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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/11101-0.txt b/11101-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..42a3235 --- /dev/null +++ b/11101-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4567 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11101 *** + +The Scribner English Classics + +EDITED BY + +FREDERICK H. SYKES, PH.D. +TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY + + + +COLERIDGE'S ANCIENT MARINER AND SELECT POEMS + + + +1908 + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE + + +The text of the poems in this volume is that of J. Dykes Campbell in the +Globe edition of Coleridge's poems. For the introduction I have depended +also largely upon his Memoir of Coleridge, and upon the two volumes of +the "Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge," edited by the poet's grandson, +Mr. E.H. Coleridge. In the Notes, as will be seen, I am indebted +particularly to the general editor of this series, Dr. F.H. Sykes, to +Dr. Lane Cooper of Cornell University, and again to Mr. Coleridge, +through whose kindness I have been able to get a reproduction of the +Marshmills crayon, undoubtedly the most satisfactory portrait of the +poet in existence, for the frontispiece. + +H.M.B. + + + + +CONTENTS + + BIBLIOGRAPHY + + INTRODUCTION: + + I. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE + II. COLERIDGE'S POEMS + + TEXT: + + THE ANCIENT MARINER + CHRISTABEL + KUBLA KHAN + LOVE + FRANCE: AN ODE + DEJECTION: AN ODE + YOUTH AND AGE + WORK WITHOUT HOPE + EPITAPH + + NOTES + + + + +*SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY* + + +EDITIONS: + +Globe Edition. Edited by J. Dykes Campbell. 1 vol. Muses' Library. +Edited by Richard Garnett. + +LIFE AND CRITICISM: + +Stephen, Leslie, Article "Coleridge" in "The Dictionary of National +Biography." + +H.D. Traill, "Coleridge" ("English Men of Letters Series"). + +Caine, T.H., "Coleridge" ("Great Writers Series"). + +Coleridge, S.T., "Biographia Literaria" ("Everyman's Library"). + +De Quincey, T., "Lake Poets." + +Hazlitt, W., "First Acquaintance with Poets." + +Cottle, J., "Reminiscences of Coleridge and Southey." + +Pater, W., "Appreciations." + +Shairp, J.C., "Studies in Poetry and Philosophy." + +Sarrazin, Gabriel, "La Renaissance de la Poésie Anglaise, 1798-1889." + +Brandl, Alois, "S.T. Coleridge and the English Romantic School." + +BIBLIOGRAPHY: + +Haney, J.L., "A Bibliography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge." + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +I. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE + + +I. THE BEGINNINGS + + +Coleridge lived in what may safely be called the most momentous period +of modern history. In the year following his birth Warren Hastings was +appointed first governor-general of India, where he maintained English +empire during years of war with rival nations, and where he committed +those acts of cruelty and tyranny which called forth the greatest +eloquence of the greatest of English orators, in the famous impeachment +trial at Westminster, when Coleridge was a sixteen-year-old schoolboy in +London. A few years before his birth the liberal philosophy of France +had found a popular voice in the writings of Rousseau, which became the +gospel of revolution throughout Europe in Coleridge's youth and early +manhood. "The New Héloise" in the field of sentiment and of the relation +of the sexes, "The Social Contract" In political theory, and "Émile" in +matters of education, were books whose influence upon Coleridge's +generation it would be hard to estimate. When Coleridge was four years +old the English colonies in America declared their independence and +founded a new nation upon the natural rights of man,--a nation that has +grown to be the mightiest and most beneficent on the globe. Coleridge +was seventeen when the French Revolution broke out; he was forty-three +when Napoleon was sent to St. Helena. He saw the whole career of the +greatest political upheaval and of the greatest military genius of the +modern world. Fox, Pitt, and Burke,--the greatest Liberal orator, the +greatest Parliamentary leader, and the greatest philosophic statesman +that England has produced--were at the height of their glory when +Coleridge went up to Cambridge in 1791. + +In literature--naturally, since literature is but an interpretation of +life--the age was not less remarkable. Dr. Johnson was still alive when +Coleridge came up to school at Christ's Hospital, Goldsmith had died +eight years before. But a new spirit was abroad in the younger +generation. Macpherson's "Fingal," alleged to be a translation from the +ancient Gaelic poet Ossian, had appeared in 1760; Thomas Percy's +"Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," a collection of folk-ballads and +rude verse-romances such as the common people cherished but critics had +long refused to consider as poetry, was published in 1765. These two +books were of prime importance in fostering a new taste in +literature,--a love of natural beauty, of simplicity, and of rude +strength. The new taste hailed with delight the appearance of a native +lyric genius in Burns, whose first volume of poems was printed in 1786. +It welcomed also the homely, simple sweetness, what Coleridge and Lamb +called the "divine chit-chat," of Cowper, whose "Task" appeared in the +preceding year. But it was in Coleridge himself and his close +contemporaries and followers that the splendor of the new poetry showed +itself. He was two years younger than Wordsworth, a year younger than +Scott; he was sixteen at the birth of Byron, twenty at that of Shelley, +twenty-four at that of Keats; and he outlived all of them except +Wordsworth. His genius blossomed early. "The Ancient Mariner," his +greatest poem, was published some years before Wordsworth's "Ode on the +Intimations of Immortality" was written, or Scott's "Lay of the Last +Minstrel." He was in the prime of life, or what should have been the +prime of life--forty years old--when Byron burst into sudden fame with +the first two cantos of "Childe Harold" in 1812; he was forty-six when +Keats published "Endymion"; he was fifty-one when Shelley was drowned. +And of all this gifted company Coleridge, though not the strongest +character or the most prolific poet, was the profoundest intellect and +the _most originative poetic spirit_. + +There was little hint, however, of future greatness or of fellowship +with great names in his birth and early circumstances. His father was a +country clergyman and schoolmaster in the village of Ottery St. Mary, in +Devonshire, a simple-hearted unworldly man, full of curious learning and +not very attentive to practical affairs. His mother managed the +household and brought up the children. Both his parents were of simple +West-country stock; but his father, having a natural turn for study and +having done well in his early manhood as a schoolmaster, went at the age +of thirty-one as a sizar, or poor student, to Sidney-Sussex College, +Cambridge, took orders, and was afterwards given the living of Ottery +St. Mary. Here he continued his beloved work of teaching, in addition to +his pastoral duties, and by means of this combination won the humble +livelihood which, through his wife's careful economy, sufficed for +rearing his large family. Coleridge tells us that his father "had so +little of parental ambition in him that he had destined his children to +be blacksmiths, etc." (though he had "resolved that I should be a +parson"), "and had accomplished his intention but for my mother's pride +and spirit of aggrandizing her family." Several of the children rewarded +their mother's care by distinguishing themselves in a modest way in the +army or in the church, but the only one about whom the world is curious +now was the youngest of the ten, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was born +at Ottery St. Mary, October 21, 1772. + +The essential traits of his later character appeared in his early +childhood. Almost from infancy he lived in his imagination rather than +in the world of reality. "The schoolboys drove me from play, and were +always tormenting me, and hence I took no pleasure in boyish sports, but +read incessantly.... I became a _dreamer_, and acquired an indisposition +to all bodily activity; and I was fretful, and inordinately +passionate." "Sensibility, imagination, vanity, sloth," were "prominent +and manifest" in his character before he was eight years old. Such is +his own account of his childhood, written to his friend Poole in 1797; +and it is an accurate description, as far as it goes, of the grown man. +But of the religious temper, too, the love of freedom and of virtue, the +hatred of injustice, cruelty, and falsehood that guided his uneven steps +through all the pitiful struggle of his middle life, of the conscience +that made his weakness hell to him--of these, too, we may be sure that +the beginnings were to be seen in the boy at Ottery St. Mary, as indeed +they were before his eyes in the person of his father, who, if not a +first-rate genius, was, says his son, "a first-rate Christian." + +The good vicar died in 1781; and the next year, a "presentation" to +Christ's Hospital having been secured for him, little Samuel, not yet +eleven years old, went up to London to enter the famous old city school. +Here, + + "In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim," + +where he + + "Saw nought lovely but the sky and stars," + +one of some seven hundred Blue-Coat boys, Coleridge lived for nine +years. + +Most of the boys at Christ's Hospital, then as now, were given a +"commercial" education (which none the less included a very thorough +training in Latin); but a few of the most promising students were each +year selected by the masters for a classical training in preparation for +the universities, whence they were known as Grecians. Coleridge was +elected a Grecian in 1788. The famous Boyer--famous for his enthusiasm +alike in teaching the classics and in wielding the birch--laid the +foundation of Coleridge's later scholarship. Here, too, Coleridge did a +great amount of reading not laid down in the curriculum,--Latin and +Greek poetry and philosophy, mediaeval science and metaphysics--and won +the approval of his teachers by the excellence of his verses in Greek +and Latin, such as boys at school and students at the universities were +expected to write in those days. In the great city school, as in the +Devonshire vicarage, he lived in the imagination, inert of body and +rapacious of intellect; but he was solitary no longer, having found his +tongue and among his more intellectual schoolfellows an interested +audience. While yet a boy, he would hold an audience spellbound by his +eloquent declamation or the fervor of his argument till, as Lamb, who +was one of his hearers, tells us, "the walls of the old Grey Friars +re-echoed to the accents of the _inspired charity boy_!" That is the way +his conversation,--or monologue, as it often was,--affected not boys +only, but men, and especially young men, to his dying day. He cast a +spell upon men by his speech; upon his schoolfellows, upon young men at +the universities in the Pantisocracy days, upon Lloyd and Poole at +Nether Stowey, upon earnest young thinkers in his last days at Highgate; +so that even if he had never written "The Ancient Mariner" and the +_Biographia, Literaria_ he would still be remembered for the inspiration +of his talk. + +Further details of the life at Christ's Hospital must be sought in +Lamb's two essays, especially that on "Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty +Years Ago." In 1791, having secured a Christ's Hospital "exhibition," he +entered Jesus College, Cambridge. + +His university life extended over three years, from October, 1791, to +December, 1794. It was an unhappy time for him and an uneasy time for +his respectable relatives, for reasons that were partly in his own +nature and partly in the temper of the times. + +Even Boyer's severe training, while it had made him a hard student and +an unusual scholar for his years, had failed to give him what he most +needed as a balance to his intellect and imagination, stability of +character. There is evidence that after the first few months, during +which the habits of his hard school life had not yet broken, the new +liberty of university life led him into extravagance, if not +dissipation. Work he doubtless did (he won the Browne medal for a Greek +ode on the slave-trade in 1792), but fitfully, giving less and less +attention to his regular studies and more to conviviality and, above +all, to dreams of literary fame. He wrote verses after various models, +sentimental, fanciful, or gallant; he was enthusiastic in praise of a +contemporary sonneteer, the Rev. William Bowles, whose "divine +sensibility" seemed to him the height of poetic feeling; and in +connection with Wordsworth's younger brother Christopher, who entered +Cambridge in 1793, he formed a literary society that discussed, among +other things, Wordsworth's volume of early poetry, "Descriptive +Sketches," published in that year. Wordsworth himself was a Cambridge +man, but had taken his degree in 1791 and gone abroad, so that the two +men whose personal friendship was to mean so much in English poetry did +not meet until 1796. Already in 1793, however, Coleridge had developed +political theories, or rather sympathies, which were preparing him for +fellowship with Wordsworth. + +The French Revolution, which, after years of preparation, took concrete +shape in 1789, did not look to young Englishmen in 1791-4 as it looks to +us now, nor even as it was to look to those same Englishmen in 1800. In +those first years warm-hearted young enthusiasts at the universities saw +in the violence of their fellow-men across the Channel only the +struggles of the beautiful Spirit of Liberty bursting the chains of +age-long tyranny and corruption and calling men up to the heights to +breathe diviner air. + + "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, + But to be young was very Heaven!" + +wrote Wordsworth afterwards; and in the glow of his young idealism he +had gone over to France in the autumn of 1791 and was on the point of +throwing in his lot with the revolutionists, when his parents compelled +his return by cutting off his supplies. And many who, like Coleridge, +merely watched from afar shared his faith that a new order of things was +to be established, wherein Love should be Law and man's inhumanity to +man become but a memory of things outworn. + +Less generous men, with a selfish interest in established privileges; +timid men, who looked with terror upon any prospect of change; older and +wiser men, who better understood the foundations of social order and the +nature of man--all these looked with distrust upon the revolutionary +idealism that was spreading from France through the younger generation +of Englishmen. The new notions of liberty, it was felt, threatened not +only the vested rights of property and the prescriptions of rank, but +the Church, too, and religion. Some of the would-be reformers were +avowed atheists; some (Coleridge and his friends, for instance, in the +Pantisocracy period) were communists. In general, they ascribed all the +evils of society to "institutions," and wanted them abolished. + +Just how far Coleridge had gone in this direction by the autumn of 1793 +we do not know; far enough at least to disturb his view of the future, +to worry his elder brother George, a clergyman and school-teacher, who +had in some measure filled a father's place to the young genius, and, +most important of all, to alarm and distress a gentle girl in London. +For before he left Christ's Hospital for Cambridge he had become +intimate at the house of a Mrs. Evans, and most of the letters preserved +from his first two years at the University were addressed to her or to +one of her two daughters, Anne and Mary. With the latter Coleridge was +in love; and that she had some regard for him is apparent from a letter +she sent him in 1794. Before that, however, Coleridge had taken a step +that seemed likely to close at once his college career and his prospects +of literary fame. The reasons have not been recorded: probably pecuniary +embarrassment, the yeasty state of his religious and political ideas, +and impatience or despondency over his love-affair with Mary Evans, +combined to precipitate his flight; what we know is that he ran away +from Cambridge and in December, 1793, enlisted as a dragoon in the +army. + +Coleridge had hardly taken the step before he repented of it. His +letters to his brother George, who with other friends bestirred himself +for Coleridge's release as soon as his whereabouts was discovered, are +rather distressing in their self-abasement. The efforts of his friends +were successful and in April he returned to the University, where a +public admonition was the extent of his punishment, and he continued in +receipt of his Christ's Hospital exhibition. + +But Coleridge's college days were practically over. He was now nearly +twenty-two years old, and the revolutionary unrest which had doubtless +contributed to his first escapade soon resulted in the formation of +schemes that took him away from Cambridge for good and all. In June, +1794, he made a visit to an old schoolfellow at Oxford. Here he met +Robert Southey of Balliol College. A friendship sprang up between them +out of which, before the end of the summer, grew the Utopian scheme of +Pantisocracy. A company of gentlemen and ladies were to emigrate to +America, take up lands in the Susquehanna valley, and there establish an +ideal community in which all should bear rule equally and find happiness +in a life of justice, labor, and love. The education of the young in the +principles of ideal humanity was an important part of the scheme. We are +reminded of the Brook Farm experiment in New England a generation later, +which bears a daughter's likeness to Pantisocracy, the chief difference +being that the New England enthusiasts were mature men and women and +really put the idea into practice, whereas the Pantisocrats were for the +most part collegians and never got beyond the stage of talking and +writing about their plans. The scheme was further elaborated at Bristol, +where Coleridge, returning from a vacation tour in Wales, again met +Southey, and at Bath, the home of Southey and of Southey's betrothed and +her sister, Edith and Sarah Fricker--"two sisters, milliners of Bath," +as Byron contemptuously called them. + +To the other sister, Sarah, Coleridge rather precipitately engaged +himself. His love for Mary Evans was not dead, but he seems to have +despaired of winning her and to have determined, by uniting himself +domestically with Southey and his friends, to make retreat from their +communistic scheme impossible. A few weeks later he is back at +Cambridge, tortured apparently between his old love and his new +engagement. Mary Evans has written to him deploring his wild notions and +the mad plan of Pantisocracy, yet confident that he has "too much +sensibility to be an infidel." Southey has reproved him rather sharply +for failing to write to his betrothed at Bath. Our next glimpse of him +is at London, discussing poetry and philosophy with Lamb at the +"Salutation and Cat" tavern and perhaps trying to get a sight of Mary +Evans. In December he is again at Bristol, in lively correspondence with +Southey about democracy, Pantisocracy, and poetry, but at the same time +he addresses a last appeal to Miss Evans. Her answer is kind, but final; +that chapter is closed, and Coleridge writes to Southey that he will "do +his duty," by which he means apparently that he will be faithful to +Pantisocracy and marry Sarah Fricker. + +The Pantisocracy scheme could not in the nature of things be long-lived. +As a matter of fact it lasted little more than a year, ending in a +rupture between the two leading spirits just when they became +brothers-in-law. Coleridge spent the summer of 1795 in Bristol in +company with Southey, writing and lecturing. In October he was married +to Sarah Fricker in "St. Mary's Redcliff, poor Chatterton's church." In +November Southey married Edith Fricker and set sail for Lisbon, where +his uncle was the English chaplain; and Pantisocracy was dead. + +The break with Southey was the natural result of attempting to force +through a scheme impracticable in itself and doubly impracticable for +the men who conceived it. Its collapse did not altogether sever their +literary relations. The collaboration begun in "The Fall of Robespierre" +(Cambridge, 1794) was continued in Southey's "Joan of Arc" (1796), to +which Coleridge contributed the part afterwards printed (with some +additions) as "The Destiny of Nations," and in Coleridge's first volume +of "Poems" (Bristol, 1796). A more important contributor to this volume, +however, was Charles Lamb, whose initials were appended to four of the +pieces. A second edition appeared in June, 1797, with eleven additions +from Coleridge besides verses by Lamb and Charles Lloyd, all under the +title: "Poems by S.T. Coleridge. Second Edition. To which are added +Poems by Charles Lamb, and Charles Lloyd." The publisher of both +editions was Joseph Cottle, a bookseller of Bristol, who played the part +of provincial Murray to the young poets in these years. + +Meanwhile Coleridge, after a period of lecturing and projecting, had as +we have seen married Sarah Fricker, with whom he was now very much in +love, and had begun housekeeping in a cottage at Clevedon near the +Bristol Channel. The beauty of the place and his happiness there are +celebrated in "The Aeolian Harp" and "Reflections on Leaving a Place of +Retirement" (better known by its opening words, "Low was our pretty +cot"). His next residence was in Bristol--rather a base of operations +than a home, for Coleridge was on the road much of the time, lecturing, +preaching, soliciting subscriptions for his political and philosophical +paper "The Watchman" (which ran from March to May, 1796), and trying in +various other ways to provide for his family, which was increased by the +birth of a son in September, 1796. At last in December he secured the +little cottage at Nether Stowey in the Quantock Hills (south of the +Bristol Channel, in Somerset), close to the house of his beloved friend, +Thomas Poole, where he lived until his departure for Germany in +September, 1798. + + +II. AT NETHER STOWEY + + +The Stowey period was the blossoming time of Coleridge's genius. All the +poems in this volume except the last four, and besides these "This +Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," "Frost at Midnight," and "Fears in +Solitude"--the bulk of his achievement in poetry--were either written or +begun in 1797 and 1798. It will be proper, then, to dwell a little on +his circumstances, his friends, and his ideas during these two years. + +The means of livelihood for himself and his family when he went to +Stowey were a subscription of about £40 that Poole and some friends got +together for him, £20 that Cottle paid for the second edition of the +"Poems," the promise of £80 from the father of Charles Lloyd, who was to +live with him and study under his direction, and such money as he could +earn by reviews and magazine articles, which he estimated at £40 a year; +not a munificent provision for a household of three adults and a child. +But the theories of the simple life that had made Pantisocracy seem a +feasible project still inspired him with confidence. "Sixteen +shillings," he wrote to Poole, "would cover all the weekly expenses of +my wife, infant, and myself. This I say from my wife's own +calculations." Further, he will support himself by the labor of his +hands. "If you can instruct me to manage an acre and a half of land, and +to raise in it, with my own hands, all kinds of vegetables and grain, +enough for myself and my wife and sufficient to feed a pig or two with +the refuse, I hope that you will have served me _most_ effectually by +placing me out of the necessity of being served." This was in December, +just before he moved to Stowey. In February he wrote from his new home +to another friend: "From seven till half past eight I work in my garden; +from breakfast till twelve I read and compose, then read again, feed the +pigs, poultry, etc., till two o'clock; after dinner work again till tea; +from tea till supper, _review_. So jogs the day, and I am happy.... I +raise potatoes and all manner of vegetables, have an orchard, and shall +raise corn with the spade, enough for my family. We have two pigs, and +ducks and geese. A cow would not answer the keep: we have whatever milk +we want from T. Poole." + +There is a suspicious regularity about this schedule. Lamb wrote from +London in January: "Is it a farm that you have got? And what does your +worship know about farming?" His agricultural activity, in the month of +February, must have been chiefly prospective; and we may safely assume +that Poole supplied other things besides milk, and that the poet spent +more time reading, dreaming, and talking than he did raising potatoes. A +good deal of time must have been spent in the actual composition of his +poetry, including his play "Osorio," which was written in 1797, and in +studying the landscape beauties of the Quantocks. After the coming of +the Wordsworths to Alfoxden he spent much of the time walking between +Alfoxden and Stowey, or further afield with Wordsworth and his sister. +"My walks," he wrote