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Updated: June 12, 2025
He wrote several long poems, the two best known perhaps are The Curse of Kehama and Thalaba, the one a Hindoo, the other a Mahometan story, but he is better remembered by his short poems, such as The Battle of Blenheim and The Inchcape Rock.
Luckless, indeed, is he who has the misfortune to possess, or the reputation of possessing this fatal power. From that time forward the world flees him, as the water did Thalaba. A curse is on him, and from the very terror at seeing him accidents are most likely to follow. Keep him from your children, or they will break their legs, arms, or necks.
Even more unpleasant is the description of Sextus Pompeius's consultation of the witch Erichtho; horror upon horror is piled up until the blood curdles at the sickening details, which even Southey's Thalaba does not approach and, after all, the feeling produced is not horror but disgust. It is pleasant to turn from his irreligion to his philosophy.
You are a strong swimmer, and have borne up poor Joey with all his leaden weights about him, his own and other people's! Nothing has answered to him but your works. By me he has lost somewhat by Fox, Amos, and himself very much. I can sell your "Thalaba" quite as well in your absence as in your presence.
Chilian had been reading Southey's "Thalaba." "Oh, no. We often read in the evening," said Cynthia. She was netting a bead bag, an industry all the rage then among the women. They really were prettier than the samplers. But she rose and brought the box of chessmen, while he rolled the table from its corner. "Will I disturb you if I stay?" she asked. "Not unless it interferes with Mr.
Now it was, I think, that I repeated to myself the words, which had ever been dear to me from my school days, "Exoriare aliquis!" now too, that Southey's beautiful poem of Thalaba, for which I had an immense liking, came forcibly to my mind. I began to think that I had a mission. There are sentences of my letters to my friends to this effect, if they are not destroyed.
This quotation is from memory, but, I trust, right in sentiment, though it may not be perfectly so in words; but I have seen little else concerning the physique either of him "Who framed of Thalaba that wild and wondrous song," or of those to whom his blood is transmitted.
Compare the choruses of the Samson Agonistes with any stanza taken at random in Thalaba: how much had the language gained in the interval between them! Without denying the high merits of Southey’s beautiful romance, we surely shall not be wrong in saying, that in its unembarrassed eloquent flow, it is the language of the nineteenth century that speaks, as much as the author himself.
The superior melody of the nightingale's song over the grave of Orpheus is alluded to by Southey in his "Thalaba": "Then on his ear what sounds Of harmony arose' Far music and the distance-mellowed song From bowers of merriment, The waterfall remote, The murmuring of the leafy groves; The single nightingale Perched in the rosier by, so richly toned, That never from that most melodious bird Singing a love song to his brooding mate, Did Thracian shepherd by the grave Of Orpheus hear a sweeter melody, Though there the spirit of the sepulchre All his own power infuse, to swell The incense that he loves"
He often opened a volume when halfway up the library steps, fell upon some interesting passage, and, without shifting his inconvenient posture, continued immersed in the fascinating perusal until the servant pulled him by the skirts to assure him that dinner waited. How happily the days Of Thalaba went by!
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