On First Looking Into Mays’ Coleridge
Albert Ross
(Coleridge Bulletin New Series 18, Winter 2001, p53)
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Much have I travelled through library stacks
And many fine poetic volumes browsed;
Round online catalogues I often moused,
Those cyber regions where one surfs and hacks.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That full-lipped Coleridge ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till MAYS displayed it loud and bold.
But sod it, Jim, this stolen Keats won’t do—
What’s stout Cortez to you, or vice versa?
I’m left by you and your great work, sir,
Silent, upon a peak in Xanadu.