afterwards, "were almost daily on the top of +Quantock, and among its sloping coombs. With my pencil and +memorandum-book in my hand, I was making studies, as the artists call +them, and often moulding them into verse with the objects and imagery +immediately before my eyes." This does not sound much like "raising corn +with the spade." + +On Sundays he would sometimes preach before such Unitarian +congregations, within walking distance, as cared to hear him. But as he +would take no pay for his services his preaching contributed nothing +toward the support of his family. Lloyd, who was epileptic and subject +to moody variation in his attachments, was but an irregular housemate +after the first few months, and his contribution to the household +expenses was correspondingly uncertain. The future looked so dark in +October, 1797, that in spite of misgivings and former scruples he had +concluded that he "must become a Unitarian minister, as a less evil than +starvation." Accordingly he was in Shrewsbury in January, 1798, +preaching in the Unitarian church and on the point of accepting the +pastorate at a salary of £150 a year, when the sky brightened in another +quarter. Thomas and Josiah Wedgwood, sons of the famous potter and +friends of Thomas Poole, offered him an equal sum annually as a free +gift. They were wealthy men, well able to afford it; they attached no +condition to the gift except that he should devote himself entirely to +the study of poetry and philosophy, which was precisely what he wanted +to do; and he was not long in determining to accept the offer. "I +accepted it," he wrote to Wordsworth while still at Shrewsbury, "on the +presumption that I had talents, honesty, and propensities to perseverant +effort." The propensities, alas, remained propensities, never acquiring +the force of habit. The pension, however, continued to be paid in full +until 1812, when Josiah Wedgwood withdrew his half of it. The other +half, upon the death of Thomas Wedgwood in 1805, had been secured to +Coleridge for life; and this annuity must have constituted the chief +reliance of Mrs. Coleridge for many years. + +If Coleridge did not prosper financially, he was at least fortunate in +his friends; and a man's friends are after all the best testimony to the +character of his mind and heart. When he went to Stowey in December, +1796, he was again on good terms with Southey, though the enthusiasm of +their first fellowship was gone. The friendship with Lamb, begun in +their school-days and renewed at the "Salutation and Cat" in 1794, was +maintained by an eager correspondence and by Lamb's visit to Stowey in +July, 1797; and although Lloyd's vagaries led to a coolness between the +old friends in the following year, the breach was soon healed, and the +friendship continued till death. Another with whom Coleridge maintained +a voluminous correspondence in 1796-7 was John Thelwall, theoretical +democrat, atheist, and admirer of Godwin, whose visit to Coleridge and +Wordsworth in the summer of 1797 so shocked the good conservatives of +the neighborhood that Wordsworth had to leave Alfoxden in consequence of +it. But without doubt the dearest and most influential friend Coleridge +had before the Wordsworths came into his life was Thomas Poole. It was +in order to be in daily intercourse with Poole that he moved to Stowey; +and Poole's hesitation about securing the cottage for him, arising, +Coleridge seemed to fear, from imperfect confidence and friendship, was +a source of agonized apprehension to the sensitive poet. When we +consider that Poole was a self-educated man, a Somersetshire tanner with +no claim to literary genius or philosophical acquirements, Coleridge's +devotion to him and dependence on him bring out in a strong light the +substantial, elemental character of the man. "O Poole!" Coleridge wrote +to him from Germany afterwards, "you are a noble heart as ever God +made!" Poole had indeed in a marked degree the genius for friendship. +Strength of character, sympathy, and self-effacing devotion, combined +with prudence and sincerity, made this man a tower of refuge for the +unstable spirit of the poet. + +No other single relation, however, can compare in importance, for +Coleridge's poetic development, with that which sprang up in the summer +of 1797 between him and William Wordsworth. Just when they first met is +not recorded. We have seen that Coleridge was acquainted with +Wordsworth's younger brother in his college days, and discussed with him +Wordsworth's first published poems. In January, 1797, he told Cottle +that he wished to submit his "Visions of the Maid of Arc" to Wordsworth +for criticism. The earliest definite record of their personal +acquaintance is a letter Coleridge wrote to Cottle while on a visit to +Wordsworth at Racedown (just over the Somerset border in Dorsetshire) +early in June. About the beginning of July he is again at Racedown; and +when he returns he brings Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy with him for +a visit. On the 7th Lamb arrived for his long-planned reunion with +Coleridge. The second week of July, 1797, was thus a rich and +long-remembered time for all of them, despite the fact that Mrs. +Coleridge "accidentally emptied a skillet of boiling milk" on her +husband's foot, which confined him "during the whole time of Charles +Lamb's stay." The others took long walks in the neighborhood, amid such +scenery as is described in "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," a poem +that admirably voices the happiness, of those days of spiritual +fellowship. The Wordsworths did not return to Racedown. "By a +combination of curious circumstances a gentleman's seat, with a park and +woods, elegantly and completely furnished,... in the most beautiful and +romantic situation by the seaside, four miles from Stowey--this we have +got for Wordsworth at the _rent of twenty-three pounds a year, taxes +included_!" Coleridge triumphantly announced to Southey; and in this +house, the Manor of Alfoxden, the Wordsworths remained for a year, in +daily companionship with Coleridge and surrounded by scenes of natural +beauty that have left a lasting mark on the work of both poets. + +What the friendship with Coleridge meant to Wordsworth may best be seen +in "The Prelude: or, Growth of a Poet's Mind," Wordsworth's greatest +long poem, written some years afterwards and addressed throughout to +Coleridge. + + "There is no grief, no sorrow, no despair, + No languor, no dejection, no dismay, + No absence scarcely can there be, for those + Who love as we do." + +What Wordsworth was to Coleridge is more important for us here. The +admiration which the brilliant child of genius felt for the great +preacher-poet is chiefly, one feels, an admiration for his character. As +a matter of fact, Wordsworth had written nothing, up to his coming to +Alfoxden, that would have preserved his name as a poet, nothing so +noteworthy or promising as what Coleridge had already written. But +Coleridge felt in this lean and thoughtful young man a strength of mind, +a depth and sureness of heart that compelled his allegiance and even +imparted, for the time, some of that resolution in which he was by +nature so sadly deficient. The character of their friendship is to be +seen not only in the published work of the two poets from this time on +(notably in "Dejection"), but perhaps even more clearly in Dorothy +Wordsworth's Journal and in Coleridge's letters. "I speak with +heart-felt sincerity," he wrote to Cottle in June, 1797, "and (I think) +unblinded judgment, when I tell you that I feel myself _a little man by +his side_, and yet do not think myself the less man than I formerly +thought myself.... T. Poole's opinion of Wordsworth is that he is the +greatest man he ever knew; I coincide." Wordsworth's influence is +evident in a letter from Coleridge to his brother George in April, 1798: +"I love fields and woods and mountains with almost a visionary fondness. +And because I have found benevolence and quietness growing within me as +that fondness has increased, therefore I should wish to be the means of +implanting it in others, and to destroy the bad passions not by +combating them but by keeping them in inaction." Under the calming and +clarifying influence of the stronger Northern spirit the fever of his +revolutionary dreams abated, he found happiness in the conscious +exercise of his poetic powers, and for one year in his troubled +existence his genius showed itself in all its splendor. + +The immediate poetic result of their friendship was the "Lyrical +Ballads," published by Cottle in September, 1798. The origin of the work +has been described both by Wordsworth (in a prefatory note to "We Are +Seven") and by Coleridge (in the _Biographia Literaria_, chap. xiv.). At +first, they were to collaborate in writing a poem the proceeds of which +should pay the expenses of a little tour they were making when the plan +was thought of, in November, 1797; and thus "The Ancient Mariner" was +begun. As this poem grew under Coleridge's "shaping-spirit of +imagination" Wordsworth saw that he "could only be a clog" upon its +progress, and it was resigned to Coleridge. The plan was then enlarged +to include a volume illustrating "two cardinal points of poetry, the +power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to +the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by +the modifying colours of imagination." Wordsworth was to illustrate the +former principle, Coleridge the latter, and the proceeds of the book +were to go toward the expenses of a trip to Germany, decided on in the +spring of 1798. The bulk of the volume was Wordsworth's, and was +typically Wordsworthian, ranging from such simple ballads of humble +incident as "Goody Blake" and "The Idiot Boy" to the magnificent blank +verse of "Tintern Abbey"; Coleridge's share consisted of a brief poem +called "The Nightingale," two short extracts from "Osorio," and "The +Rime of the Ancyent Marinere." + +Apart from the "Lyrical Ballads" Coleridge conceived and finished +between June, 1797, and the departure for Germany in 1798, and published +in the latter year, "Fire, Famine, and Slaughter," "Frost at Midnight," +"Fears in Solitude," and "France." He conceived and partly executed, but +did not then publish, "Christabel," "Kubla Khan," "Love," "The Ballad of +the Dark Ladie," and "The Three Graves." Thus, all Coleridge's best +poetry, with the exception of those three saddest of voices out of a +broken life, "Dejection" (1802), the lines to Wordsworth on hearing him +read "The Prelude" (1807), and "Youth and Age" (1823-32), belongs either +wholly or in its inception to the year of his fellowship with the +Wordsworths in the Quantock Hills. + +Of his political, religious, and literary opinions at this time he has +left a fairly adequate account in his published writings and his +correspondence, especially in the _Biographia Literaria_ and in the +letter to the Rev. George Coleridge referred to above. The first year of +his married life saw him still, in spite of the failure of Pantisocracy, +an eager visionary reformer upborne by generous enthusiasm and ardent +religious feeling. "O! never can I remember those days," he wrote in the +_Biographia_, "with either shame or regret. For I was most sincere, most +disinterested! My opinions were indeed in many and most important points +erroneous; but my heart was single. Wealth, rank, life itself, then +seemed cheap to me, compared with the interest of (what I believed to +be) the truth, and the will of my Maker." However much he may have +consorted with unbelievers like Thelwall and distressed his good brother +George by his heterodoxy, he was by nature deeply religious. He tried in +his letters to recover Thelwall from his "atheism," though he heartily +approved a sentiment expressed by the latter: "He who thinks and _feels_ +will be virtuous; and he who is absorbed in self will be vicious, +whatever may be his speculative opinions." Godwin's system of "Justice," +with its soulless logic, he abhorred. He preached often in Unitarian +churches. To young Hazlitt, who heard him preach in January, 1798, from +the text "And He went up into the mountain to pray, _Himself, alone_," +it seemed "as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human +heart, and as if that prayer might have floated in solemn silence +through the universe." In politics he was, when he went to Stowey, +"almost equidistant from all the three prominent parties, the Pittites, +the Foxites, and the Democrats"; he was "a vehement anti-ministerialist, +but after the invasion of Switzerland, a more vehement anti-Gallican +[see the last two stanzas of "France"], and still more intensely an +anti-Jacobin." Under Wordsworth's influence his thoughts turned in great +measure from contemporary politics to more fundamental matters. Always +his poetry had been the utterance of his essential being. "I feel +strongly and I think strongly," he wrote to Thelwall in 1796, "but I +seldom feel without thinking or think without feeling. Hence, though my +poetry has in general a hue of tenderness or passion over it, yet it +seldom exhibits unmixed and simple tenderness and passion. My +philosophical opinions are blended with or deduced from my feelings." +Wordsworth gave his feelings a new object and his philosophy a higher +aim. In April of the second year at Stowey, in the letter to his brother +already quoted, Coleridge wrote: "I have for some time past withdrawn +myself totally from the consideration of _immediate causes_, which are +infinitely complex and uncertain, to muse on fundamental and general +causes, the 'causae causarum.' I devote myself to such works as encroach +not on the anti-social passions--in poetry, to elevate the imagination +and set the affections in right tune by the beauty of the inanimate +impregnated as with a living soul by the presence of life--in prose to +the seeking with patience and a slow, very slow mind, 'Quid sumus, et +quidnam victuri gignimus,'--what our faculties are and what they are +capable of becoming." This last sentence is a sort of half-prophetic +summary of his life's work; but the poetry soon gave way to the prose, +and he never again so nearly realized his poetical ideal as he had +already done in "The Ancient Mariner." + +Of his person and the impression he made upon people at this time there +are various contemporary accounts. To Thelwall, in November, 1796, he +sent the following description of himself: "... my face, unless when +animated by immediate eloquence, expresses great sloth, and great, +indeed almost idiotic good-nature. 'Tis a mere carcass of a face; fat, +flabby, and expressive chiefly of inexpression. Yet I am told that my +eyes, eyebrows, and forehead are physiognomically good; but of this the +deponent knoweth not. As to my shape, 'tis a good shape enough if +measured, but my gait is awkward, and the walk of the whole man +indicates _indolence capable of energies_.... I cannot breathe through +my nose, so my mouth, with sensual thick lips, is almost always open. In +conversation I am impassioned, and oppose what I deem error with an +eagerness which is often mistaken for personal asperity; but I am ever +so swallowed up in the _thing_ said that I forget my _opponent_. Such am +I." The Rev. Leapidge Smith, in his "Reminiscences of an Octogenarian," +remembered him as "a tall, dark, handsome young man, with long, black, +flowing hair; eyes not merely dark, but black, and keenly penetrating; a +fine forehead, a deep-toned, harmonious voice; a manner never to be +forgotten, full of life, vivacity, and kindness; dignified in person +and, added to all these, exhibiting the elements of his future +greatness."[1] Hazlitt, in "My First Acquaintance with Poets" (a paper +that every student of Coleridge's life and poetry should read), +describing him as he appeared on his visit to Hazlitt's father at Wem in +1798, says: "His complexion was at that time clear, and even bright. His +forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with large +projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them like a sea with +darkened lustre.... His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his +chin good-humored and round, but his nose, the rudder of the face, the +index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing--like what he has done." +And Dorothy Wordsworth (to close with a contemporary and sympathetic +impression) set him down in her journal after their first meeting at +Racedown thus: "He is a wonderful man. His conversation teems with soul, +mind, and spirit.... At first I thought him very plain, that is for +about three minutes: he is pale, thin, has a wide mouth, thick lips, and +not very good teeth, longish, loose-growing, half-curling, rough black +hair. But if you hear him speak for five minutes you think no more of +them. His eye is large and full, and not very dark, but grey[2]--such an +eye as would receive from a heavy soul the dullest expression; but it +speaks every emotion of his animated mind; it has more of 'the poet's +eye in a fine frenzy rolling' than I ever witnessed. He has fine dark +eyebrows, and an overhanging forehead." The friendly and keen-sighted +woman gives a more sympathetic picture than the others; but there must +have been truth, too, in the view of the equally keen-sighted and less +friendly Hazlitt, whose description accords well with Coleridge's +self-portraiture, and in the last sarcastic item, too well, with the +remainder of the poet's career. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: "Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge," ed. by E.H. +Coleridge, Vol. I., p. 180, note.] + +[Footnote 2: The uncertainty as to the color of his eyes is a tribute to +their expressiveness. Carlyle described him in 1824 as having "a pair of +strange brown, timid, yet earnest-looking eyes." Emerson visited him in +1833 and found him "with bright blue eyes and fine clear complexion."] + + + + +III. THE REST OF THE STORY + + +Coleridge lived for thirty-six years after he left Stowey for Germany in +1798. His fame as a poet grew as the world became acquainted with and +learned to feel the peculiar charm of his poetry, and he was even more +famous, for a while, as a literary critic and a moral philosopher. But +they were years of weak-willed wandering, of vast hazy plans and feeble +performance, lighted only here and there by glimpses of fragmentary +accomplishment, and that seldom in poetry. Keats died at twenty-six, +leaving behind him a body of poetry hardly less wonderful than Coleridge +had fashioned at the same age; and another poet sang of him: + + "The bloom, whose petals, nipt before they blew, + Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste." + +In Coleridge the poet died at nearly the same age, almost as completely +as if the man himself had passed "within the twilight chamber ... of +white Death"; and "Dejection" is that poet's dirge. The remaining years +need therefore but few words. + +Coleridge had taken opium, perhaps as early as his school-days, for +relief from neuralgia. He had recourse to it in March, 1796, for +sleeplessness; in the following November, for relief from violent +nervous pains; and near the close of the Stowey period, in May, 1798, +when the vagaries of Lloyd, the estrangement from Lamb, domestic +anxiety, and physical suffering had reduced him to a state of extreme +nervous wretchedness, he again took refuge in opiates, of which "Kubla +Khan" is partly the result. He returned from Germany in 1799, worked for +a while on a newspaper in London and on a translation of Schiller's +"Wallenstein," and in the summer of 1800 removed to Keswick in +Cumberland, in the Lake Country, where the Wordsworths had already +established themselves. Here, in the autumn of 1800, he strove to +finish "Christabel," and did finish the second part. In the winter and +spring he suffered from a complicated illness, in which he again had +recourse to laudanum; and from the spring of 1801 he was confirmed in +the opium habit, sinking often to pitiful depths of moral and physical +misery. He was in the Mediterranean, chiefly at Malta, from 1804 to +1806. His wife and children remained at Keswick, where Southey and his +family had become co-tenants with them of Greta Hall. Southey, it might +almost be said, took care of Coleridge's family henceforth; for +Coleridge had begun to find his own fireside an intolerable place as +early as 1802, lived little at home, and made a formal separation from +his wife in 1808,--though they saw each other occasionally after that +and the Wedgwood annuity continued to be paid to Mrs. Coleridge. In 1809 +he was living with the Wordsworths at Grasmere, where he wrote several +numbers of a politico-philosophical paper called "The Friend." About the +close of 1810 he was taken in hand by a Mr. and Mrs. Morgan of +Hammersmith, near London, under whose care he kept the opium in check +sufficiently to give his famous lectures on the "Principles of Poetry" +in the winter of 1811-12, and another series in the early summer on +Shakespeare. In the winter following, his play of "Remorse," a recast of +the "Osorio" of 1797, was acted in London with some success. In the +winter of 1813-14 he lectured, in a "conversational" fashion, at +Bristol. He also wrote irregularly for the London papers during these +years. But his studies, since his return from Germany, had been directed +to metaphysics, and especially to the philosophical bases of poetry and +theology; and the last twenty years of his life, at least, were occupied +with plans for a great philosophical work covering these two fields of +thought. One of the fragments of the great work that actually came to +light, the _Biographia Literaria_, seems to have been sent to the +printers in 1815. A collected edition of his poetry was also begun while +he was under the Morgans' care. + +From 1816 till his death in 1834 he lived in comparative peace, if not +in happiness, with a Mr. Gilman of Highgate near London, an apothecary. +Gilman and his wife were able so far to wean him from the drug, or to +regulate his use of it, that he brought to the birth something of his +vast plans in criticism and philosophy, notably the _Biographia +Literaria_ (1817) and the "Aids to Reflection" (1825). The beginning of +his stay with Gilman was also marked by the publication of "Christabel" +and "Kubla Khan" (1816), and of a collected edition of his other poems +(including "The Ancient Mariner," considerably revised) under the title +"Sibylline Leaves" (1817). But the poems that were not finished in the +first great period at Stowey remained unfinished. He talked divinely +("an archangel a little damaged," Lamb said), and both by his talk and +his metaphysical writings profoundly influenced the literature and +philosophy of the century, both in England and America; but the poet in +him was dead. + + "Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain, + And genius given, and knowledge won in vain; + And all which I had culled in woodwalks wild, + And all which patient toil had reared, and all + Commune with _thee_ had opened out--but flowers + Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier, + In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!"[1] + +It would be a mistake to ascribe the paralysis of Coleridge's powers of +constructive imagination exclusively to laudanum. Rather the resort to +narcotics and the inability to control his creative faculty are alike +symptoms of a temperamental malady which had its roots in his nature +close to the seat of that special faculty. Under a favorable conjunction +of outward circumstance and inward state, imagination came; it possessed +him, and he labored in it, happily. Afterwards he could revise what he +had shaped, analyze it philosophically, perfect some details of it, but +he could not proceed in the creative act after the inspiration had left +him. His own description of his nature--"_indolence capable of +energies_"--is accurate as far as it goes. The opium, resorted to often, +no doubt, to quicken the dreams in his brain as well as to relieve his +bodily suffering, helped to enfeeble his will; but the "indolence" was +in him before he became addicted to opium, and he was never "capable of +energies" at the call of duty, but only at the call of his "shaping +spirit," over whose coming and going he had no control. + +Poetically it is perhaps as well. Had he been like his friend Wordsworth +in strength and steadiness of purpose--which is to suppose him another +nature than he was--his life would have been happier and more edifying, +but he would hardly have given us anything better than "Christabel" and +"The Ancient Mariner." Romantic poetry of the higher type is essentially +the creature of mood. Even Wordsworth's long and conscientious labors +produced but a small bulk of poetry of this character, amid dreary +reaches of uninspired preaching. Coleridge waited--in despondency often, +in self-upbraidings, in the temporary deception of opium dreams with +their consequent misery--for the return of the spirit; and it did not +come. