Photo by Phyllis

In an era and culture of fake news, I have some reservations about the veracity of the following, but it’s been reported [*] that an hitherto unseen poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge has been discovered in his birthplace of Ottery St Mary – the actual location so far undisclosed – and it is said to be a sonnet in which Coleridge celebrates the town’s traditional Tar Barrel event.

The history of this event is considered to date back to the time of the gunpowder plot of 1605 and thus the alleged Coleridge sonnet is plausibly based on one or more personally observed November 5^th Tar Barrel events held in his hometown, Samuel living there from the date of his birth in 1772 to 1781.

The stylistic tone and Romantic reverie of the event’s impact on the writer reflects a mature appreciation and will have been written some time after Samuel left Ottery at eight years old – if indeed it is his work. You be the judge:

A thick orange flame flares from the barrel rim
And quivers hot, fluttering in the night,
This roaring unquiet thing on the backs
Of men in motion, a rush of nature
That gives me bright sympathies where I live.
O! this life in Ottery and afar
Which is all motion and becomes its soul,
All fire and sound, sound-bright powered light,
Rhythm in running and fun everywhere –
Methinks, it should be quite impossible
Not to love the Rollers in Ottery,
Where the bonfire rages and smoked air
Is Music merged with a barrel’s scorched tar,
As wild and various as random stars.

[*] Ersatz News International