Volume 5 — COLERIDGE AS A PLAGIARIST.
Reading edition
SOMETHING CHILDISH BUT VERY NATURAL.
Written in Germany 1798-99.
If I had but two little wings, And were a little feathery bird, To you I'd fly, my dear! But thoughts like these are idle things, And I stay here. But in my sleep to you I fly: I'm always with you in my sleep! The world is all one's own. But then one wakes, and where am I? All, all alone. Sleep stays not, though a monarch bids, So I love to wake ere break of day: For though my sleep be gone, Yet, while tis dark, one shuts one's lids, And still dreams on.
Thus much for Coleridge. Now for his original:
"Were I a little bird, Had I two wings of mine, I'd fly to my dear; But that can never be, So I stay here. "Though I am far from thee, Sleeping I'm near to thee, Talk with my dear; When I awake again, I am alone. "Scarce there's an hour in the night When sleep does not take its flight, And I think of thee, How many thousand times Thou gav'st thy heart to me."
"This," says Mr. Bayard Taylor, in the Notes to his translation of Faust, "this is an old song of the people of Germany. Herder published it in his Volkslieder, in 1779, but it was no doubt familiar to Goethe in his childhood. The original melody, to which it is still sung, is as simple and sweet as the words."