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: From the lines addressed to Wordsworth after hearing him +read "The Prelude," in 1807.] + + + + +II. COLERIDGE'S POEMS. + + +"THE ANCIENT MARINER" + +"The Ancient Mariner" was first printed in the first edition of "Lyrical +Ballads," 1798, again with considerable changes in the second edition, +1800, and without further significant change in the editions of 1802 and +1805. Its fifth appearance was in "Sibylline Leaves," 1817, again with +some important changes, and the addition of the Latin motto and the +marginal gloss. In the "Poetical Works," 1828, and again in the +"Poetical Works," 1829, the poem appeared in its final form as we now +have it,--differing very little from the form it had in "Sibylline +Leaves." One or two significant minor changes will be mentioned in the +notes. + +Coleridge's own account of the genesis of the poem, given in the +_Biographia Literaria_ nearly twenty years later, is interesting. +"During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our +conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, +the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence +to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty +by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm, which +accidents of light and shade, which moonlight or sunset, diffused over a +known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability +of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested +itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might +be composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to +be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to +consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of +such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing +them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being +who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself +under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be +chosen from ordinary life; the characters and incidents were to be such +as will be found in every village and its vicinity where there is a +meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them when +they present themselves. + +"In this idea originated the 'Lyrical Ballads'; in which it was agreed +that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters +supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our +inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to +procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of +disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. +Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, +to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a +feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention +from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the wonders and +loveliness of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for +which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, +we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither +feel nor understand. + +"With this view I wrote 'The Ancient Mariner,' and was preparing, among +other poems, 'The Dark Ladie,' and the 'Christabel,' in which I should +have more nearly realized my ideal than I had done in my first attempt. +But Mr. Wordsworth's industry had proved so much more successful, and +the number of his poems so much greater, that my compositions, instead +of forming a balance, appeared rather an interpolation of heterogeneous +matter. Mr. Wordsworth added two or three poems written in his own +character, in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction which is +characteristic of his genius [among them the "Lines composed a few miles +above Tintern Abbey"]. In this form the 'Lyrical Ballads' were +published." + +Lyrical they hardly were, in any current meaning of that word; they were +narrative. But they were ballads as the word was then understood. The +two cardinal points of poetry that Coleridge says they had in view in +this partnership production were both believed to be special marks of +the ballad; the charm of homeliness and simplicity, and the spell of the +supernatural and romantic. Bishop Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English +Poetry," 1765, had created a taste for the traditional poetry of humble +folk. Spreading to Germany and uniting there with the sentimental +sensationalism of the eighteenth century, this taste found expression in +Burger's "Lenore," which in turn had a powerful influence in England, +five distinct translations of it appearing in 1796. Of the distinction +so much insisted on by later analysts of the true popular ballad--its +communal origin, its impersonality, its freedom from adornment, its lack +of conscious art--the Englishman of Coleridge's time took no account. +"The Ancient Mariner" is not a ballad in the sense in which "Sir Patrick +Spens" or "Young Waters" is a ballad. It is in the highest degree a work +of conscious and individual art. It is rather to be classed, like +"Christabel," as a romance. But it was conceived and written under the +influence of the "ballad revival," and bears many marks of that +influence both in its general structure and in its details of +workmanship. + +Much of the archaic diction and antique spelling, as well as the ruder +grotesquerie, that in the first edition proclaimed its relation to the +pseudo-balladry of the time disappeared in the later editions. But the +archaisms, the "unpoetical" diction, and especially the disregard of +tense coherence in the poem as we now have it, contribute greatly to the +atmosphere of romance--as of a story removed alike from the commonplace +experience of every day and from familiar literary conventions--which it +was Coleridge's intention to produce. By a few devotional +ejaculations--"Heaven's Mother send us grace!" "To Mary Queen the praise +be given!"--we are made to feel that the Ancient Mariner lived before +the Reformation, in the ages of wonder and faith. Repetition, as in many +stanzas of Part IV., is a device caught from the folk-ballad and +modified to produce the effect of a spell, which is so strong a mark of +the poem. The abrupt opening, the unannounced transitions in dialogue, +the omission of all but the vital incidents of the story, all belong to +the ballad style. The verse form is what is known as the ballad stanza +(stanza of four lines--a line of four accents followed by one of three, +the second and fourth lines riming) variously extended and modified to +suit the mood of the passage. The prose summary in the form of a +marginal gloss, first added in the edition of 1817, is a practice taken +from early printed books, but not from balladry, which is normally oral. + +Of the literary qualities of the poem much might be said, but I call +attention here to but two: the organic structure of the story and the +character of the imagery, two important aspects of creative imagination. +The seven parts are seven stages of the narrative, each, except the +last, closing with a reference to the Mariner's sin. The story proceeds +like the successive acts of a play. In Part I. the deed is committed; in +Part II. the punishment begins; in Part III. the punishment reaches its +climax. Part IV. brings the "turn"; in the crisis of his sufferings +comes the consciousness of fellowship with other creatures and +repentance for his cruelty. Parts V. and VI. relate his penance begun, +and his return by supernatural agencies to the world of human +fellowship; and Part VII. brings us back to the opening scene, closing +the whole with a moral. The moral is so plainly set forth that one +wonders how Mrs. Barbauld could ever have complained, as Coleridge tells +us she did, that the poem "had no moral." His reply is worth recording: +"I told her that in my opinion the poem had too much; and that the only, +or chief fault, if I might say so, was the obtrusion of the moral +sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle or cause of action in a +work of such pure imagination. It ought to have had no more moral than +the Arabian Nights' tale of the merchant's sitting down to eat dates by +the side of a well, and throwing the shells aside, and lo! a genie +starts up, and says he _must_ kill the aforesaid merchant, because one +of the date shells had, it seems, put out the eye of the genie's son." +But the poet of 1798 knew better than the metaphysician of 1830. The +moral is as essential a part of the whole poem as moral consciousness is +of man; without it the poem would be without the coherence of human +interest which alone can secure for "these shadows of imagination" +"poetic faith." The moral, really, is suffused throughout the work, is +the blood of its being; that it should be formulated at the close is +quite in accord with the simplicity which marked the whole conception of +the "Lyrical Ballads," and is moreover perfectly harmonious with the +spirit of the poem itself. There have been poets who seemed to be +without the moral sense, and who have written poetry quite free from any +moral, like Poe and his landscape visions, but wonderful as they are, +they are abnormal, and are less great as they are less completely human. +It may be that Wordsworth, as one infers from recollections of the +composition of the poem, suggested the moral plot; but if so it entered +at once and completely into Coleridge's imagination and governed the +shaping of the poem from the start. In all the very considerable changes +and omissions that the poem underwent after it was first printed, there +was none that either retrenched from or added to the moral +interpretation of the tale. + +Of its imagery the most evident characteristic is what may be called the +anthropomorphic treatment of nature. This, although in accord with +modern conceptions of primitive culture, is not at all a mark of the +popular ballad. Sun, and moon, and storm-wind, and ocean are in +folk-song sun and moon and wind and water and nothing more; but in "The +Ancient Mariner" they are living beings. + + "And now the Storm-blast came, and he + Was tyrannous and strong: + He struck with his o'ertaking wings, + And chased us south along." + + "And straight the Sun was flecked with bars, + (Heaven's Mother send us grace!) + As if through a dungeon-grate he peered + With broad and burning face." + + "Still as a slave before his lord, + The ocean hath no blast; + His great bright eye most silently + Up to the Moon is cast-- + + "If he may know which way to go; + For she guides him smooth or grim. + See, brother, see! how graciously + She looketh down on him." + +This is the most noticeable of the "modifying colours of imagination" +in "The Ancient Mariner." The practice might be classed as a sort of +personification; but how utterly different in its effect from the +conventional "literary" personifications of the eighteenth century--of +Gray in the "Elegy," for instance! Grandeur, and Envy, and Honour, in +that admirable poem, are not real persons to the imagination; the +abstraction remains an abstraction. But in Coleridge's poem all nature +is alive with the life of men. Other elements of "that synthetic and +magical power to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of +imagination," and which blends "the idea with the image" and "the sense +of novelty and freshness with old and familiar objects" will be felt as +the poem is studied. + +Wordsworth related in after years that the suggestion for the poem came +from a dream of a phantom ship told to Coleridge by a friend, and that +he (Wordsworth) proposed the shooting of the albatross, the revenge of +the "tutelary spirits," and the "navigation of the ship by the dead +men," and contributed the fourth stanza of the poem and the last two +lines of the first stanza of Part IV. He had been reading Shelvocke's +"Voyages," a book in which he had found a description of albatrosses as +they are seen in far southern waters. Other reading that may have +suggested some of the scenery is described in the "Notes" to the Globe +edition of Coleridge's poems. There are also passages and situations in +the last two acts of Wordsworth's play, "The Borderers," which Coleridge +read with great admiration in the summer of 1797, that have evident +kinship with "The Ancient Mariner," and Wordsworth's "Peter Bell" +(composed at Alfoxden, but printed many years later) suggests what the +story might have become if Coleridge instead of Wordsworth had withdrawn +from collaboration. + + + + +"CHRISTABEL" AND "KUBLA KHAN" + + +"Christabel" and "Kubla Khan" were first printed in 1816, in a pamphlet +along with "The Pains of Sleep," a sort of contrast to "Kubla Khan" +composed in 1803. In the Preface to this pamphlet Coleridge informs us +that the first part of "Christabel" was written at Stowey in 1797 and +the second part at Keswick, Cumberland, in 1800. The poem was intended +originally for the "Lyrical Ballads," and it was with the hope of +finishing it for the second edition that Coleridge took it up again in +the fall of 1800. There is a good deal of uncertainty as to just how +much of the work was done at that time. In two letters of that period he +speaks of it as "running up to 1300 lines," and "swelled into a poem of +1400 lines," so that it is no longer suitable for the "Lyrical Ballads"; +but hardly half of this amount was printed in the 1816 pamphlet or has +ever been found since. One suspects that already in 1800 dreams and +projects had begun to be confounded with performance. In the latter of +the two letters mentioned above he relates how his "verse-making +faculties returned" to him, after long and unsuccessful struggles with +"barrenness" and deep "dejection," as the result of drinking, "at the +house of a neighbouring clergyman, ... so much wine, that I found some +effort and dexterity requisite to balance myself on the hither edge of +sobriety." On the whole, it seems probable that "Christabel" owes little +to the forced efforts of his first year in the Lake country. Like most +of the other poems in this volume, it is a product of the great year at +Stowey. He himself told a friend in later years: "I had the whole of the +two cantos in my mind before I began it," adding very truly, "certainly +the first canto is more perfect, has more of the true wild weird spirit +than the last." + +Down to the close of his life he dreamed of finishing this work. He +amused his listeners at Highgate with a continuation of the plot; and +in 1833 he declared that if he "were perfectly free from vexation and +were in the _ad libitum_ hearing of fine music" he could yet finish +"Christabel," "for I have, as I always had, the whole plan entire from +beginning to end in my mind; but I fear I could not carry on with equal +success the execution of the idea." Wordsworth had a different +recollection. He told Coleridge's nephew in 1836 that he did not think +Coleridge "had ever conceived, in his own mind, any definite plan for +it; that the poem had been composed while they were in habits of daily +intercourse, and almost in his presence, and when there was the most +unreserved intercourse between them as to all their literary projects +and productions, and he had never heard from him any plan for finishing +it"; and added, what is fully borne out by a study of Coleridge's life: +"schemes of this sort passed rapidly and vividly through his mind, and +so impressed him, that he often fancied he had arranged things, which +really, and upon trial, proved to be mere embryos." + + "The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower + Unfinished must remain," + +wrote Longfellow, alluding to "The Dolliver Romance" that Hawthorne left +incomplete at his death. There is strong kinship, moral and artistic, +between Coleridge and Hawthorne; both believed that the heart is more +than the head, and neither could force his imagination to work under +unfavorable conditions. But Hawthorne's failure of imagination came at +the end of a fruitful and consistent career, and his life failed with +it; in Coleridge the poet died half a lifetime before the man, and left +the man--the preacher and philosopher--to lament his loss. + +Whether or not Coleridge had the story complete in his mind, what we +have is a fragment, and does not enable us to divine, as some broken +statues do, the plan of the whole. What it gives us is the romantic +mood, the sense of "witchery by daylight," and this it does more +hauntingly than anything else in the English language. It is a series +of magical and unforgetable pictures. It owes a good deal to the old +verse romances and ballads that so impressed the imagination in those +days of the mediaeval revival, but it was itself a far stronger +influence. It operated as an original force, both by its form and by its +spirit, upon the poetic imagination of the first half of the nineteenth +century more widely and deeply than the work of any other man, Burns and +Keats not excepted. Scott heard it read from manuscript, and the "Lay of +the Last Minstrel," with the series of verse romances that followed, may +almost be called a result of that reading; the verse form of Scott's +romances certainly is. Poe's poetry is as far as the poles removed from +Scott's; yet a close study of Poe's work shows the influence of +"Christabel" to be even deeper here than in the "Lay of the Last +Minstrel." + +Coleridge was fully aware of a special power, both of imagination and of +verse-music, in the poem. His attempts to complete it in 1800 brought +persistently to his mind the project of a philosophy of poetry, and +especially of this poem, as we may infer from a letter to Poole in +March, 1801: "I shall ... immediately publish my 'Christabel,' with two +essays annexed to it, on the 'Preternatural' and on 'Metre.'" When the +two cantos were at last printed in 1816, Coleridge wrote in the Preface: +"The metre of the 'Christabel' is not, properly speaking, irregular, +though it may seem so from its being founded on a new principle: namely, +that of counting in each line the accents, not the syllables. Though the +latter may vary from seven to twelve, yet in each line the accents will +be found to be only four. Nevertheless this occasional variation in +number of syllables is not introduced wantonly, or for the mere ends of +convenience, but in correspondence with some transition, in the nature +of the imagery or passion." This is not to be taken quite literally. The +accentual principle was assuredly nothing new in English verse, and +syllable-counting, though introduced by Chaucer, had to be reintroduced +by the Renaissance poets and did not become an unquestioned convention +till the latter part of the seventeenth century. But the return to free +accentual verse in the "Christabel" was an innovation at the beginning +of the nineteenth century. It is to be noted, too, that there are lines +of three and even of two accents in Part I. + +In chap. XV. of the _Biographia Literaria_, in a list of the "specific +symptoms of poetic power" in Shakespeare's early work, Coleridge places +first "the perfect sweetness of the versification; its adaptation to the +subject; and the power displayed in varying the march of the words.... +The sense of musical delight, with the power of producing it, is a gift +of imagination; and this, together with the power of reducing multitude +into unity of effect, and modifying a series of thoughts by some one +predominant thought or feeling, may be cultivated and improved, but can +never be learnt. It is in these that _Poeta nascitur non fit_." + +"Kubla Khan" is the remembered fragment of a dream. All that we know +about it is contained in the note Coleridge prefixed to it in the +pamphlet of 1816. In the summer of 1798 (Coleridge says 1797, but this +seems to have been a slip of his memory[1]) "the author, then in ill +health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, +on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a +slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects +of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading +the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in 'Purchas's +Pilgrimage': 'Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a +stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were +inclosed with a wall.' The author continued for about three hours in a +profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he +has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than +from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called +composition in which all the images rose up before him as _things_, +with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any +sensation or consciousness of effort. On awaking he appeared to himself +to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, +and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here +preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on +business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his +return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, +that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the +general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or +ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the +images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, +alas! without the after restoration of the latter!" + +Opinion will ever vary as to its poetic worth. Coleridge himself +professed to consider it "rather as a psychological curiosity" than as a +thing "of any supposed _poetic_ merits"; to Lamb he repeated it "so +enchantingly that it irradiates and brings heaven and elysian bowers +into any parlour when he sings or says it," and it has been a sort of +touchstone of romantic taste ever since. It supremely illustrates that +"sense of musical delight, with the power of producing it," which the +poet declared to be a gift of the imagination that can never be learnt. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: See notes to this poem in the Globe edition, and E.H. +Coleridge's "Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge," Vol. I, p. 245, note.] + + + + +"FRANCE: AN ODE" + + +This ode was written in February, 1798, and first printed in the +"Morning Post" for April 16 of that year, under the significant title of +"Recantation." In the autumn it was printed with its present title in a +pamphlet together with "Fears in Solitude," another political poem, and +"Frost at Midnight," a poem on his infant child. In October, 1802, it +was reprinted in the "Post" with a prose "Argument" (see notes), less +necessary for the readers of that time than it may be now. Coleridge, +like Wordsworth, had welcomed the French Revolution as ushering in an +era of light and love in human society; both, though Wordsworth more +profoundly, had been depressed by the excesses of 1793-4, and by the +lust of conquest which became more and more evident under the Directory; +and when at last in February, 1798, the French armies invaded +Switzerland, the ancient sacred home of liberty in Europe, Coleridge +"recanted" in this ode. + +Political poetry is likely to lose its power with the passing of the +events and passions that give it birth; it retains its power just in +proportion as it is built on lasting and universal interests of the +heart of man. That "France" has retained its position as one of the +great odes of the English language is due not only to the loftiness of +its thought and the splendor of its imagery, but even more to the fact +that it turns from the political excitement of the hour to the grandeur +and beauty of nature and to those aspirations and ideals whose home is +"in the heart of man." + + + + +"LOVE" + + +From the second edition of "Lyrical Ballads," 1800. It was planned by +Coleridge as an introduction to the ballad of "The Dark Ladie," which +was never completed, but of which some fifteen stanzas were printed in +the 1834 edition of his "Poetical Works." Its composition cannot be +accurately dated. It is conceived in the general spirit of the ballads +but is simpler, more purely a poem of sentiment, than either +"Christabel" or "The Ancient Mariner," and makes no use of the +supernatural. Its simplicity and absolute purity of tone are, however, +something more than a negative virtue. Coleridge himself declared of it +and "The Ancient Mariner" that they might be excelled, but could not be +imitated. + + + + +"DEJECTION: AN ODE" + + +This ode was written in April, 1802, at a time when, after sickness, +opium, domestic unhappiness and the consequent paralysis of his poetic +faculty had driven him to seek distraction in the study of metaphysics, +he made a visit to Wordsworth at Dove Cottage and in that vitalizing +presence experienced a brief return of his powers--enough to give +wonderful expression to perhaps the saddest thoughts that ever visited +ungoverned genius. The earliest known form of the poem, preserved in a +letter to W. Sotheby of July 19, 1802, shows (what is apparent enough to +one familiar with the relations existing between the two poets) that it +was conceived as a letter to Wordsworth, who is addressed in this +earliest version as "Dearest Poet," "Wordsworth," and "William." It was +first printed in the "Morning Post" for October 4, 1802, with "Edmund" +for Wordsworth's name and with some omissions, but with the strong +personal feeling undiminished; and in its present form (that is, with +the parts omitted in the 1802 print restored, but with the substitution +of "Lady" for "Edmund" and with numerous other omissions and changes, +notably in the last stanza, all tending to depersonalize the poem) in +"Sibylline Leaves," 1816. In 1810 a hint given by Wordsworth, with the +best intentions, to a third person concerning the real nature of +Coleridge's troubles, was reported, or rather misreported, to Coleridge, +and an estrangement fraught with deep grief to both ensued. The breach +was healed, as much as such wounds may be, by the mediation of a common +friend in 1812; but the old glad and fruitful fellowship could never be +restored. Coleridge wrote to Poole, February 13, 1813: "A reconciliation +has taken place, but the _feeling_, which I had previous to that moment, +... that, I fear, never can return. All outward actions, all inward +wishes, all thoughts and admirations will be the same--_are_ the same, +but--aye, there remains an immedicable _But_." + +"Dejection" is distinguished from the other poems in this volume by +containing, along with its wonderful interpretation of outward nature +into harmony with his own else unutterable sadness, Coleridge's--and +perhaps all poets'--essential philosophy of poetry. It was natural that +the metaphysics in which he had been immersed should color his thought; +but literature affords few if any instances of metaphysics so +transformed into poetry in the crucible of feeling as is afforded by +stanza V. of this ode. + + + + +"YOUTH AND AGE" AND "WORK WITHOUT HOPE" + + +In these two poems Coleridge has left a record of the sadness of a life +lived + +"In darkness, with the light of youth gone out," + +or returning only in glimpses that showed what he had lost. In these +latter years he was busy enough in an incoherent, visionary fashion, and +did even write and publish (though in characteristically fragmentary +form) a work that made a great impression on young men in the second +quarter of the century, his "Aids to Reflection"; but his activity was +philosophical and theological, not poetic, and even in that field the +product fell far short of his plans and promises. The inner and real +life of the man is revealed, now as always, in his poetry; and amidst +what profound dejection it glimmers on, these two brief poems show. + +"Youth and Age" was written in 1823--"an _air_ that whizzed ... right +across the diameter of my brain ... over the summit of Quantock at +earliest dawn just between the nightingale that I stopt to hear in the +copse at the foot of Quantock, and the first sky-lark that was a +song-fountain, dashing up and sparkling to the ear's eye, ... out of +sight, over the cornfields on the descent of the mountain on the other +side--out of sight, tho' twice I beheld its mute shoot downward in the +sunshine like a falling star of silver"--so he described the conception +of the poem in the original MS., printed by Mr. Campbell in the Notes to +the Globe edition. It was a flash of poignant memory of the old days at +Stowey. The first thirty-eight lines were printed in 1828, and the whole +poem (including the last six lines, which were not in the original +draft) in 1834. + +"Work Without Hope" was written, Coleridge says, "on the 21st February, +1827," and was first printed in 1828. + + + + +THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER + + + + +THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER + + +IN SEVEN PARTS + + +Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum +universitate. