Observing a Blossom on the First of February, 1796," he compares the flower to
"Bristowa's bard, the wondrous boy, An amaranth which earth seemed scarce to own, Blooming 'mid poverty's drear wintry waste."
And a little earlier than this, when meditating his pantisocracy scheme with Southey and Lovell, he had addressed the dead poet in his indignant "Monody on the Death of Chatterton," associating him in imagination with the abortive community on the Susquehannah:
"O Chatterton, that thou wert yet alive! Sure thou would'st spread thy canvas to the gale, And love with us the tinkling team to drive O'er peaceful freedom's undivided dale; And we at sober eve would round thee throng, Hanging enraptured on thy stately song, And greet with smiles the young-eyed poesy All deftly masked as hoar antiquity. . . Yet will I love to follow the sweet dream Where Susquehannah pours his untamed stream; And on some hill, whose forest-frowning side Waves o'er the murmurs of his calmer tide, Will raise a solemn cenotaph to thee, Sweet harper of time-shrouded ministrelsy."
It might be hard to prove that the Rowley poems had very much to do with giving shape to Coleridge's own poetic output. Doubtless, without them, "Christabel," and "The Ancient Mariner," and "The Darke Ladye" would still have been; and yet it is possible that they might not have been just what they are. In "The Ancient Mariner" there is the ballad strain of the "Reliques," but _plus_ something of Chatterton's. In such lines as these:
"The bride hath paced into the hall Red as a rose is she: Nodding their heads before her, goes The merry minstrelsy;"
"The wedding guest here beat his breast For he heard the loud bassoon:"
one catches a far-away reverberation from certain stanzas of "The Bristowe Tragedie:" this, _e.g._,
"Before him went the council-men In scarlet robes and gold, And tassels spangling in the sun, Much glorious to behold;"
"In different parts a godly psalm Most sweetly they did chant: Behind their backs six minstrels came, Who tuned the strung bataunt."[27]