Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge was a British novelist and poet, who also wrote essays and reviews. She taught at the London Working Women's College for twelve years from 1895 to 1907. She wrote poetry under the pseudonym Anodos, taken from George MacDonald.
Coleridge published five novels, the best known of those being The King with Two Faces, which earned her £900 in royalties in 1897. She travelled widely throughout her life, although her home was in London, where she lived with her family. Her father was Arthur Duke Coleridge who, along with the singer Jenny Lind, was responsible for the formation of the London Bach Choir in 1875. Other family friends included Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, John Millais and Fanny Kemble.
Mary Coleridge was the great-grandniece of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the great niece of Sara Coleridge, the author of Phantasmion. She died from complications arising from appendicitis while on holiday in Harrogate in 1907, leaving an unfinished manuscript for her next novel, and hundreds of unpublished poems.
One of her poems, "The Blue Bird," was set to music by Charles Villiers Stanford. A family friend, the composer, Hubert Parry also set several of her poems to music.
“. . . The stormy sun was going downIn a stormy sky.Why did you let your eyes so rest on me,And hold your breath between?In all the ages this can never beAs if it had not been.”
“We Never Said FarewellWe never said farewell, nor even lookedOur last upon each other, for no signWas made when we the linkèd chain unhookedAnd broke the level line.And here we dwell together, side by side,Our places fixed for life upon the chart.Two islands that the roaring seas divideAre not more far apart.”
“The Other Side of a Mirror I sat before my glass one day,And conjured up a vision bare,Unlike the aspects glad and gay,That erst were found reflected there -The vision of a woman, wildWith more than womanly despair.Her hair stood back on either sideA face bereft of loveliness.It had no envy now to hideWhat once no man on earth could guess.It formed the thorny aureoleOf hard, unsanctified distress.Her lips were open - not a soundCame though the parted lines of red,Whate'er it was, the hideous woundIn silence and secret bled.No sigh relieved her speechless woe,She had no voice to speak her dread.And in her lurid eyes there shoneThe dying flame of life's desire,Made mad because its hope was gone,And kindled at the leaping fireOf jealousy and fierce revenge,And strength that could not change nor tire.Shade of a shadow in the glass,O set the crystal surface free!Pass - as the fairer visions pass -Nor ever more return, to beThe ghost of a distracted hour,That heard me whisper: - 'I am she!”