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit? et gradus +et cognationes et discrimina et singulorum munera? Quid agunt? quae loca +habitant? Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit ingenium humanum, nunquam +attigit. Juvat, interea, non diffiteor, quandoque in animo, tanquam in +tabulâ, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contemplari: ne mens +assuefacta hodiernae vitae minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat +in pusillas cogitationes. Sed veritati interea invigilandum est, +modusque servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a nocte, distinguamus--T. +BURNET, _Archaeol. Phil_, p. 68. + + + +PART I + +[Sidenote: An ancient Mariner meeteth three Gallants bidden to a +wedding-feast, and detaineth one.] + + It is an ancient Mariner, + And he stoppeth one of three. + "By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, + Now wherefore stopp'st thou me? + + The bridegroom's doors are opened wide, 5 + And I am next of kin; + The guests are met, the feast is set: + May'st hear the merry din." + + He holds him with his skinny hand, + "There was a ship," quoth he. 10 + "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!" + Eftsoons his hand dropt he. + +[Sidenote: The Wedding-Guest is spellbound by the eye of the old +seafaring man, and constrained to hear his tale.] + + He holds him with his glittering eye-- + The Wedding-Guest stood still, + And listens like a three years' child: 15 + The Mariner hath his will. + + The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone: + He cannot choose but hear; + And thus spake on that ancient man, + The bright-eyed Mariner. 20 + + "The ship was cheered, the harbor cleared, + Merrily did we drop + Below the kirk, below the hill, + Below the lighthouse top. + +[Sidenote: The Mariner tells how the ship sailed southward with a good +wind and fair weather, till it reached the Line.] + + The sun came up upon the left, 25 + Out of the sea came he! + And he shone bright, and on the right + Went down into the sea. + + Higher and higher every day, + Till over the mast at noon--" 30 + The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast, + For he heard the loud bassoon. + +[Sidenote: The Wedding-Guest heareth the bridal music; but the Mariner +continueth his tale.] + + The bride hath paced into the hall, + Red as a rose is she; + Nodding their heads before her goes 35 + The merry minstrelsy. + + The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast, + Yet he cannot choose but hear; + And thus spake on that ancient man, + The bright-eyed Mariner. 40 + +[Sidenote: The ship driven by a storm toward the south pole.] + + "And now the Storm-blast came, and he + Was tyrannous and strong: + He struck with his o'ertaking wings, + And chased us south along. + + With sloping masts and dipping prow, 45 + As who pursued with yell and blow + Still treads the shadow of his foe, + And forward bends his head, + The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, + And southward aye we fled. 50 + + And now there came both mist and snow, + And it grew wondrous cold: + And ice, mast-high, came floating by, + As green as emerald. + +[Sidenote: The land of ice, and of fearful sounds where no living thing +was to be seen.] + + And through the drifts the snowy clifts 55 + Did send a dismal sheen: + Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken-- + The ice was all between. + + The ice was here, the ice was there, + The ice was all around: 60 + It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, + Like noises in a swound! + +[Sidenote: Till a great sea-bird, called the Albatross, came through the +snow-fog, and was received with great joy and hospitality.] + + At length did cross an Albatross, + Thorough the fog it came; + As if it had been a Christian soul, 65 + We hailed it in God's name. + + It ate the food it ne'er had eat, + And round and round it flew. + The ice did split with a thunder-fit; + The helmsman steered us through! 70 + +[Sidenote: And lo! the Albatross proveth a bird of good omen, and +followeth the ship as it returned northward through fog and floating +ice.] + + And a good south wind sprung up behind; + The Albatross did follow, + And every day, for food or play, + Came to the mariners' hollo! + + In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, 75 + It perched for vespers nine; + Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, + Glimmered the white moon-shine." + +[Sidenote: The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of +good omen.] + + "God save thee, ancient Mariner! + From the fiends, that plague thee thus!-- 80 + Why look'st thou so?"--"With my cross-bow + I shot the Albatross. + + + +PART II + + The Sun now rose upon the right: + Out of the sea came he, + Still hid in mist, and on the left 85 + Went down into the sea. + + And the good south wind still blew behind, + But no sweet bird did follow, + Nor any day for food or play + Came to the mariners' hollo! 90 + +[Sidenote: His shipmates cry out against the ancient Mariner, for +killing the bird of good luck.] + + And I had done a hellish thing, + And it would work 'em woe: + For all averred, I had killed the bird + That made the breeze to blow. + Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, 95 + That made the breeze to blow! + +[Sidenote: But when the fog cleared off, they justify the same, and thus +make themselves accomplices in the crime.] + + Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, + The glorious Sun uprist: + Then all averred, I had killed the bird + That brought the fog and mist. 100 + 'T was right, said they, such birds to slay, + That bring the fog and mist. + +[Sidenote: The fair breeze continues; the ship enters the Pacific Ocean, +and sails northward, even till it reaches the Line.] + + The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, + The furrow followed free; + We were the first that ever burst 105 + Into that silent sea. + +[Sidenote: The ship hath been suddenly becalmed.] + + Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, + 'T was sad as sad could be; + And we did speak only to break + The silence of the sea! 110 + + All in a hot and copper sky, + The bloody Sun, at noon, + Right up above the mast did stand, + No bigger than the Moon. + + Day after day, day after day, 115 + We stuck, nor breath nor motion; + As idle as a painted ship + Upon a painted ocean. + +[Sidenote: And the Albatross begins to be avenged.] + + Water, water, every where, + And all the boards did shrink; 120 + Water, water, every where + Nor any drop to drink. + + The very deep did rot: O Christ! + That ever this should be! + Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs 125 + Upon the slimy sea. + + About, about, in reel and rout + The death-fires danced at night; + The water, like a witch's oils, + Burnt green, and blue and white. 130 + +[Sidenote: A Spirit had followed them: one of the invisible inhabitants +of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels, concerning whom the +learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael +Psellus, may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no +climate or element without one or more.] + + And some in dreams assured were + Of the Spirit that plagued us so; + Nine fathom deep he had followed us + From the land of mist and snow. + + And every tongue, through utter drought, 135 + Was withered at the root; + We could not speak, no more than if + We had been choked with soot. + +[Sidenote: The shipmates, in their sore distress, would fain throw the +whole guilt on the ancient Mariner: in sign whereof they hang the dead +sea-bird round his neck.] + + Ah! well-a-day! what evil looks + Had I from old and young! 140 + Instead of the cross, the Albatross + About my neck was hung. + + + +PART III + +[Sidenote: The ancient Mariner beholdeth a sign in the element afar +off.] + + There passed a weary time. Each throat + Was parched, and glazed each eye. + A weary time! a weary time! 145 + How glazed each weary eye, + When looking westward, I beheld + A something in the sky. + + At first it seemed a little speck, + And then it seemed a mist; 150 + It moved and moved, and took at last + A certain shape, I wist. + + A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist! + And still it neared and neared: + As if it dodged a water-sprite, 155 + It plunged and tacked and veered. + +[Sidenote: At its nearer approach, it seemeth him to be a ship; and at a +dear ransom he freeth his speech from the bonds of thirst.] + + With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, + We could nor laugh nor wail; + Through utter drought all dumb we stood! + I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, 160 + And cried, A sail! a sail! + +With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, +Agape they heard me call: + +[Sidenote: A flash of joy;] + +[Sidenote: And horror follows. For can it be a ship that comes onward +without wind or tide?] + + Gramercy! they for joy did grin, + And all at once their breath drew in, 165 + As they were drinking all. + + + See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more! + Hither to work us weal; + Without a breeze, without a tide, + She steadies with upright keel! 170 + + The western wave was all a-flame. + The day was well nigh done! + Almost upon the western wave + Rested the broad bright Sun; + When that strange shape drove suddenly 175 + Betwixt us and the Sun; + +[Sidenote: It seemeth him but the skeleton of a ship.] + + And straight the Sun was flecked with bars, + (Heaven's Mother send us grace!) + As if through a dungeon-grate he peered + With broad and burning face. 180 + + Alas (thought I, and my heart beat loud) + How fast she nears and nears! + Are those her sails that glance in the Sun, + Like restless gossameres? + +[Sidenote: And its ribs are seen as bars on the face of the setting Sun. +The Spectre-Woman and her Deathmate, and no other on board the +skeleton-ship.] + + Are those her ribs through which the Sun 185 + Did peer, as through a grate? + And is that Woman all her crew? + Is that a Death? and are there two? + Is Death that woman's mate? + +[Sidenote: Like vessel, like crew!] + + Her lips were red, her looks were free, 190 + Her locks were yellow as gold: + Her skin was as white as leprosy, + The Night-mare Life-in-Death was she, + Who thicks man's blood with cold. + +[Sidenote: Death and Life-in-Death have diced for the ship's crew, and +she (the latter) winneth the ancient Mariner.] + + The naked hulk alongside came, 195 + And the twain were casting dice; + 'The game is done! I've won! I've won!' + Quoth she, and whistles thrice. + +[Sidenote: No twilight within the courts of the Sun.] + + The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out; + At one stride comes the dark; 200 + With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea, + Off shot the spectre-bark. + +[Sidenote: At the rising of the moon.] + + We listened and looked sideways up! + Fear at my heart, as at a cup, + My life-blood seemed to sip! 205 + The stars were dim, and thick the night, + The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white; + From the sails the dew did drip-- + Till clomb above the eastern bar + The horned Moon, with one bright star 210 + Within the nether tip. + +[Sidenote: One after another,] + + One after one, by the star-dogged Moon, + Too quick for groan or sigh, + Each turned his face with a ghastly pang, + And cursed me with his eye. 215 + +[Sidenote: His shipmates drop down dead.] + + Four times fifty living men, + (And I heard nor sigh nor groan) + With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, + They dropped down one by one. + +[Sidenote: But Life-in-Death begins her work on the ancient Mariner.] + + The souls did from their bodies fly,-- 220 + They fled to bliss or woe! + And every soul, it passed me by, + Like the whizz of my cross-bow!" + + + +PART IV + +[Sidenote: The Wedding-Guest feareth that a Spirit is talking to him;] + + "I Fear thee, ancient Mariner! + I fear thy skinny hand! 225 + And thou art long, and lank, and brown, + As is the ribbed sea-sand. + + I fear thee and thy glittering eye, + And thy skinny hand, so brown."-- + "Fear me not, fear not, thou wedding-guest! 230 + This body dropt not down. + +[Sidenote: But the ancient Mariner assureth him of his bodily life, and +proceedeth to relate his horrible penance.] + + Alone, alone, all, all alone, + Alone on the wide, wide sea! + And never a saint took pity on + My soul in agony. 235 + +[Sidenote: He despiseth the creatures of the calm.] + + The many men, so beautiful! + And they all dead did lie: + And a thousand thousand slimy things + Lived on; and so did I. + +[Sidenote: And envieth that they should live, and so many lie dead.] + + I looked upon the rotting sea, 240 + And drew my eyes away; + I looked upon the rotting deck, + And there the dead men lay. + + I looked to heaven, and tried to pray; + But or ever a prayer had gusht, 245 + A wicked whisper came, and made + My heart as dry as dust. + + I closed my lids, and kept them close, + And the balls like pulses beat; + For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky 250 + Lay like a load on my weary eye, + And the dead were at my feet. + +[Sidenote: But the curse liveth for him in the eye of the dead men.] + + The cold sweat melted from their limbs, + Nor rot nor reek did they: + The look with which they looked on me + Had never passed away. + + An orphan's curse would drag to hell + A spirit from on high; + But oh! more horrible than that + Is a curse in a dead man's eye! + Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, + And yet I could not die. + +[Sidenote: In his loneliness and fixedness he yearneth towards the +journeying Moon, and the stars that still sojourn, yet still move +onward; and every where the blue sky belongs to them, and is their +appointed rest, and their native country and their own natural homes, +which they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected and +yet there is a silent joy at their arrival.] + + The moving Moon went up the sky, + And nowhere did abide: + Softly she was going up, + And a star or two beside-- + + Her beams bemocked the sultry main, + Like April hoar-frost spread; + But where the ship's huge shadow lay, + The charmed water burnt alway + A still and awful red. + +[Sidenote: By the light of the Moon he beholdeth God's creatures of the +great calm.] + + Beyond the shadow of the ship, + I watched the water-snakes: + They moved in tracks of shining white, + And when they reared, the elfish light + Fell off in hoary flakes. + + Within the shadow of the ship + I watched their rich attire: + Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, + They coiled and swam; and every track 280 + Was a flash of golden fire. + +[Sidenote: Their beauty and their happiness.] + +[Sidenote: He blesseth them in his heart.] + + O happy living things! no tongue + Their beauty might declare: + A spring of love gushed from my heart, + And I blessed them unaware: 285 + Sure my kind saint took pity on me, + And I blessed them unaware. + +[Sidenote: The spell begins to break.] + + The selfsame moment I could pray; + And from my neck so free + The Albatross fell off, and sank 290 + Like lead into the sea. + + + +PART V + + Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing, + Beloved from pole to pole! + To Mary Queen the praise be given! + She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, 295 + That slid into my soul. + +[Sidenote: By grace of the holy Mother, the ancient Mariner is refreshed +with rain.] + + The silly buckets on the deck, + That had so long remained, + I dreamt that they were filled with dew; + And when I awoke, it rained. 300 + + My lips were wet, my throat was cold, + My garments all were dank; + Sure I had drunken in my dreams, + And still my body drank. + + I moved, and could not feel my limbs: 305 + I was so light--almost + I thought that I had died in sleep, + And was a blessed ghost. + +[Sidenote: He heareth sounds and seeth strange sights and commotions in +the sky and the element.] + + And soon I heard a roaring wind: + It did not come anear; 310 + But with its sound it shook the sails, + That were so thin and sere. + + The upper air burst into life! + And a hundred fire-flags sheen, + To and fro they were hurried about! 315 + And to and fro, and in and out, + The wan stars danced between. + + And the coming wind did roar more loud, + And the sails did sigh like sedge; + And the rain poured down from one black cloud; 320 + The Moon was at its edge. + + The thick black cloud was cleft, and still + The Moon was at its side. + Like waters shot from some high crag, + The lightning fell with never a jag, 325 + A river steep and wide. + +[Sidenote: The bodies of the ship's crew are inspired, and the ship +moves on;] + + The loud wind never reached the ship, + Yet now the ship moved on! + Beneath the lightning and the Moon + The dead men gave a groan. 330 + + They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, + Nor spake, nor moved their eyes; + It had been strange, even in a dream, + To have seen those dead men rise. + + The helmsman steered, the ship moved on; 335 + Yet never a breeze up blew; + The mariners all 'gan work the ropes, + Where they were wont to do; + They raised their limbs like lifeless tools-- + We were a ghastly crew. 340 + + The body of my brother's son + Stood by me, knee to knee: + The body and I pulled at one rope, + But he said nought to me." + +[Sidenote: But not by the souls of the men, nor by daemons of earth or +middle air, but by a blessed troop of angelic spirits, sent down by the +invocation of the guardian saint.] + + "I fear thee, ancient Mariner!" 345 + "Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest! + 'T was not those souls that fled in pain, + Which to their corses came again, + But a troop of spirits blest: + + For when it dawned--they dropped their arms, + And clustered round the mast; 350 + Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, + And from their bodies passed. + + Around, around, flew each sweet sound, + Then darted to the Sun; 355 + Slowly the sounds came back again, + Now mixed, now one by one. + + Sometimes a-dropping from the sky + I heard the sky-lark sing; + Sometimes all little birds that are, 350 + How they seemed to fill the sea and air + With their sweet jargoning! + + And now 't was like all instruments, + Now like a lonely flute; + And now it is an angel's song, 365 + That makes the heavens be mute. + + It ceased; yet still the sails made on + A pleasant noise till noon, + A noise like of a hidden brook + In the leafy month of June, 370 + That to the sleeping woods all night + Singeth a quiet tune. + + Till noon we quietly sailed on, + Yet never a breeze did breathe: + Slowly and smoothly went the ship, 375 + Moved onward from beneath. + +[Sidenote: The lonesome Spirit from the south-pole carries on the ship +as far as the Line, in obedience to the angelic troop, but still +requireth vengeance.] + + Under' the keel nine fathom deep, + From the land of mist and snow, + The spirit slid: and it was he + That made the ship to go. 380 + The sails at noon left off their tune, + And the ship stood still also. + + The Sun, right up above the mast, + Had fixed her to the ocean: + But in a minute she 'gan stir, 385 + With a short uneasy motion-- + Backwards and forwards half her length + With a short uneasy motion. + + Then like a pawing horse let go, + She made a sudden bound: 390 + It flung the blood into my head, + And I fell down in a swound. + +[Sidenote: The Polar Spirit's fellow-daemons, the invisible inhabitants +of the element, take part in his wrong; and two of them relate, one to +the other, that penance long and heavy for the ancient Mariner hath been +accorded to the Polar Spirit, who returneth southward.] + + How long in that same fit I lay, + I have not to declare; + But ere my living life returned, 395 + I heard and in my soul discerned + Two voices in the air. + + 'Is it he?' quoth one, 'Is this the man? + By him who died on cross, + With his cruel bow he laid full low 400 + The harmless Albatross. + + The spirit who bideth by himself + In the land of mist and snow, + He loved the bird that loved the man + Who shot him with his bow?' 405 + + The other was a softer voice, + As soft as honey-dew: + Quoth he, 'The man hath penance done, + And penance more will do.' + + + +PART VI + +FIRST VOICE + + 'But tell me, tell me! speak again, 410 + Thy soft response renewing-- + What makes that ship drive on so fast? + What is the ocean doing?' + +SECOND VOICE + + 'Still as a slave before his lord, + The ocean hath no blast; 415 + His great bright eye most silently + Up to the Moon is cast-- + + If he may know which way to go; + For she guides him smooth or grim. + See, brother, see! how graciously 420 + She looketh down on him.' + +FIRST VOICE + +[Sidenote: The Mariner hath been cast into a trance; for the angelic +power causeth the vessel to drive northward faster than human life could +endure.] + + 'But why drives on that ship so fast? + Without or wave or wind?' + +SECOND VOICE + + 'The air is cut away before, + And closes from behind. 425 + + Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high! + Or we shall be belated: + For slow and slow that ship will go, + When the Mariner's trance is abated. + +[Sidenote: The supernatural motion is retarded; the Mariner awakes, and +his penance begins anew.] + + I woke, and we were sailing on 430 + As in a gentle weather: + 'T was night, calm night, the moon was high, + The dead men stood together. + + All stood together on the deck, + For a charnel-dungeon fitter: 435 + All fixed on me their stony eyes, + That in the Moon did glitter. + + The pang, the curse, with which they died, + Had never passed away: + I could not draw my eyes from theirs, 440 + Nor turn them up to pray. + +[Sidenote: The curse is finally expiated.] + + And now this spell was snapt: once more + I viewed the ocean green, + And looked far forth, yet little saw + Of what had else been seen-- 445 + + Like one, that on a lonesome road + Doth walk in fear and dread, + And having once turned round walks on, + And turns no more his head; + Because he knows, a frightful fiend 450 + Doth close behind him tread. + + But soon there breathed a wind on me, + Nor sound nor motion made: + Its path was not upon the sea, + In ripple or in shade. 