Robert Southey, _Joan of Arc_

 A GREAT FRIEND of Wordsworth and Coleridge, among other literary figures, and Poet Laureate of Great Britain in the latter part of his career, Southey wrote this epic poem in six weeks when he was twenty. It was published a couple of years later, in 1796. De Quincey recommended regarding Joan of Arc as juvenilia, a remark which seemed to me a rude dismissal, but now that I have read part of the poem (the beginning and the end, basically), I would call it charitable, in that it suggests Southey went on to do much better things.

 Joan of Arc is cringe-inducing. Right out of the gate, Southey takes considerable liberties with Joan's history. He begins with Joan encountering Dunois, the Bastard of Orleans, on her way to Charles VII's court at Chinon (didn't happen). They exchange stories; Joan tells Dunois that though she was born in Domrémy, she was raised in Harfleur (not true) and that her father was fatally injured in Henry V of England's taking of that city (nope). Joan was subsequently raised by hermit in the woods, who happens to be a herbalist healer (WTF?). 

I looked ahead to learn that the poem ends with the Battle of Patay (at which Joan was actually not present) and the coronation of Charles. That is, Joan's capture, trial, and martyrdom--for me, the most heroic part of her story--are left out of Southey's poem.

On top of that, the writing is clunky and wheezing, sub-sub-Milton.

At length I heard of Orleans, by the foe
Wall'd in from human succour; to the event
All look'd with fear, for there the fate of France
Hung in the balance.

However...the first half of Book II was written mostly by Coleridge, and it is fascinating. Coleridge is (I think) trying to answer the question of where Joan's voices came from, and he works around, in his Unitarian/pantheist/metaphysics-drenched Coleridgean way,  to the idea that they came from Being itself, which he does not shy away from explaining :

          Others boldlier think
That as one body is the aggregate 
Of atoms numberless, each organiz'd
So by a strange and dim similitude, 
Infinite myriads of self-conscious minds
Form one all-conscious spirit, who directs
With absolute ubiquity of thought
All  his competent monads, that yet seem
with various province and apt agency
Each to pursue its self-centering end.       

Thus my man Sam.  This was the spirit Joan heard. Coleridge wraps up his contribution with a stirring and utterly idiosyncratic hymn of praise:

 "Glory to thee, FATHER of Earth and Heaven!
All conscious PRESENCE of the Universe!
Nature's vast ever-acting ENERGY!
In will, in deed, IMPULSE of All to all,
Whether thy LAW with unrefracted Ray
Beam on the PROPHET'S purged Eye, or if
Distressing Realms the ENTHUSIAST wild of thought
Scatter new frenzies of the infected Throng,
THOU Both inspiring, and predooming Both,
Fit INSTRUMENTS and best of perfect END.
Glory to thee, Father of Earth and Heaven!"

Whew! Unfortunately, Southey decided to remove all of Coleridge's contribution to Book II when Joan of Arc was republished in 1798. I don't know why--perhaps he decided it did not match the rest of the poem (it doesn't, being much more interesting) or perhaps the friendship was on the rocks. Coleridge had ill-advisedly married the sister of Southey's wife, and the marriage did not go well. Hats off to editor Lynda Pratt for including both the 1796 and the 1798 texts in this handy first volume of Southey's Poetical Works, published by Pickering and Chatto in 2004.