Cologne

by

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

IN Köhln, a town of monks and bones,

And pavements fang'd with murderous stones

And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches;

I counted two and seventy stenches,

All well defined, and several stinks!

Ye Nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks,

The river Rhine, it is well known,

Doth wash your city of Cologne;

            But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine

            Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as for his major prose work Biographia Literaria.

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