455 + + It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek + Like a meadow-gale of spring-- + It mingled strangely with my fears, + Yet it felt like a welcoming. + + Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship, 460 + Yet she sailed softly too: + Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze-- + On me alone it blew. + +[Sidenote: And the ancient Mariner beholdeth his native country.] + + Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed + The light-house top I see? 465 + Is this the hill? is this the kirk? + Is this mine own countree? + + We drifted o'er the harbor-bar, + And I with sobs did pray-- + O let me be awake, my God! 470 + Or let me sleep alway. + + The harbor-bay was clear as glass, + So smoothly it was strewn! + And on the bay the moonlight lay, + And the shadow of the Moon. 475 + + The rock shone bright, the kirk no less, + That stands above the rock: + The moonlight steeped in silentness + The steady weathercock. + + And the bay was white with silent light 480 + Till rising from the same, + +[Sidenote: The angelic spirits leave the dead bodies,] + + Full many shapes, that shadows were, + In crimson colors came. + +[Sidenote: And appear in their own forms of light.] + + A little distance from the prow + Those crimson shadows were: 485 + I turned my eyes upon the deck-- + Oh, Christ! what saw I there! + + Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat, + And, by the holy rood! + A man all light, a seraph-man, 490 + On every corse there stood. + + This seraph-band, each waved his hand: + It was a heavenly sight! + They stood as signals to the land, + Each one a lovely light; 495 + + This seraph-band, each waved his hand, + No voice did they impart-- + No voice; but oh! the silence sank + Like music on my heart. + + But soon I heard the dash of oars, 500 + I heard the Pilot's cheer; + My head was turned perforce away, + And I saw a boat appear. + + The Pilot and the Pilot's boy, + I heard them coming fast: 505 + Dear Lord in Heaven! it was a joy + The dead men could not blast. + + I saw a third--I heard his voice: + It is the Hermit good! + He singeth loud his godly hymns 510 + That he makes in the wood. + He'll shrieve my soul, he'll wash away + The Albatross's blood. + + + +PART VII + +[Sidenote: The Hermit of the Wood,] + + This Hermit good lives in that wood + Which slopes down to the sea. 515 + How loudly his sweet voice he rears! + He loves to talk with marineres + That come from a far countree. + + He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve-- + He hath a cushion plump: 520 + It is the moss that wholly hides + The rotted old oak-stump. + + The skiff-boat neared: I heard them talk, + 'Why, this is strange, I trow! + Where are those lights, so many and fair, 525 + That signal made but now?' + +[Sidenote: Approacheth the ship with wonder.] + + 'Strange, by my faith!' the Hermit said-- + 'And they answered not our cheer! + The planks looked warped! and see those sails, + How thin they are and sere! 530 + I never saw aught like to them, + Unless perchance it were + + Brown skeletons of leaves that lag + My forest-brook along; + When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow, 535 + And the owlet whoops to the wolf below, + That eats the she-wolf's young.' + + 'Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look-- + (The Pilot made reply) + I am a-feared'--'Push on, push on!' 540 + Said the Hermit cheerily. + + The boat came closer to the ship, + But I nor spake nor stirred; + The boat came close beneath the ship, + And straight a sound was heard. 545 + +[Sidenote: The ship suddenly sinketh.] + + Under the water it rumbled on, + Still louder and more dread: + It reached the ship, it split the bay; + The ship went down like lead. + +[Sidenote: The ancient Mariner is saved in the Pilot's boat.] + + Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound, 550 + Which sky and ocean smote, + Like one that hath been seven days drowned + My body lay afloat; + But swift as dreams, myself I found + Within the Pilot's boat. 555 + + Upon the whirl, where sank the ship, + The boat spun round and round; + And all was still, save that the hill + Was telling of the sound. + + I moved my lips--the Pilot shrieked 560 + And fell down in a fit; + The holy Hermit raised his eyes, + And prayed where he did sit. + + I took the oars: the Pilot's boy, + Who now doth crazy go, 565 + Laughed loud and long, and all the while + His eyes went to and fro. + 'Ha! ha!' quoth he, 'full plain I see, + The Devil knows how to row.' + + And now, all in my own countree, 570 + I stood on the firm land! + The Hermit stepped forth from the boat, + And scarcely he could stand. + +[Sidenote: The ancient Mariner earnestly entreateth the Hermit to +shrieve him; and the penance of life falls on him.] + + 'O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!' + The Hermit crossed his brow. 575 + 'Say quick,' quoth he, 'I bid thee say-- + What manner of man art thou?' + + Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched + With a woful agony, + Which forced me to begin my tale; 580 + And then it left me free. + +[Sidenote: And ever and anon throughout his future life an agony +constraineth him to travel from land to land,] + + Since then, at an uncertain hour, + That agony returns: + And till my ghastly tale is told, + This heart within me burns. 585 + + I pass, like night, from land to land; + I have strange power of speech; + That moment that his face I see, + I know the man that must hear me: + To him my tale I teach. 590 + + What loud uproar bursts from that door! + The wedding-guests are there: + But in the garden-bower the bride + And bride-maids singing are: + And hark the little vesper bell, 595 + Which biddeth me to prayer! + + O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been + Alone on a wide, wide sea: + So lonely 't was, that God himself + Scarce seemed there to be. 600 + + O sweeter than the marriage-feast, + 'T is sweeter far to me, + To walk together to the kirk + With a goodly company!-- + + To walk together to the kirk, 605 + And all together pray, + While each to his great Father bends, + Old men, and babes, and loving friends + And youths and maidens gay! + +[Sidenote: And to teach, by his own example, love and reverence to all +things that God made and loveth.] + + Farewell, farewell! but this I tell 610 + To thee, thou Wedding-Guest! + He prayeth well, who loveth well + Both man and bird and beast. + + He prayeth best, who loveth best + All things both great and small; 615 + For the dear God who loveth us, + He made and loveth all." + + The Mariner, whose eye is bright, + Whose beard with age is hoar, + Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest 620 + Turned from the bridegroom's door. + + He went like one that hath been stunned, + And is of sense forlorn: + A sadder and a wiser man, + He rose the morrow morn. 625 + + + + +CHRISTABEL + + +PART THE FIRST + + 'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, + And the owls have awakened the crowing cock. + Tu--whit!----Tu--whoo! + And hark, again! the crowing cock, + How drowsily it crew. 5 + + Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, + Hath a toothless mastiff, which + From her kennel beneath the rock + Maketh answer to the clock, + Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; 10 + Ever and aye, by shine and shower, + Sixteen short howls, not over loud; + Some say, she sees my lady's shroud. + + Is the night chilly and dark? + The night is chilly, but not dark. 15 + The thin gray cloud is spread on high, + It covers but not hides the sky. + The moon is behind, and at the full; + And yet she looks both small and dull. + The night is chill, the cloud is gray: 20 + 'T is a month before the month of May, + And the Spring comes slowly up this way. + + The lovely lady, Christabel, + Whom her father loves so well, + What makes her in the wood so late, 25 + A furlong from the castle gate? + She had dreams all yesternight + Of her own betrothed knight; + And she in the midnight wood will pray + For the weal of her lover that's far away. 30 + + She stole along, she nothing spoke, + The sighs she heaved were soft and low, + And naught was green upon the oak + But moss and rarest mistletoe: + She kneels beneath the huge oak tree, 35 + And in silence prayeth she. + + The lady sprang up suddenly, + The lovely lady, Christabel! + It moaned as near, as near can be, + But what it is she cannot tell.-- 40 + On the other side it seems to be, + Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree. + + The night is chill; the forest bare; + Is it the wind that moaneth bleak? + There is not wind enough in the air 45 + To move away the ringlet curl + From the lovely lady's cheek-- + There is not wind enough to twirl + The one red leaf, the last of its clan, + That dances as often as dance it can, 50 + Hanging so light, and hanging so high, + On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky. + + Hush, beating heart of Christabel! + Jesu, Maria, shield her well! + She folded her arms beneath her cloak, 55 + And stole to the other side of the oak. + What sees she there? + + There she sees a damsel bright, + Drest in a silken robe of white, + That shadowy in the moonlight shone: 60 + The neck that made that white robe wan, + Her stately neck, and arms were bare; + Her blue-veined feet unsandal'd were, + And wildly glittered here and there + The gems entangled in her hair. 65 + I guess, 'twas frightful there to see + A lady so richly clad as she-- + Beautiful exceedingly! + + "Mary mother, save me now!" + Said Christabel, "And who art thou?" 70 + + The lady strange made answer meet, + And her voice was faint and sweet:-- + "Have pity on my sore distress, + I scarce can speak for weariness: + Stretch forth thy hand, and have no fear!" 75 + Said Christabel, "How camest thou here?" + And the lady, whose voice was faint and sweet, + Did thus pursue her answer meet:-- + + "My sire is of a noble line, + And my name is Geraldine: 80 + Five warriors seized me yestermorn, + Me, even me, a maid forlorn: + They choked my cries with force and fright, + And tied me on a palfrey white. + The palfrey was as fleet as wind, 85 + And they rode furiously behind. + They spurred amain, their steeds were white: + And once we crossed the shade of night. + As sure as Heaven shall rescue me, + I have no thought what men they be; 90 + Nor do I know how long it is + (For I have lain entranced I wis) + + Since one, the tallest of the five, + Took me from the palfrey's back, + A weary woman, scarce alive. 95 + Some muttered words his comrades spoke: + He placed me underneath this oak; + He swore they would return with haste; + Whither they went I cannot tell-- + I thought I heard, some minutes past, 100 + Sounds as of a castle bell. + Stretch forth thy hand," thus ended she, + "And help a wretched maid to flee." + + Then Christabel stretched forth her hand, + And comforted fair Geraldine: 105 + "O well, bright dame! may you command + The service of Sir Leoline; + And gladly our stout chivalry + Will he send forth and friends withal + To guide and guard you safe and free 110 + Home to your noble father's hall." + + She rose: and forth with steps they passed + That strove to be, and were not, fast. + Her gracious stars the lady blest, + And thus spake on sweet Christabel: 115 + "All our household are at rest, + The hall as silent as the cell; + Sir Leoline is weak in health, + And may not well awakened be, + But we will move as if in stealth, 120 + And I beseech your courtesy, + This night, to share your couch with me." + + They crossed the moat, and Christabel + Took the key that fitted well; + A little door she opened straight, 125 + All in the middle of the gate; + The gate that was ironed within and without, + Where an army in battle array had marched out. + The lady sank, belike through pain, + And Christabel with might and main 130 + Lifted her up, a weary weight, + Over the threshold of the gate: + Then the lady rose again, + And moved, as she were not in pain. + + So free from danger, free from fear, 135 + They crossed the court: right glad they were. + And Christabel devoutly cried + To the lady by her side, + "Praise we the Virgin all divine + Who hath rescued thee from thy distress!" 140 + "Alas, alas!" said Geraldine, + "I cannot speak for weariness." + So free from danger, free from fear, + They crossed the court: right glad they were. + + Outside her kennel, the mastiff old 145 + Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold. + The mastiff old did not awake, + Yet she an angry moan did make! + And what can ail the mastiff bitch? + Never till now she uttered yell 150 + Beneath the eye of Christabel. + Perhaps it is the owlet's scritch: + For what can ail the mastiff bitch? + + They passed the hall, that echoes still, + Pass as lightly as you will! 155 + The brands were flat, the brands were dying, + Amid their own white ashes lying; + But when the lady passed, there came + A tongue of light, a fit of flame; + And Christabel saw the lady's eye, 160 + And nothing else saw she thereby, + Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall, + Which hung in a murky old niche in the wall. + "O softly tread," said Christabel, + "My father seldom sleepeth well." 165 + + Sweet Christabel her feet doth bare, + And jealous of the listening air + They steal their way from stair to stair, + Now in glimmer, and now in gloom, + And now they pass the Baron's room, 170 + As still as death, with stifled breath + And now have reached her chamber door; + And now doth Geraldine press down + The rushes of the chamber floor. + + The moon shines dim in the open air, 175 + And not a moonbeam enters here. + But they without its light can see + The chamber carved so curiously, + Carved with figures strange and sweet, + All made out of the carver's brain, 180 + For a lady's chamber meet: + The lamp with twofold silver chain + Is fastened to an angel's feet. + + The silver lamp burns dead and dim; + But Christabel the lamp will trim. 185 + She trimmed the lamp, and made it bright, + And left it swinging to and fro, + While Geraldine, in wretched plight, + Sank down upon the floor below. + + "O weary lady, Geraldine, 190 + I pray you, drink this cordial wine! + It is a wine of virtuous powers; + My mother made it of wild flowers." + + "And will your mother pity me, + Who am a maiden most forlorn? 195 + Christabel answered--"Woe is me! + She died the hour that I was born. + I have heard the gray-haired friar tell + How on her death-bed she did say, + That she should hear the castle-bell 200 + Strike twelve upon my wedding-day. + O mother dear! that thou wert here!" + "I would," said Geraldine, "she were!" + + But soon with altered voice, said she-- + "Off, wandering mother! Peak and pine! 205 + I have power to bid thee flee." + Alas! what ails poor Geraldine? + Why stares she with unsettled eye? + Can she the bodiless dead espy? + And why with hollow voice cries she, 210 + "Off, woman, off! this hour is mine-- + Though thou her guardian spirit be, + Off, woman, off! 'tis given to me." + + Then Christabel knelt by the lady's side, + And raised to heaven her eyes so blue-- 215 + "Alas!" said she, "this ghastly ride-- + Dear lady! it hath wildered you!" + The lady wiped her moist cold brow, + And faintly said, "'Tis over now!" + + Again the wild-flower wine she drank: 220 + Her fair large eyes 'gan glitter bright, + And from the floor whereon she sank, + The lofty lady stood upright: + She was most beautiful to see, + Like a lady of a far countree. 225 + And thus the lofty lady spake-- + "All they who live in the upper sky, + Do love you, holy Christabel! + And you love them, and for their sake + And for the good which me befell, 230 + Even I in my degree will try, + Fair maiden, to requite you well. + But now unrobe yourself; for I + Must pray, ere yet in bed I lie." + + Quoth Christabel, "So let it be!" 235 + And as the lady bade, did she. + Her gentle limbs did she undress, + And lay down in her loveliness. + + But through her brain of weal and woe + So many thoughts moved to and fro, 240 + That vain it were her lids to close; + So half-way from the bed she rose, + And on her elbow did recline + To look at the Lady Geraldine. + + Beneath the lamp the lady bowed, 245 + And slowly rolled her eyes around; + Then drawing in her breath aloud, + Like one that shuddered, she unbound + The cincture from beneath her breast: + Her silken robe, and inner vest, 250 + Dropt to her feet, and full in view, + Behold! her bosom and half her side-- + A sight to dream of, not to tell! + O shield her! shield sweet Christabel! + + Yet Geraldine nor speaks nor stirs; 255 + Ah! what a stricken look was hers! + Deep from within she seems half-way + To lift some weight with sick assay, + And eyes the maid and seeks delay; + Then suddenly, as one defied, 260 + Collects herself in scorn and pride, + And lay down by the Maiden's side!-- + And in her arms the maid she took, + Ah wel-a-day! + And with low voice and doleful look 265 + These words did say: + "In the touch of this bosom there worketh a spell, + Which is lord of thy utterance, Christabel! + Thou knowest to-night, and wilt know to-morrow, + This mark of my shame, this seal of my sorrow; 270 + But vainly thou warrest, + For this is alone in + Thy power to declare, + That in the dim forest + Thou heard'st a low moaning, 275 + And found'st a bright lady, surpassingly fair; + And didst bring her home with thee in love and in charity, + To shield her and shelter her from the damp air." + + + +THE CONCLUSION TO PART THE FIRST + + It was a lovely sight to see + The lady Christabel, when she 280 + Was praying at the old oak tree. + Amid the jagged shadows + Of mossy leafless boughs, + Kneeling in the moonlight, + To make her gentle vows; 285 + Her slender palms together prest, + Heaving sometimes on her breast; + Her face resigned to bliss or bale-- + Her face, oh call it fair not pale, + And both blue eyes more bright than clear, 290 + Each about to have a tear. + + With open eyes (ah woe is me!) + Asleep, and dreaming fearfully, + Fearfully dreaming, yet, I wis, + Dreaming that alone, which is-- 295 + O sorrow and shame! Can this be she, + The lady, who knelt at the old oak tree? + And lo! the worker of these harms, + That holds the maiden in her arms, + Seems to slumber still and mild, 300 + As a mother with her child. + + A star hath set, a star hath risen, + O Geraldine! since arms of thine + Have been the lovely lady's prison. + O Geraldine! one hour was thine-- 305 + Thou 'st had thy will! By tairn and rill, + The night-birds all that hour were still. + But now they are jubilant anew, + From cliff and tower, tu--whoo! tu--whoo! + Tu--whoo! tu--whoo! from wood and fell! 310 + + And see! the lady Christabel + Gathers herself from out her trance; + Her limbs relax, her countenance + Grows sad and soft; the smooth thin lids + Close o'er her eyes; and tears she sheds-- 315 + Large tears that leave the lashes bright! + And oft the while she seems to smile + As infants at a sudden light! + + Yea, she doth smile, and she doth weep, + Like a youthful hermitess, 320 + Beauteous in a wilderness, + Who, praying always, prays in sleep. + And, if she move unquietly, + Perchance, 'tis but the blood so free + Comes back and tingles in her feet. 325 + No doubt, she hath a vision sweet. + What if her guardian spirit 'twere, + What if she knew her mother near? + But this she knows, in joys and woes, + That saints will aid if men will call: 330 + For the blue sky bends over all! + + + +PART THE SECOND + + "Each matin bell," the Baron saith, + "Knells us back to a world of death." + These words Sir Leoline first said, + When he rose and found his lady dead: 335 + These words Sir Leoline will say + Many a morn to his dying day! + + And hence the custom and law began + That still at dawn the sacristan, + Who duly pulls the heavy bell, 340 + Five and forty beads must tell + Between each stroke--a warning knell, + Which not a soul can choose but hear + From Bratha Head to Wyndermere. + + Saith Bracy the bard, "So let it knell! 345 + And let the drowsy sacristan + Still count as slowly as he can! + There is no lack of such, I ween, + As well fill up the space between. + In Langdale Pike and Witch's Lair, 350 + And Dungeon-ghyll so foully rent, + With ropes of rock and bells of air + Three sinful sextons' ghosts are pent, + Who all give back, one after t' other, + The death-note to their living brother; 355 + And oft too, by the knell offended, + Just as their one! two! three! is ended, + The devil mocks the doleful tale + With a merry peal from Borrowdale." + + The air is still! through mist and cloud 360 + That merry peal comes ringing loud; + And Geraldine shakes off her dread, + And rises lightly from the bed; + Puts on her silken vestments white, + And tricks her hair in lovely plight, 365 + And nothing doubting of her spell + Awakens the lady Christabel. + "Sleep you, sweet lady Christabel? + I trust that you have rested well." + + And Christabel awoke and spied 370 + The same who lay down by her side-- + O rather say, the same whom she + Raised up beneath the old oak tree! + Nay, fairer yet! and yet more fair! + For she belike hath drunken deep 375 + Of all the blessedness of sleep! + And while she spake, her looks, her air, + Such gentle thankfulness declare, + That (so it seemed) her girded vests + Grew tight beneath her heaving breasts. 380 + "Sure I have sinn'd!" said Christabel, + "Now heaven be praised if all be well!" + And in low faltering tones, yet sweet, + Did she the lofty lady greet + With such perplexity of mind 385 + As dreams too lively leave behind. + + So quickly she rose, and quickly arrayed + Her maiden limbs, and having prayed + That He, who on the cross did groan, + Might wash away her sins unknown, 390 + She forthwith led fair Geraldine + To meet her sire, Sir Leoline. + + The lovely maid and the lady tall + Are pacing both into the hall, + And pacing on through page and groom, 395 + Enter the Baron's presence-room. + + The Baron rose, and while he prest + His gentle daughter to his breast, + With cheerful wonder in his eyes + The lady Geraldine espies, 400 + And gave such welcome to the same, + As might beseem so bright a dame! + + But when he heard the lady's tale, + And when she told her father's name, + Why waxed Sir Leoline so pale, 405 + Murmuring o'er the name again, + Lord Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine? + + Alas! they had been friends in youth; + But whispering tongues can poison truth; + And constancy lives in realms above; 410 + And life is thorny; and youth is vain; + And to be wroth with one we love + Doth work like madness in the brain. + And thus it chanced, as I divine, + With Roland and Sir Leoline. 415 + Each spake words of high disdain + And insult to his heart's best brother: + They parted--ne'er to meet again! + But never either found another + To free the hollow heart from paining-- 420 + They stood aloof, the scars remaining, + Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; + A dreary sea now flows between. + But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, + Shall wholly do away, I ween, 425 + The marks of that which once hath been. + + Sir Leoline, a moment's space, + Stood gazing on the damsel's face: + And the youthful Lord of Tryermaine + Came back upon his heart again. 430 + + O then the Baron forgot his age, + His noble heart swelled high with rage; + He swore by the wounds in Jesu's side + He would proclaim it far and wide, + With trump and solemn heraldry, 435 + That they, who thus had wronged the dame + Were base as spotted infamy! + "And if they dare deny the same, + My herald shall appoint a week, + And let the recreant traitors seek 440 + My tourney court--that there and then + I may dislodge their reptile souls + From the bodies and forms of men!" + He spake: his eye in lightning rolls! + For the lady was ruthlessly seized; and he kenned 445 + In the beautiful lady the child of his friend! + + And now the tears were on his face, + And fondly in his arms he took + Fair Geraldine, who met the embrace, + Prolonging it with joyous look. 450 + Which when she viewed, a vision fell + Upon the soul of Christabel, + The vision of fear, the touch and pain! + She shrunk and shuddered, and saw again-- + (Ah, woe is me! Was it for thee, 455 + Thou gentle maid! such sights to see?) + + Again she saw that bosom old, + Again she felt that bosom cold, + And drew in her breath with a hissing sound: + Whereat the Knight turned wildly round, 460 + And nothing saw, but his own sweet maid + With eyes upraised, as one that prayed. + + The touch, the sight, had passed away, + And in its stead that vision blest, + Which comforted her after-rest, 465 + While in the lady's arms she lay, + Had put a rapture in her breast, + And on her lips and o'er her eyes + Spread smiles like light! + With new surprise, + "What ails then my beloved child?" 470 + The Baron said--His daughter mild + Made answer, "All will yet be well!" + I ween, she had no power to tell + Aught else: so mighty was the spell. + + Yet he, who saw this Geraldine, 475 + Had deemed her sure a thing divine. + Such sorrow with such grace she blended, + As if she feared she had offended + Sweet Christabel, that gentle maid! + And with such lowly tones she prayed 480 + She might be sent without delay + Home to her father's mansion. + "Nay! + Nay, by my soul!" said Leoline. + "Ho! Bracy the bard, the charge be thine! + Go thou, with music sweet and loud, 485 + And take two steeds with trappings proud, + And take the youth whom thou lov'st best + To bear thy harp, and learn thy song, + And clothe you both in solemn vest, + And over the mountains haste along, 490 + Lest wandering folk, that are abroad, + Detain you on the valley road. + + "And when he has crossed the Irthing flood, + My merry bard! he hastes, he hastes + Up Knorren Moor, through Halegarth Wood, 495 + And reaches soon that castle good + Which stands and threatens Scotland's wastes. + + "Bard Bracy! bard Bracy! your horses are fleet, + Ye must ride up the hall, your music so sweet, + More loud than your horses' echoing feet! 500 + And loud and loud to Lord Roland call, + 'Thy daughter is safe in Langdale hall! + Thy beautiful daughter is safe and free-- + Sir Leoline greets thee thus through me. + He bids thee come without delay 505 + With all thy numerous array + And take thy lovely daughter home: + And he will meet thee on the way + With all his numerous array + White with their panting palfreys' foam': 510 + And, by mine honour! I will say, + That I repent me of the day + When I spake words of fierce disdain + To Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine!-- + --For since that evil hour hath flown, 515 + Many a summer's sun hath shone; + Yet ne'er found I a friend again + Like Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine." + + The lady fell, and clasped his knees, + Her face upraised, her eyes o'erflowing; 520 + And Bracy replied, with faltering voice, + His gracious hail on all bestowing; + "Thy words, thou sire of Christabel, + Are sweeter than my harp can tell; + Yet might I gain a boon of thee, 525 + This day my journey should not be, + So strange a dream hath come to me; + That I had vowed with music loud + To clear yon wood from thing unblest, + Warned by a vision in my rest! 530 + For in my sleep I saw that dove, + That gentle bird, whom thou dost love, + And call'st by thy own daughter's name-- + Sir Leoline! I saw the same, + Fluttering, and uttering fearful moan, 535 + Among the green herbs in the forest alone. + Which when I saw and when I heard, + I wondered what might ail the bird; + For nothing near it could I see, + Save the grass and green herbs underneath the old tree. 540 + + "And in my dream, methought, I went + To search out what might there be found; + And what the sweet bird's trouble meant, + That thus lay fluttering on the ground. + I went and peered, and could descry 545 + No cause for her distressful cry; + But yet for her dear lady's sake + I stooped, methought, the dove to take, + When lo! I saw a bright green snake + Coiled around its wings and neck. 550 + Green as the herbs on which it couched, + Close by the dove's its head it crouched; + And with the dove it heaves and stirs, + Swelling its neck as she swelled hers! + I woke; it was the midnight hour, 555 + The clock was echoing in the tower; + But though my slumber was gone by, + This dream it would not pass away-- + It seems to live upon my eye! + And thence I vowed this self-same day 560 + With music strong and saintly song + To wander through the forest bare, + Lest aught unholy loiter there." + + Thus Bracy said: the Baron, the while, + Half-listening heard him with a smile; 565 + Then turned to Lady Geraldine, + His eyes made up of wonder and love; + And said in courtly accents fine, + "Sweet maid, Lord Roland's beauteous dove, + With arms more strong than harp or song, 570 + Thy sire and I will crush the snake!" + He kissed her forehead as he spake, + And Geraldine in maiden wise + Casting down her large bright eyes, + With blushing cheek and courtesy fine 575 + She turned her from Sir Leoline; + Softly gathering up her train, + That o'er her right arm fell again; + And folded her arms across her chest, + And couched her head upon her breast, 580 + And looked askance at Christabel-- + Jesu, Maria, shield her well! + + A snake's small eye blinks dull and shy, + And the lady's eyes they shrunk in her head, + Each shrunk up to a serpent's eye, 585 + And with somewhat of malice, and more of dread, + At Christabel she looked askance!-- + One moment--and the sight was fled! + But Christabel in dizzy trance + Stumbling on the unsteady ground 590 + Shuddered aloud, with a hissing sound; + And Geraldine again turned round, + And like a thing, that sought relief, + Full of wonder and full of grief, + She rolled her large bright eyes divine 595 + Wildly on Sir Leoline. + + The maid, alas! her thoughts are gone, + She nothing sees--no sight but one! + The maid, devoid of guile and sin, + I know not how, in fearful wise, 600 + So deeply had she drunken in + That look, those shrunken serpent eyes, + That all her features were resigned + To this sole image in her mind: + And passively did imitate 605 + That look of dull and treacherous hate! + And thus she stood, in dizzy trance, + Still picturing that look askance + With forced unconscious sympathy + Full before her father's view-- 610 + As far as such a look could be + In eyes so innocent and blue! + + And when the trance was o'er, the maid + Paused awhile, and inly prayed: + Then falling at the Baron's feet, 615 + "By my mother's soul, do I entreat + That thou this woman send away!" + She said: and more she could not say: + For what she knew she could not tell, + O'er-mastered by the mighty spell. 620 + + Why is thy cheek so wan and wild, + Sir Leoline? Thy only child + Lies at thy feet, thy joy, thy pride, + So fair, so innocent, so mild; + The same, for whom thy lady died! 625 + O, by the pangs of her dear mother + Think thou no evil of thy child! + For her, and thee, and for no other, + She prayed the moment ere she died: + Prayed that the babe for whom she died, 630 + Might prove her dear lord's joy and pride! + That prayer her deadly pangs beguiled, + Sir Leoline! + And wouldst thou wrong thy only child, + Her child and thine? 635 + + Within the Baron's heart and brain + If thoughts, like these, had any share, + They only swelled his rage and pain, + And did but work confusion there. + + His heart was cleft with pain and rage, 640 + His cheeks they quivered, his eyes were wild, + Dishonoured thus in his old age; + Dishonour'd by his only child, + And all his hospitality + To the insulted daughter of his friend 645 + By more than woman's jealousy + Brought thus to a disgraceful end-- + He rolled his eye with stern regard + Upon the gentle minstrel bard, + And said in tones abrupt, austere-- 650 + "Why, Bracy! dost thou loiter here? + I bade thee hence!" The bard obeyed; + And turning from his own sweet maid, + The aged knight, Sir Leoline, + Led forth the lady Geraldine! 655 + + + +THE CONCLUSION TO PART THE SECOND + + A little child, a limber elf, + Singing, dancing to itself, + A fairy thing with red round cheeks, + That always finds, and never seeks, + Makes such a vision to the sight 660 + As fills a father's eyes with light; + And pleasures flow in so thick and fast + Upon his heart, that he at last + Must needs express his love's excess + With words of unmeant bitterness. 665 + Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together + Thoughts so all unlike each other; + To mutter and mock a broken charm, + To dally with wrong that does no harm. + Perhaps 'tis tender too and pretty 670 + At each wild word to feel within + A sweet recoil of love and pity. + And what, if in a world of sin + (O sorrow and shame should this be true!) + Such giddiness of heart and brain 675 + Comes seldom save from rage and pain, + So talks as it's most used to do. + + + + +KUBLA KHAN + + In Xanadu did Kubla Khan + A stately pleasure-dome decree: + Where Alph, the sacred river, ran + Through caverns measureless to man + Down to a sunless sea. 5 + So twice five miles of fertile ground + With walls and towers were girdled round: + And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills, + Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; + And here were forests ancient as the hills, 10 + Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. + + But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted + Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! + A savage place! as holy and enchanted + As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted 15 + By woman wailing for her demon-lover! + And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, + As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, + A mighty fountain momently was forced: + Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst 20 + Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, + Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail: + And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever + It flung up momently the sacred river. + Five miles meandering with a mazy motion 25 + Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, + Then reached the caverns measureless to man, + And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: + And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far + Ancestral voices prophesying war! 30 + + The shadow of the dome of pleasure + Floated midway on the waves; + Where was heard the mingled measure + From the fountain and the caves. + It was a miracle of rare device, 35 + A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! + + A damsel with a dulcimer + In a vision once I saw: + It was an Abyssinian maid, + And on her dulcimer she played, 40 + Singing of Mount Abora. + Could I revive within me. + Her symphony and song, + To such a deep delight 'twould win me, + That with music loud and long, 45 + I would build that dome in air, + That sunny dome! those caves of ice! + And all who heard should see them there, + And all should cry, Beware! Beware! + His flashing eyes, his floating hair! 50 + Weave a circle round him thrice, + And close your eyes with holy dread, + For he on honey-dew hath fed, + And drunk the milk of Paradise. + + + + +LOVE + + All thoughts, all passions, all delights, + Whatever stirs this mortal frame, + All are but ministers of Love, + And feed his sacred flame. + + Oft in my waking dreams do I 5 + Live o'er again that happy hour, + When midway on the mount I lay, + Beside the ruined tower. + + The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene, + Had blended with the lights of eve; 10 + And she was there, my hope, my joy, + My own dear Genevieve! + + She leant against the armed man, + The statue of the armed knight; + She stood and listened to my lay, 15 + Amid the lingering light. + + Few sorrows hath she of her own. + My hope! my joy! my Genevieve! + She loves me best, whene'er I sing + The songs that make her grieve. 20 + + I played a soft and doleful air, + I sang an old and moving story-- + An old rude song, that suited well + That ruin wild and hoary. + + She listened with a flitting blush, 25 + With downcast eyes and modest grace; + For well she knew, I could not choose + But gaze upon her face. + + I told her of the Knight that wore + Upon his shield a burning brand; 30 + And that for ten long years he wooed + The Lady of the Land. + + I told her how he pined: and ah! + The deep, the low, the pleading tone + With which I sang another's love, 35 + Interpreted my own. + + She listened with a flitting blush, + With downcast eyes, and modest grace + And she forgave me, that I gazed + Too fondly on her face! 40 + + But when I told the cruel scorn + That crazed that bold and lovely Knight, + And that he crossed the mountain-woods, + Nor rested day nor night; + + That sometimes from the savage den, 45 + And sometimes from the darksome shade, + And sometimes starting up at once + In green and sunny glade,-- + + There came and looked him in the face + An angel beautiful and bright; 50 + And that he knew it was a Fiend, + This miserable Knight! + + And that unknowing what he did, + He leaped amid a murderous band, + And saved from outrage worse than death 55 + The Lady of the Land! + + And how she wept, and clasped his knees; + And how she tended him in vain-- + And ever strove to expiate + The scorn that crazed his brain;-- 60 + + And that she nursed him in a cave; + And how his madness went away, + When on the yellow forest-leaves + A dying man he lay;-- + + His dying words--but when I reached 65 + That tenderest strain of all the ditty, + My faltering voice and pausing harp + Disturbed her soul with pity! + + All impulses of soul and sense + Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve; 70 + The music and the doleful tale, + The rich and balmy eve; + + And hopes, and fears that kindle hope, + An undistinguishable throng, + And gentle wishes long subdued, 75 + Subdued and cherished long! + + She wept with pity and delight, + She blushed with love, and virgin-shame; + And like the murmur of a dream, + I heard her breathe my name. 80 + + Her bosom heaved--she stepped aside, + As conscious of my look she stepped-- + Then suddenly, with timorous eye + She fled to me and wept. + + She half enclosed me with her arms, 85 + She pressed me with a meek embrace; + And bending back her head, looked up, + And gazed upon my face. + + 'Twas partly love, and partly fear, + And partly 'twas a bashful art, 90 + That I might rather feel, than see, + The swelling of her heart. + + I calmed her fears, and she was calm, + And told her love with virgin pride; + And so I won my Genevieve, 95 + My bright and beauteous Bride. + + + + +FRANCE: AN ODE + + + +I + + Ye Clouds! that far above me float and pause, + Whose pathless march no mortal may control! + Ye Ocean-Waves! that, wheresoe'er ye roll, + Yield homage only to eternal laws! + Ye Woods! that listen to the night-birds' singing, 5 + Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined, + Save when your own imperious branches swinging, + Have made a solemn music of the wind! + Where, like a man beloved of God, + Through glooms, which never woodman trod, 10 + How oft, pursuing fancies holy, + My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound, + Inspired, beyond the guess of folly, + By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound! + O ye loud Waves! and O ye Forests high! 15 + And O ye Clouds that far above me soared! + Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky! + Yea, every thing that is and will be free! + Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be, + With what deep worship I have still adored 20 + The spirit of divinest Liberty. + + + +II + + When France in wrath her giant-limbs upreared, + And with that oath, which smote air, earth, and sea, + Stamped her strong foot and said she would be free, + Bear witness for me, how I hoped and feared! 25 + + With what a joy my lofty gratulation + Unawed I sang, amid a slavish band: + And when to whelm the disenchanted nation, + Like fiends embattled by a wizard's wand, + The Monarchs marched in evil day, 30 + And Britain joined the dire array; + Though dear her shores and circling ocean, + Though many friendships, many youthful loves + Had swoln the patriot emotion + And flung a magic light o'er all her hills and groves; 35 + Yet still my voice, unaltered, sang defeat + To all that braved the tyrant-quelling lance, + And shame too long delayed and vain retreat! + For ne'er, O Liberty! with partial aim + I dimmed thy light or damped thy holy flame; 40 + But blessed the paeans of delivered France, + And hung my head and wept at Britain's name. + + + +III + + "And what," I said, "though Blasphemy's loud scream + With that sweet music of deliverance strove! + Though all the fierce and drunken passions wove 45 + A dance more wild than e'er was maniac's dream! + Ye storms, that round the dawning east assembled, + The Sun was rising, though ye hid his light!" + And when, to soothe my soul, that hoped and trembled, + The dissonance ceased, and all seemed calm and bright; 50 + When France her front deep-scarred and gory + Concealed with clustering wreaths of glory; + When, insupportably advancing, + Her arm made mockery of the warrior's ramp; + While timid looks of fury glancing, 55 + Domestic treason, crushed beneath her fatal stamp, + Writhed like a wounded dragon in his gore; + Then I reproached my fears that would not flee; + "And soon," I said, "shall Wisdom teach her lore + In the low huts of them that toil and groan! 60 + And, conquering by her happiness alone, + Shall France compel the nations to be free, + Till Love and Joy look round, and call the Earth their own." + + + +IV + + Forgive me, Freedom! O forgive those dreams! + I hear thy voice, I hear thy loud lament, 65 + From bleak Helvetia's icy caverns sent-- + I hear thy groans upon her blood-stained streams! + Heroes, that for your peaceful country perished, + And ye that, fleeing, spot your mountain-snows + With bleeding wounds; forgive me, that I cherished 70 + One thought that ever blessed your cruel foes! + To scatter rage and traitorous guilt + Where Peace her jealous home had built; + A patriot-race to disinherit + Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear; 75 + And with inexpiable spirit + To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer-- + O France, that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind, + And patriot only in pernicious toils! + Are these thy boasts, Champion of human kind? 80 + To mix with Kings in the low lust of sway, + Tell in the hunt, and share the murderous prey; + To insult the shrine of Liberty with spoils + From freemen torn; to tempt and to betray? + + + +V + + The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain, 85 + Slaves by their own compulsion! In mad game + They burst their manacles and wear the name + Of Freedom, graven on a heavier chain! + O Liberty! with profitless endeavour + Have I pursued thee, many a weary hour; 90 + But thou nor swell'st the victor's strain, nor ever + Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power. + + Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee, + (Nor prayer, nor boastful name delays thee) + Alike from Priestcraft's harpy minions, 95 + And factious Blasphemy's obscener slaves, + Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions, + The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves! + And there I felt thee!--on that sea-cliff's verge, + Whose pines, scarce travelled by the breeze above, 100 + Had made one murmur with the distant surge! + Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare, + And shot my being through earth, sea and air, + Possessing all things with intensest love, + O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there. 105 + + + + +DEJECTION: AN ODE + +WRITTEN APRIL 4, 1802 + + Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon, + With the old Moon in her arms; + And I fear, I fear, my Master dear! + We shall have a deadly storm. + +_Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence._ + + + +I + + Well! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made + The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence, + This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence + Unroused by winds, that ply a busier trade + Than those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes, 5 + Or the dull sobbing draft, that moans and rakes + Upon the strings of this Aeolian lute, + Which better far were mute. + For lo! the New-moon winter-bright! + And overspread with phantom light, 10 + (With swimming phantom light o'erspread + But rimmed and circled by a silver thread) + I see the old Moon in her lap, foretelling + The coming-on of rain and squally blast. + And oh! that even now the gust were swelling, 15 + And the slant night-shower driving loud and fast! + Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awed, + And sent my soul abroad, + Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give, + Might startle this dull pain, and make it move so and live! 20 + + + +II + + A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, + A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, + Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, + In word, or sigh, or tear-- + O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood, 25 + To other thoughts by yonder throstle wooed, + All this long eve, so balmy and serene, + Have I been gazing on the western sky, + And its peculiar tint of yellow green: + And still I gaze--and with how blank an eye! 30 + And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, + That give away their motion to the stars; + Those stars, that glide behind them or between, + Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen: + Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew 35 + In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue; + I see them all so excellently fair, + I see, not feel, how beautiful they are! + + + +III + + My genial spirits fail; + And what can these avail 40 + To lift the smothering weight from off my breast? + It were a vain endeavour, + Though I should gaze for ever + On that green light that lingers in the west: + I may not hope from outward forms to win 45 + The passion and the life, whose fountains are within. + + + +IV + + O Lady! we receive but what we give, + And in our life alone does Nature live: + Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud! + And would we aught behold, of higher worth. 50 + + Than that inanimate cold world allowed + To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd, + Ah, from the soul itself must issue forth + A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud + Enveloping the Earth-- 55 + And from the soul itself must there be sent + A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, + Of all sweet sounds the life and element! + + + +V + + O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me + What this strong music in the soul may be! 60 + What, and wherein it doth exist, + This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist, + This beautiful and beauty-making power. + Joy, virtuous Lady! Joy that ne'er was given, + Save to the pure, and in their purest hour, 65 + Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and shower, + Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power, + Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower, + A new Earth and new Heaven, + Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud-- 70 + Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud-- + We in ourselves rejoice! + And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, + All melodies the echoes of that voice, + All colours a suffusion from that light. 75 + + + +VI + + There was a time when, though my path was rough, + This joy within me dallied with distress, + And all misfortunes were but as the stuff + Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness: + For hope grew round me, like the twining vine, 80 + And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine. + + But now afflictions bow me down to earth: + Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth; + But oh! each visitation + Suspends what nature gave me at my birth, 85 + My shaping spirit of Imagination. + For not to think of what I needs must feel, + But to be still and patient, all I can; + And haply by abstruse research to steal + From my own nature all the natural man-- 90 + This was my sole resource, my only plan: + Till that which suits a part infects the whole, + And now is almost grown the habit of my soul. + + + +VII + + Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind, + Reality's dark dream! 95 + I turn from you, and listen to the wind, + Which long has raved unnoticed. What a scream + Of agony by torture lengthened out + That lute sent forth! Thou Wind, that rav'st without, + Bare crag, or mountain-tairn, or blasted tree, 100 + Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb, + Or lonely house, long held the witches' home, + Methinks were fitter instruments for thee, + Mad Lutanist! who in this month of showers, + Of dark-brown gardens, and of peeping flowers, 105 + Mak'st Devils' yule, with worse than wintry song, + The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves among. + Thou Actor, perfect in all tragic sounds! + Thou mighty Poet, even to frenzy bold! + What tell'st thou now about? 110 + 'Tis of the rushing of an host in rout, + With groans of trampled men, with smarting wounds-- + At once they groan with pain, and shudder with the cold! + + But hush! there is a pause of deepest silence! + And all that noise, as of a rushing crowd, 115 + With groans, and tremulous shudderings--all is over-- + It tells another tale, with sounds less deep and loud! + A tale of less affright, + And tempered with delight, + As Otway's self had framed the tender lay, 120 + 'Tis of a little child + Upon a lonesome wild, + Not far from home, but she hath lost her way: + And now moans low in bitter grief and fear, + And now screams loud, and hopes to make her mother hear. 125 + + + +VIII + + 'Tis midnight, but small thoughts have I of sleep: + Full seldom may my friend such vigils keep! + Visit her, gentle Sleep! with wings of healing, + And may this storm be but a mountain-birth, + May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling, 130 + Silent as though they watched the sleeping Earth! + With light heart may she rise, + Gay fancy, cheerful eyes, + Joy lift her spirit, joy attune her voice; + To her may all things live, from pole to pole, 135 + Their life the eddying of her living soul! + O simple spirit, guided from above, + Dear Lady! friend devoutest of my choice, + Thus mayest thou ever, evermore rejoice. + + + + +YOUTH AND AGE + + Verse, a breeze mid blossoms straying, + Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee-- + Both were mine! Life went a-maying + With Nature, Hope, and Poesy, + When I was young! 5 + + _When_ I was young?--Ah, woful When! + Ah! for the change 'twixt Now and Then! + This breathing house not built with hands, + This body that does me grievous wrong, + O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands, 10 + How lightly _then_ it flashed along:-- + Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore, + On winding lakes and rivers wide, + That ask no aid of sail or oar, + That fear no spite of wind or tide! 15 + Nought cared this body for wind or weather + When Youth and I lived in 't together. + + Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like; + Friendship is a sheltering tree; + O! the joys, that came down shower-like, 20 + Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty, + Ere I was old! + + _Ere_ I was old? Ah woful Ere, + Which tells me Youth 's no longer here! + O Youth! for years so many and sweet, 25 + 'Tis known, that thou and I were one, + I'll think it but a fond conceit-- + It cannot be that thou art gone! + Thy vesper-bell hath not yet tolled:-- + And thou wert aye a masker bold! 30 + What strange disguise hast now put on, + To _make believe_, that thou art gone? + I see these locks in silvery slips, + This drooping gait, this altered size: + But Spring-tide blossoms on thy lips, 35 + And tears take sunshine from thine eyes! + Life is but thought: so think I will + That Youth and I are house-mates still. + + Dew-drops are the gems of morning, + But the tears of mournful eve! 40 + Where no hope is, life 's a warning + That only serves to make us grieve, + When we are old: + That only serves to make us grieve + With oft and tedious taking-leave, 45 + Like some poor nigh-related guest, + That may not rudely be dismist; + Yet hath outstayed his welcome while, + And tells the jest without the smile. + + + + +WORK WITHOUT HOPE + +LINES COMPOSED 21ST FEBRUARY 1827 + + + All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair-- + The bees are stirring--birds are on the wing-- + And Winter slumbering in the open air, + Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! + And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, 5 + Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing. + + Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow, + Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow. + Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may, + For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away! 10 + With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll: + And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul? + Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, + And Hope without an object cannot live. + + + + +EPITAPH + + Stop, Christian passer-by!--Stop, child of God, + And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod + A poet lies, or that which once seemed he.-- + O, lift one thought in prayer for S.T.C.; + That he who many a year with toil of breath 5 + Found death in life, may here find life in death! + Mercy for praise--to be forgiven for fame + He ask'd, and hoped, through Christ. + Do thou the same! + + + + +NOTES + + +THE ANCIENT MARINER + + +The Latin motto is condensed, by omission, from about a page of Thomas +Burnet's _Archaeologiae Philosophicae: sive Doctrina Antiqua de Rerum +Originibus_, published in London in 1692. Burnet was Master of +Charterhouse from 1685 till his death in 1715, and enjoyed considerable +reputation as a man of curious learning. In the _Archaeologiae_ he +professed to reconcile a former work of his on the origins of the world +with the account given in Genesis. The quotation is from chapter VII. of +book I., "De Hebraeis, eorumque Cabalâ," and may be translated thus: "I +easily believe that the invisible natures in the universe are more in +number than the visible. But who shall tell us all the kinds of them? +the ranks and relationships, the peculiar qualities and gifts of each? +what they do? where they dwell? Man's wit has ever been circling about +the knowledge of these things, but has never attained to it. Yet in the +meanwhile I will not deny that it is profitable to contemplate from time +to time in the mind, as in a picture, the idea of a larger and better +world; lest the mind, becoming wonted to the little things of everyday +life, grow narrow and settle down altogether to mean businesses. At the +same time, however, we must watch for the truth, and observe method, so +as to distinguish the certain from the uncertain, day from night." + +Instead of this motto the first edition had an Argument prefixed, as +follows: + +"How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold +Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course +to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange +things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back +to his own Country." + +This was somewhat enlarged in the second edition (1800), and dropped +thereafter. + +*Page 3*, LINE 12--*eftsoons*. Anglo-Saxon _eftsona (eft_ +afterwards, again, + _sona_ soon), reënforced by the adverbial genitive +ending _-s._ Coleridge found the word in Spenser and the old ballads. + +4, 23--*kirk*. The Scotch and Northern English form of "church." The +old ballads had been preserved chiefly in the North; hence this Northern +form came to be looked on as the proper word for church in the ballad +style. + +41, marginal gloss--*driven*. All editions down to Campbell's had +"drawn;" but this he believes to have been a misprint, since the +narrative seems to require "driven." + +5, 55--*clifts*. This word arose from a confusion of "cliff," a +precipice, and "cleft," a fissure. It was "exceedingly common in the +16th-18th cent.," according to the New English Dict., which gives +examples from Captain John Smith, Marlowe, and Defoe. + +62--*swound*. An archaic form of "swoon," found in Elizabethan +English. + +64--*thorough*. "Through" and "thorough" are originally the same +word, and in Shakespeare's time both forms were used for the +preposition. Cf. Puck's song in "Midsummer Night's Dream," "Thorough +bush, thorough briar." + +67--*eat*. This form (pronounced _et_) is still in use in England and +New England for the past tense of the verb, though in America the form +"ate" is now preferred. "Eat" as past participle, however, was archaic +or rude even in Coleridge's time. + +76--*vespers*. Properly a liturgical term, meaning the daily evening +service in church; then in a more general way "evening." The Century +Dict. gives no examples of its use as a nautical term. Probably +Coleridge used it to give a suggestion of ante-Reformation times. The +more familiar word for the evening service in the English Church is +"even-song," but Coleridge in line 595 prefers "the little vesper bell" +for its suggestion of medievalism. + +6, 97--*like God's own head*. The comparison is the converse of that +in the Bible, Matthew xvii., 2, Revelations I., 16, where the +countenance of Christ glorified is said to shine "as the sun" (Sykes). + +98--*uprist*. This word was used in Middle English as a noun, and +regularly as the 3d pers. sing. pres. ind. of the verb "uprise." In "The +Reves Tale" line 329, however, Chaucer uses, it in a context of past +tenses, as Coleridge does here, as if it were a weak preterit; and +Chaucer uses "rist up" in the same way several times (Sykes). + +104--*The furrow followed free*. This was changed in "Sibylline +Leaves" to "The furrow streamed off free," because, Coleridge tells us, +"from the ship itself the _Wake_ appears like a brook flowing off from +the stern." In the case of modern steamboats at least it would be more +correct to say that the wake, as seen from the stern of the boat, looks +like a brook _following_ the boat. The original reading was restored in +the editions of 1828 and 1829. + +7, 123--*The very deep did rot*, etc. The ship becalmed in tropic +seas, and the slimy things engendered there, were a vision in +Coleridge's mind before "The Ancient Mariner" was thought of. In the +lines contributed to Southey's "Joan of Arc" in 1796 (published, with +additions, as "The Destiny of Nations" in "Sibylline Leaves"), in an +allegoric passage on Chaos and Love, he wrote: + + "As what time, after long and pestful calms, + With slimy shapes and miscreated life + Poisoning the vast Pacific, the fresh breeze + Wakens the merchant sail uprising." + +The same subject had occupied Wordsworth's imagination before he and +Coleridge came together at Stowey; see Wordsworth's "The Borderers," Act +iv. + +125--*slimy things*. Strange creatures, the spawn of the rotting sea, +for which the Mariner has no name. + +131, marginal gloss--*Josephus, Michael Psellus*. The only "learned +Jew, Josephus," that we know of is the historian of that name who lived +in the first century of our era; but little has been found in his works +to justify this reference. The "Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael +Psellus," was a Byzantine teacher of the eleventh century who wrote a +dialogue in which demons are classified according to the element in +which they live (Cooper; Sykes). + +8, 152--*I wist*. "Wist" is properly the past tense of an old verb +"wit," to know. But Coleridge seems to use "I wist" here as equivalent +to "I wis" (see "Christabel," l. 92), which is a form of "iwis," an +adverb meaning "certainly." + +157--*with throats unslaked*, etc. A remarkable instance of +onomatopoeia. + +9, 164--*gramercy*. An exclamation, meaning originally "much thanks" +(Old French _grand merci_), and so used by Shakespeare ("Merchant of +Venice" II., 2, 128, "Richard III" III., 2, 108). But in the ballads it +is often a mere exclamation of wonder and surprise, and so Coleridge +uses it here,--*grin*. Coleridge says ("Table Talk" May 31, 1830): "I +took the thought of 'grinning for joy' from my companion's remark to me, +when we had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon [in Wales, in the summer of +1794], and were nearly dead with thirst. We could not speak from the +constriction, till we found a little puddle under a stone. He said to +me: 'You grinned like an idiot.' He had done the same." To "grin" was +originally to snarl and show the teeth as animals do when angry. "They +go to and fro in the evening: they grin like a dog, and run about +through the city," Ps. LIX., 6, Prayer-Book Version, where the King +James Version has "make a noise like a dog." Hence idiots, stupid +people, foolish people, all who are or who demean themselves below the +dignity of man, _grin_ rather than smile; and so the Mariner's +companions, their muscles stiffened by drought, could show their +gladness only by the contortions of a grin, not by a natural smile of +joy. + +169--*Without a breeze, without a tide*. The Phantom Ship is a +wide-spread sailor's superstition that has been often used in the +romantic literature of the nineteenth century. See Scott's "Rokeby," +Canto II. xi; Marryat's "Phantom Ship;" Poe's "MS. Found in a Bottle;" +and Longfellow's "Ballad of Carmilhan" (in "Tales of a Wayside Inn," +Second Day). It is seen in storms, driving by with all sails set, and is +generally held to be an omen of disaster. Coleridge has shaped the +legend to his own purposes. The ship appears in a calm, not in a storm, +and sailing without, rather than against, wind and tide; and instead of +a crew of dead men it carries only Death and Life-in-Death. Possibly he +was acquainted with a form of the legend found in Bechstein's _Deutsches +Sagenbuch_ (pointed out by Dr. Sykes), in which "Falkenberg, for murder +of his brother, is condemned to sail a spectral bark, attended only by +his good and his evil spirit, who play dice for his soul." + +185--*Are those her ribs*, etc. Instead of this stanza the first +edition had these two: + + "Are those _her_ naked ribs, which fleck'd + The sun that did behind them peer? + And are those two all, all the crew, + That woman and her fleshless Pheere? + + "His bones are black with many a crack, + All black and bare, I ween; + Jet-black and bare, save where with rust + Of mouldy damps and charnel crust + They're patch'd with purple and green" + +And again after line 198 the first edition had this stanza: + + "A gust of wind sterte up behind + And whistled thro' his bones; + Thro' the holes of his eyes and the hole of his mouth + Half-whistles and half-groans." + +But this crude grotesquerie of horror--quite in the taste of that day, +the day of "Monk" Lewis and Mrs. Radcliffe--Coleridge's finer poetical +judgment soon rejected. + +190--*Her lips were red*, etc. Life-in-Death--who wins the Mariner, +while Death wins his shipmates--is conceived as a witch, something after +the fashion of Geraldine in "Christabel" or Duessa in "The Faerie +Queene," but wilder, stranger than either; a thing of startling and evil +beauty. Spenser's pages of description, however, give no such vivid +image of loathsome loveliness as do the first three lines of this +stanza. "Her skin was as white as leprosy" is a feat in suggestion. + +10, 199, marginal gloss--*within the courts of the Sun*. Between the +tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. + +210--*with one bright star Within the nether tip*. An interesting +case of poetical illusion. No one, of course, ever saw a star _within_ +the tip of the horned moon. Yet a good many readers, until reminded of +their astronomy, think they have seen this phenomenon. Coleridge +apparently knew that the human mind would receive it as experience. The +phrase is no slip on his part; the earlier editions had instead "almost +atween the tips," which is astronomically justifiable, but in "Sibylline +Leaves" and later he wrote it as in the text. + +222--*And every soul, it passed me by, Like the whizz of my +cross-bow!* It was an ancient belief, imaginatively revived by +romantic poets, that when a person died his soul could be seen, or +heard, or both, as it left the body, Cf. Keats's "Eve of St. Agnes," +first stanza; Rossetti's "Sister Helen;" and Kipling's "Danny Deever." + +11, 226--*And thou art long*, etc. "For the last two lines of this +stanza," runs. Coleridge's note to the passage in "Sibylline Leaves," "I +am indebted to Mr. Wordsworth. It was on a delightful walk from Nether +Stowey to Dulverton, with him and his sister, in the autumn of 1797, +that this poem was planned, and in part composed." Wordsworth in later +years declared that he contributed also lines 13-16, "and four or five +lines more in different parts of the poem, which I could not now point +out." + +245--*or ever*. "Or" here is not the adversative conjunction but an +entirely different word, an archaic variant of "ere," meaning "before." + +250--*For the sky and the sea*, etc. Another instance of the sound +fitting the sense. The rocking rhythm of the line is the rhythm of his +fevered pulse. The poem is full of this quality. + +13, 297--*silly*. This word meant in Old English timely (from _soel_, +time, occasion) hence fortunate, blessed. From this was developed, under +the influence of medieval religious teaching, the meaning innocent, +harmless, simple; and from this again our modern meaning, foolish, +simple in a derogatory sense. Chaucer has the word in all these +meanings, and also in another, a modification of the second--wretched, +pitiable. Another shade of the same meaning appears in Spenser's "silly +bark," i.e. _frail_ ship, and in Burns's "To a Mouse": + + "Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin! + Its silly wa's the win's are strewin'!" + +"The epithet may be due either to the gush of love that has filled the +Mariner's heart, or to his noticing the buckets, long useless, frail, +now filled with water" (Sykes); very likely to both together. + +14, 314--*fire-flags*. The notion of the "fire-flags" "hurried about" +was probably suggested to Coleridge by the description of the Northern +Lights (_aurora borealis_) in Hearne's "Journey ... to the Northern +Ocean," a book printed in 1795 and known to both Wordsworth and +Coleridge before 1798. Hearne says: "I can positively affirm that in +still nights I have frequently heard them make a rustling and crackling +noise, like the waving of a large flag in a fresh gale of wind." See +also Wordsworth's "Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman" (Cooper). + +15, 358--*Sometimes a-dropping*, etc. The Mariner's sin was that in +wanton cruelty he took the life of a friendly fellow-creature; his +punishment is to live with dead men round him and the dead bird on his +breast, in such solitude that "God himself scarce seemed there to be," +until he learns to feel the _sacredness of life_ even in the +water-snakes, the "slimy things" that coil in the rotting sea; and the +stages of his penance are marked by suggestions of his return to the +privilege of human fellowship. The angels' music is like the song of the +skylark, the sails ripple like a leaf-hidden brook--recollections of his +happy boyhood in. England; and finally comes the actual land breeze, and +he is in his "own countree." Observe the marginal gloss to line 442. + +17, 407--*honey-dew*. See note on "Kubla Khan," line 53. + +416--*His great bright eye*, etc. Dorothy Wordsworth in her Journal, +February 27, 1798, describes the look of the sea by moonlight, "big and +white, swelled to the very shores, but round and high in the middle." + +20, 512--*shrieve*. To hear confession and pronounce absolution, one +of the duties of the priesthood in the Catholic church. The word is more +often spelled _shrive. Shrift_ is the abstract noun derived from it. + +21, 523--*skiff-boat*. A pleonastic compound; a skiff is a boat. +Coleridge is fond of such formations. See for example II. 41, 77, 472 of +this poem and II. 46, 649 of "Christabel" (Cooper). + +535--*ivy-tod*. A clump or bush of ivy. Cf. Spenser's "Shepheards +Calender," March, II. 67 ff.: + + "At length within an Yvie todde + (There shrouded was the little God) + I heard a busie bustling." + +23, 607--*While each to his great Father bends*, etc. Cf. the 148th +Psalm (Prayer-Book Version) v. 12: "Young men and maidens, old men and +children, praise the name of the Lord: for his name only is excellent, +and his praise above heaven and earth." + + +CHRISTABEL + +25,6-7--This couplet ran as follows in the first edition: + + "Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, + Hath a toothless mastiff bitch." + +In the editions of 1828 and 1829 Coleridge changed it to the form +printed in the text; "but _bitch_ has been restored in all subsequent +editions except Mr. Campbell's" (Garnett). + +16--*thin gray cloud*, etc. The "thin gray cloud," as also the +dancing leaf of ll. 49-52, was observed at Stowey. They are noted in +Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal, January 31 and March 7, 1798. + +26, 54--*Jesu*. This form of the word is nearer to the Hebrew +original than the more familiar _Jesus_. It is often (though not +exclusively) used in ejaculation and prayer, as here, and was perhaps +supposed to be the vocative form. + +27, 92--*I wis.* This is a misinterpretation of Middle English +_iwis_, from Old English _gewis_, "certainly." + +29, 129--*The lady sank,* etc. The threshold of a house is, in +folk-lore, a sacred place, and evil things cannot cross but have to be +carried over it. + +142--*I cannot speak,* etc. Geraldine blesses "her gracious stars" +(l. 114), but cannot join in praise to the Holy Virgin. + +30, 167--*And jealous of the listening air*. This line was not in the +first edition, but was added in the edition of 1828. + +32, 252--*Behold! her bosom and half her side*, etc. There exist at +least three versions of this passage. The text is that of the 1828 +edition. The edition of 1816 lacked ll. 255-61, having only these lines +between 253 and 262: + + "And she is to sleep by Christabel. + She took two paces, and a stride," etc. + +The third form is that of a MS. copy of the poem once the property of +Wordsworth's sister-in-law, Sarah Hutchinson, and recently published in +facsimile by Mr. E.H. Coleridge, which gives this reading for ll. 253-4: + + "Are lean and old and foul of hue, + And she is to sleep by Christabel." + +Coleridge seems to have tried both ways, that of revealing Geraldine's +loathsome secret and that of leaving it an unknown and nameless horror, +and finally to have chosen the latter, just as he rejected in later +editions the charnel-house particulars in the description of Death in +"The Ancient Mariner." Unquestionably he was right. The horror that is +merely suggested and left shrouded in mystery for the imagination to +work on is more powerful than that which is known. The suppressed line, +however, helps us in an age less familiar with notions of the +supernatural to understand what Geraldine is. The character is conceived +upon the general lines of Duessa in the first book of "The Faerie +Queene;" a being of great external loveliness, but within "full of all +uncleanness." Observe also that the thought, shrouded here, is half +revealed later (l. 457). + +35, 344--*Bratha Head, Wyndermere, Langdale Pike*, etc. For the +relation of the Second Part of the poem to the Lake country see +Introduction. All of the places named in these lines are near the +border-line between Cumberland and Westmoreland and within a dozen miles +of the Wordsworths' home at Grasmere. Keswick, which was the home of +Coleridge from 1800 to 1804, and of his wife and children for many years +thereafter, is on Derwent Water, in Cumberland, some ten miles north of +Grasmere. The little river Bratha runs into the upper or northern end of +Windermere, a larger lake lying about three miles below Grasmere and +connected with it by another stream. Langdale Pike (or Pikes, for there +are more than one) is the name of the steep hills at the head of +Langdale, on the Cumberland border. Dungeon-Ghyll is a ravine in +Langdale (see Wordsworth's "The Idle Shepherd Boys; or, Dungeon-Ghyll +Force"). Borrowdale lies over the border in Cumberland and slopes the +other way, toward Derwent Water. + +37, 407--*Lord Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine*. Sir Leoline lives at +"Langdale Hall," a supposed castle in the immediate vicinity of the +poets' homes; the friend of his youth, whose daughter Geraldine claims +to be, is given the name of a real family and an historical estate in +eastern Cumberland, Tryermaine in Gilsland, on the River Irthing, which +forms part of the boundary between Cumberland and Northumberland. Scott +in his notes to "The Bridal of Triermain" quotes as follows from Burns's +"Antiquities of Westmoreland and Cumberland": "After the death of +Gilmore, Lord of Tryermaine and Torcrossock, Hubert Vaux gave Tryermaine +and Torcrossock to his second son, Ranulph Vaux.... Ranulph, being Lord +of all Gilsland, gave Gilmore's land to his younger son, named +Roland.... And they were named Rolands successively, that were lords +thereof, until the reign of Edward the Fourth." + +44--*The Conclusion to Part the Second*. Campbell thought it "highly +improbable" that these lines were originally composed as a part of +"Christabel." In a letter to Southey, May 6, 1801, Coleridge speaks of +his eldest boy, Hartley, then in his fifth year: "Dear Hartley! we are +at times alarmed by the state of his health, but at present he is well. +If I were to lose him, I am afraid it would exceedingly deaden my +affection for any other children I may have." Then he writes the lines +that we now have as the Conclusion to Part the Second; and adds: "A very +metaphysical account of fathers calling their children rogues, rascals, +and little varlets, etc." + + +KUBLA KHAN + +Kubla Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, was a Mongolian conqueror who +stretched his empire from European Russia to the eastern shores of China +in the thirteenth century. His exploits, like those of his grandfather +and those of the Mohammedan Timur in the next century, made a deep +impression on the imagination of Western Europe. Compilers of +travellers's tales, like Hakluyt and Purchas, caught up eagerly whatever +they could find, history or legend, concerning the extent of his domain, +the methods of his government, or the splendors of his court. The +passage in "Purchas his Pilgrimage" to which Coleridge refers is as +follows: + +"In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace, encompassing sixteene +miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, +pleasant Springs, delightfull Streames, and all sorts of beasts of +chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous house of +pleasure" (quoted in the Notes of the Globe edition). + +Coleridge's poem, however, contains suggestions and reminiscences from +another part of Purchas's book, and probably from other books as well. +"It reads like an arras of reminiscences from several accounts of +natural or enchanted parks, and from various descriptions of that +elusive and danger-fraught garden which mystic geographers have studied +to locate from Florida to Cathay" (Cooper). + +The earthly paradise, which was closed to man indeed, but not destroyed, +when Adam and Eve were driven from its gates, has exercised the +imagination of the Christian world from the early Middle Ages. +Lactantius described it in the fourth century; the author of the +"Phoenix," probably in the eighth century, translated Lactantius' Latin +into Anglo-Saxon verse; Sir John Mandeville, in the fourteenth century, +though he did not reach it himself because he "was not worthy," gives an +account of it from what he has "heard say of wise Men beyond;" Milton +described it enchantingly in "Paradise Lost;" Dr. Johnson used a +modification of it in "Rasselas;" and William Morris in our own time +made it the framework for a delightful series of world-old tales. The +idea, indeed, is not peculiar to Christianity, but is probably to be +found in every civilization. Christian Europe has naturally located it +in the East; and since the Crusades, which brought Western Europe more +in contact with the East, various eastern legends have been attached to +or confounded with the original notion. One of these is the Abyssinian +legend of the hill Amara (cf. l. 41, where Coleridge's "Mount Abora" +seems to stand for Purchas's Amara). Amara in Purchas's account is a +hill in a great plain in Ethiopia, used as a prison for the sons of +Abyssinian kings. Its level top, twenty leagues in circuit and +surrounded by a high wall, is a garden of delight. "Heauen and Earth, +Nature and Industrie, have all been corriuals to it, all presenting +their best presents, to make it of this so louely presence, some taking +this for the place of our Forefathers Paradise." The sides of the hill +are of overhanging rock, "bearing out like mushromes, so that it is +impossible to ascend it" except by a passageway "cut out within the +Rocke, not with staires, but ascending little by little," and closed +above and below with gates guarded by soldiers. "Toward the South" of +the level top "is a rising hill ... yeelding ... a pleasant spring which +passeth through all that Plaine ... and making a Lake, whence issueth a +River, which having from these tops espied Nilus, never leaves seeking +to find him, whom he cannot leave both to seeke and to finde.... There +are no Cities on the top, but palaces, standing by themselves ... +spacious, sumptuous, and beautifull, where the Princes of the Royall +blood have their abode with their families." + +This legend looks backward to Mandeville, with whose account of the +Terrestrial Paradise it has much in common, and forward to Milton, who +used some of its elements in his description of Paradise in the fourth +book of "Paradise Lost." (See Professor Cooper's article in "Modern +Philology," III., 327 ff., from which this is condensed.) + +Mr. E.H. Coleridge (the poet's grandson) has recently shown that in the +winter of 1797-8 Coleridge read and made notes from a book, "Travels +through ... the Cherokee Country," by the American botanist William +Bartram. Chapter VII. of Bartram's book contains an account of some +natural wonders in the Cherokee country that almost certainly afforded +part of the imagery of "Kubla Khan." Bartram, says Mr. Coleridge, +"speaks of waters which 'descend by slow degrees through rocky caverns +into the bowels of the earth, whence they are carried by subterraneous +channels into other receptacles and basons.' He travels for several +miles over 'fertile eminences and delightful shady forests.' He is +enchanted by a 'view of a dark sublime grove;' of the grand fountain he +says that the 'ebullition is astonishing and continual, though its +greatest force of fury intermits' (note the word 'intermits') 'regularly +for the space of thirty seconds of time: the ebullition is perpendicular +upward, from a vast rugged orifice through a bed of rock throwing up +small particles of white shells.' He is informed by 'a trader' that when +the Great Sink was forming there was heard 'an inexpressible rushing +noise like a mighty hurricane or thunderstorm,' that 'the earth was +overflowed by torrents of water which came wave after wave rushing down, +attended with a terrific noise and tremor of the earth,' that the +fountain ceased to flow and 'sank into a huge bason of water;' but, as +he saw with his own eyes, 'vast heaps of fragments of rock' (Coleridge +writes 'huge fragments'), 'white chalk, stones, and pebbles had been +thrown up by the original outbursts and forced aside into the lateral +valleys.'" + +From these and from other like sources Coleridge's mind was no doubt +stored with suggestions of tropical wonder and loveliness, which fell +together--if his own account of the making of the poem is to be relied +on--into the kaleidoscopic beauty of "Kubla Khan." It is not unlikely, +too (cf. ll. 12-13), that the ash-tree dell at Stowey, which he had +already used for a scene of supernatural terror in "Osorio," bears some +part in his avowed dream of Xanadu. + +45, 3--*Alph, the sacred river.* This name seems to be of Coleridge's +own invention; at least it has not been pointed out where he found it. + +16--*demon-lover.* The demon-lover (or more often, with sexes +reversed, the fairy mistress) is a favorite theme of romance, taken from +folk-lore, where it appears in many forms. Cf. the ballads of "Thomas +Rymer," "Tam Lin," and "The Demon Lover," in Child's "English and +Scottish Popular Ballads," and Scott's "William and Helen" (a +translation of Burger's "Lenore"). + +46, 39, 41--*Abyssinian maid, Mount Abora.* See introductory note +above. + +53--*honey-dew.* A sweet sticky substance found on plants, deposited +there by the aphis or plant-louse. It was supposed to be the food of +fairies. Not improbably Coleridge was thinking of manna, a saccharine +exudation found upon certain plants in the East. Mandeville describes it +as found in "the Land of Job:" "This Manna is clept Bread of Angels. And +it is a white Thing that is full sweet and right delicious, and more +sweet than Honey or Sugar. And it Cometh of the Dew of Heaven that +falleth upon the Herbs in that Country. And it congealeth and becometh +all white and sweet. And Men put it in Medicines." + +53-4--*For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.* +Professor Cooper, in the article cited in the introductory note above, +points out that this part of the poem contains perhaps reminiscences of +the stories told of the Old Man of the Mountain. This was the title +popularly given to the head of a fanatical sect of Mohammedans in Syria +in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, whose method of getting rid of +their enemies has given us the word _assassin_. To quote from +Mandeville's "Travels," which has the essentials of the story, though +the chief is here called Gatholonabes, and his domain is not in Syria +but in the island Mistorak, "in the Lordship of Prester John:" + +"He had a full fair Castle and a strong in a Mountain, so strong and so +noble, that no Man could devise a fairer or a stronger. And he had made +wall all the Mountain about with a strong Wall and a fair. And within +those Walls he had the fairest Garden that any Man might behold.... + +"And he had also in that Place, the fairest Damsels that might be found, +under the Age of fifteen Years, and the fairest young Striplings that +Men might get, of that same Age. And they were all clothed in Cloths of +Gold, full richly. And he said that those were Angels. + +"And he had also made 3 Wells, fair and noble, and all environed with +Stone of Jasper, and of Crystal, diapered with Gold, and set with +precious Stones and great orient Pearls. And he had made a Conduit under +the Earth, so that the 3 Wells, at his List, should run, one Milk, +another Wine, and another Honey. And that Place he clept Paradise. + +"And when that any good Knight, that was hardy and noble, came to see +this Royalty, he would lead him into his Paradise, and show him these +wonderful Things for his Sport, and the marvellous and delicious Song of +divers Birds, and the fair Damsels, and the fair Wells of Milk, Wine and +Honey, plenteously running. And he would make divers Instruments of +Music to sound in an high Tower, so merrily, that it was Joy to hear; +and no Man should see the Craft thereof. And those, he said, were Angels +of God, and that Place was Paradise, that God had promised to his +Friends, saying, '_Dabo vobis Terram fluentem Lacte et Melle_' ('I shall +give thee a Land flowing with Milk and Honey'). And then would he make +them to drink of certain Drink [hashish, a narcotic drug, whence their +name of Assassins], whereof anon they should be drunk. And then would +they think it greater Delight than they had before. And then would he +say to them, that if they would die for him and for his Love, that after +their Death they should come to his Paradise; and they should be of the +Age of the Damsels, and they should play with them, and yet be Maidens. +And after that should he put them in a yet fairer Paradise, where that +they should see the God of Nature visibly, in His Majesty and in His +Bliss. And then would he show them his Intent, and say to them, that if +they would go slay such a Lord, or such a Man that was his Enemy or +contrarious to his List, that they should not therefore dread to do it +and to be slain themselves. For after their Death, he would put them in +another Paradise, that was an 100-fold fairer than any of the tother; +and there should they dwell with the most fairest Damsels that might be, +and play with them ever-more. + +"And thus went many divers lusty Pachelors to slay great Lords in divers +Countries, that were his Enemies, and made themselves to be slain, in +Hope to have that Paradise." + + +FRANCE: AN ODE + +When Coleridge republished this poem in the _Post_ in 1802 he prefixed +to it the following + + +ARGUMENT + +_First Stanza_. An invocation to those objects in Nature the +contemplation of which had inspired the Poet with a devotional love of +Liberty. _Second Stanza_. The exultation of the Poet at the commencement +of the French Revolution, and his unqualified abhorrence of the Alliance +against the Republic. _Third Stanza_. The blasphemies and horrors during +the domination of the Terrorists regarded by the Poet as a transient +storm, and as the natural consequence of the former despotism and of the +foul superstition of Popery. Reason, indeed, began to suggest many +apprehensions; yet still the Poet struggled to retain the hope that +France would make conquests by no other means than by presenting to the +observation of Europe a people more happy and better instructed than +under other forms of Government. _Fourth Stanza_. Switzerland, and the +Poet's recantation. _Fifth Stanza_. An address to Liberty, in which the +Poet expresses his conviction that those feelings and that grand _ideal_ +of Freedom which the mind attains by its contemplation of its individual +nature, and of the sublime surrounding objects (see stanza the first) do +not belong to men as a society, nor can possibly be either gratified or +realized under any form, of human government; but belong to the +individual man, so far as he is pure, and inflamed with the love and +adoration of God in Nature. + +51, 22--*When France in wrath*, etc. The storming of the Bastile took +place July 14, 1789. On the 4th of August feudal and manorial privileges +were swept away by the National Assembly; and on the 18th of August the +Assembly formally adopted a declaration of "the rights of man." In +September 1792 the National Convention abolished royalty and declared +France a republic. + +52, 26-7--*With what a joy my lofty gratulation Unawed I* sang. +Coleridge wrote a poem on the "Destruction of the Bastile," probably in +1789 or soon after (first printed in 1834); and in September, 1792, some +lines "To a Young Lady, with a Poem on the French Revolution" (first +printed in _The Watchman_ in 1796), in which he tells his emotions-- + + "When slumbering Freedom roused with high disdain + With giant fury burst her triple chain!" + +28--*the disenchanted nation*. "Disenchanted" because they found that +freedom, peace, and virtue were not to be secured by mere proclamation; +and that all Europe was not ready at the call of the revolutionists to +abolish prescriptive rights and establish republican forms of society. +In January 1793 Louis XVI was beheaded. The act was followed pretty +promptly by a coalition of England, Holland, Spain, Naples, and the +German states against the Republic. + +36--*Yet still my voice*. In "Religious Musings," 1794-6, and more +ardently in the parts that he contributed to Southey's "Joan of Arc," +1796. + +42--*Britain's name*. England was from the beginning the centre of +resistance to the violence and ambition of revolutionary France; and +Pitt, who controlled English policy in these years, was looked upon as a +cold-blooded agent of tyranny by the French republicans and their +English sympathizers. + +44--*sweet music of deliverance*. The French were so convinced that +their Revolution marked the beginning of a new era in human affairs that +they determined to have a new chronology. Accordingly a commission of +scientists was appointed to formulate a system, which was adopted in +October 1793. The "Era of the Republic" was to be counted from the +autumnal equinox, 1792. The year was divided into twelve months, as +before, but they were renamed (_Thermidor_ hot month, _Fructidor_ fruit +month, _Nivose_ snow month, &c.), and ran in periods of thirty days each +from the 22d of September. This left five days undistributed, which were +set apart as feast-days in celebration of five virtues or ideals. Each +month consisted of three decades, and each tenth day, or _decadis_, was +a holiday. The purpose of this was to eradicate the observance of the +Christian Sunday. This chronology was in actual use in France until +Napoleon put an end to it in 1806. + +The municipality of Paris in 1793 decreed that on the 10th of November +the worship of Reason should be inaugurated at Notre Dame. "On that day +the venerable cathedral was profaned by a series of sacrilegious +outrages unparalleled in the history of Christendom. A temple dedicated +to 'Philosophy' was erected on a platform in the middle of the choir ... +the Goddess of Reason, impersonated by Mademoiselle Maillard, a well +known figurante of the opera, took her seat upon a grassy throne in +front of the temple; ... and the multitude bowed the knee before her in +profound admiration.... At the close of this grotesque ceremony the +whole cortège proceeded to the hall of the Convention, carrying with +them their 'goddess,' who was borne aloft in a chair of state on the +shoulders of four men. Having deposited her in front of the president," +Chaumette, the spokesman of the procession, "harangued the Assembly.... +He proceeded to demand that the ci-devant metropolitan church should +henceforth be the temple of Reason and Liberty; which proposition was +immediately adopted. The 'goddess' was then conducted to the president, +and he and other officers of the House saluted her with the 'fraternal +kiss,' amid thunders of applause. After this, upon the motion of +Thuriot, the Convention in a body joined the mass of the people, and +marched in their company to the temple of Reason, to witness a +repetition of the impieties above described.... At St. Gervais a ball +was given in the chapel of the Virgin. In other churches theatrical +spectacles took place.... On Sunday, the 17th of November, all the +parish churches of Paris were closed by authority, with three +exceptions.... Religion was proscribed, churches closed, Christian +ordinances interdicted; the dreary gloom of atheistical despotism +overspread the land."--Jervis, "The Gallican Church and the Revolution," +quoted in Larned's "History for Ready Reference," p. 1300. The next +year, however, Robespierre had a decree passed of which the first +article was: "The French people acknowledge the existence of the Supreme +Being and the immortality of the soul;" and thereupon the inscriptions +_To Reason_ that had been placed upon the French churches were replaced +by others reading _To the Supreme Being_. + +50--*calm and bright*. After the downfall of Robespierre in 1794 +France gradually worked back to a less hysterical mood. In October 1795 +a new form of government known as the Directory was established, under +which the people enjoyed comparative safety at home and developed a +remarkable military efficiency against their foreign enemies. +Bonaparte's military genius brought him rapidly to the front in the wars +of the Directory. It was he that created the Cisalpine and Ligurine +"republics," and his policy directed the invasions of Rome and of +Switzerland. + +53, 66--*Helvetia*. In March, 1798, after having fostered or +compelled the formation of republics under French protection in Holland, +northern Italy, and Rome, the Directory, under pretence of defending the +republican rights of the Vaudois, made a concerted attack upon +Switzerland. Berne, the centre of resistance, was taken, despite the +heroic defence of the mountaineers who for five centuries had maintained +in "bleak Helvetia's icy caverns" a "shrine of liberty" for all Europe. + + +DEJECTION: AN ODE + +55, 1 of motto--*yestreen*. Abbreviation of "yester-even," yesterday +evening. + +58, 82--*But now afflictions*, etc. In March 1801 Coleridge wrote to +Godwin: "In my long illness I had compelled into hours of delight many a +sleepless, painful hour of darkness by chasing down metaphysical game, +and since then I have continued the hunt, until I found myself unaware +at the root of pure mathematics.... The poet is dead in me." And years +afterward in a letter to an artist friend, W. Collins (December, 1818): +"Poetry is out of the question. The attempt would only hurry me into +that sphere of acute feelings from which abstruse research, the mother +of self-oblivion, presents an asylum." + +95--*Reality's dark dream*! In the earlier forms of the poem the +lines corresponding to 94-5 stood thus: + + "Nay, wherefore did I let it haunt my mind, + This dark, distressful dream?" + +He seems to mean, "This loss of joy, of poetic power, is, must be, only +an evil dream, and I will shake it from my mind;" but he knows that it +is a reality, and so turns to forget it in the sensuous intoxication of +the wind's music. Or perhaps--for Coleridge is already a +metaphysician--reality is used here in opposition to ideality or +imagination; the truth of philosophy (cf. ll. 89-90) and the metaphysic +habit of mind that the study of it induces--what we call reality--is a +dream that has come between him and the world of the ideal in which he +had and used his "shaping spirit of imagination." The passage is +obscure. + +100--*Bare crag*, etc. The scenery here is that of the Lake country +where Coleridge and Wordsworth were then living--the former at Keswick +in Cumberland, the latter at Grasmere, Westmoreland. + +59, 120--*Otway*. Coleridge wrote originally, "As thou thyself [i.e. +Wordsworth--see next note] had'st fram'd the tender lay." This he +changed to "Edmund's self" when he first printed the poem in 1802; and +finally to "Otway's self." Thomas Otway was a dramatist of the time of +Charles II (born 1651, died 1685). He wrote, among other plays, two +tragedies of wonderful pathetic power, "The Orphan" and "Venice +Preserved." The theme and style of the former of these, especially, no +doubt suggested his name to Coleridge here. Otway's own career was +pathetic; he died young, neglected, and according to one story, starved. +To this story Coleridge alludes in one of his early poems, the "Monody +on the Death of Chatterton:" + + "While, 'mid the pelting of that merciless storm, + Sunk to the cold earth Otway's famished form!" + +121--*'T is of a little child*, etc. Alluding to Wordsworth's "Lucy +Gray," which had been published in the second edition of "Lyrical +Ballads," 1800. + + +YOUTH AND AGE + +60, 12--*trim skiffs*, etc. Fulton had invented the steamboat in +1807. The first regular steamboat in British waters was built in 1812. + +61, 34--*altered size*. Coleridge became very stout in his later +years. + + +WORK WITHOUT HOPE + +62, 5--*the sole unbusy thing*. Cf. George Herbert's "Employment:" + + "All things are busie; onely I + Neither bring hony with the bees, + Nor flowers to make that, nor the husbandrie + To water these." + +"I find more substantial comfort now," wrote Coleridge to his friend +Collins in 1818, "in pious George Herbert's 'Temple,' which I used to +read to amuse myself with his quaintness, in short, only to laugh at, +than in all the poetry since Milton." + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select +Poems, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11101 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eaba1ad --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #11101 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11101) diff --git a/old/11101-8.txt b/old/11101-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..115d763 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11101-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4990 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems +by Samuel Taylor Coleridge + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems + +Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge + +Release Date: February 15, 2004 [EBook #11101] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLERIDGE *** + + + + +Produced by Rick Niles, Kat Jeter, John Hagerson, Rosanna Yuen and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + +The Scribner English Classics + +EDITED BY + +FREDERICK H. SYKES, PH.D. +TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY + + + +COLERIDGE'S ANCIENT MARINER AND SELECT POEMS + + + +1908 + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE + + +The text of the poems in this volume is that of J. Dykes Campbell in the +Globe edition of Coleridge's poems. For the introduction I have depended +also largely upon his Memoir of Coleridge, and upon the two volumes of +the "Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge," edited by the poet's grandson, +Mr. E.H. Coleridge. In the Notes, as will be seen, I am indebted +particularly to the general editor of this series, Dr. F.H. Sykes, to +Dr. Lane Cooper of Cornell University, and again to Mr. Coleridge, +through whose kindness I have been able to get a reproduction of the +Marshmills crayon, undoubtedly the most satisfactory portrait of the +poet in existence, for the frontispiece. + +H.M.B. + + + + +CONTENTS + + BIBLIOGRAPHY + + INTRODUCTION: + + I. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE + II. COLERIDGE'S POEMS + + TEXT: + + THE ANCIENT MARINER + CHRISTABEL + KUBLA KHAN + LOVE + FRANCE: AN ODE + DEJECTION: AN ODE + YOUTH AND AGE + WORK WITHOUT HOPE + EPITAPH + + NOTES + + + + +*SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY* + + +EDITIONS: + +Globe Edition. Edited by J. Dykes Campbell. 1 vol. Muses' Library. +Edited by Richard Garnett. + +LIFE AND CRITICISM: + +Stephen, Leslie, Article "Coleridge" in "The Dictionary of National +Biography." + +H.D. Traill, "Coleridge" ("English Men of Letters Series"). + +Caine, T.H., "Coleridge" ("Great Writers Series"). + +Coleridge, S.T., "Biographia Literaria" ("Everyman's Library"). + +De Quincey, T., "Lake Poets." + +Hazlitt, W., "First Acquaintance with Poets." + +Cottle, J., "Reminiscences of Coleridge and Southey." + +Pater, W., "Appreciations." + +Shairp, J.C., "Studies in Poetry and Philosophy." + +Sarrazin, Gabriel, "La Renaissance de la Poésie Anglaise, 1798-1889." + +Brandl, Alois, "S.T. Coleridge and the English Romantic School." + +BIBLIOGRAPHY: + +Haney, J.L., "A Bibliography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge." + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +I. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE + + +I. THE BEGINNINGS + + +Coleridge lived in what may safely be called the most momentous period +of modern history. In the year following his birth Warren Hastings was +appointed first governor-general of India, where he maintained English +empire during years of war with rival nations, and where he committed +those acts of cruelty and tyranny which called forth the greatest +eloquence of the greatest of English orators, in the famous impeachment +trial at Westminster, when Coleridge was a sixteen-year-old schoolboy in +London. A few years before his birth the liberal philosophy of France +had found a popular voice in the writings of Rousseau, which became the +gospel of revolution throughout Europe in Coleridge's youth and early +manhood. "The New Héloise" in the field of sentiment and of the relation +of the sexes, "The Social Contract" In political theory, and "Émile" in +matters of education, were books whose influence upon Coleridge's +generation it would be hard to estimate. When Coleridge was four years +old the English colonies in America declared their independence and +founded a new nation upon the natural rights of man,--a nation that has +grown to be the mightiest and most beneficent on the globe. Coleridge +was seventeen when the French Revolution broke out; he was forty-three +when Napoleon was sent to St. Helena. He saw the whole career of the +greatest political upheaval and of the greatest military genius of the +modern world. Fox, Pitt, and Burke,--the greatest Liberal orator, the +greatest Parliamentary leader, and the greatest philosophic statesman +that England has produced--were at the height of their glory when +Coleridge went up to Cambridge in 1791. + +In literature--naturally, since literature is but an interpretation of +life--the age was not less remarkable. Dr. Johnson was still alive when +Coleridge came up to school at Christ's Hospital, Goldsmith had died +eight years before. But a new spirit was abroad in the younger +generation. Macpherson's "Fingal," alleged to be a translation from the +ancient Gaelic poet Ossian, had appeared in 1760; Thomas Percy's +"Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," a collection of folk-ballads and +rude verse-romances such as the common people cherished but critics had +long refused to consider as poetry, was published in 1765. These two +books were of prime importance in fostering a new taste in +literature,--a love of natural beauty, of simplicity, and of rude +strength. The new taste hailed with delight the appearance of a native +lyric genius in Burns, whose first volume of poems was printed in 1786. +It welcomed also the homely, simple sweetness, what Coleridge and Lamb +called the "divine chit-chat," of Cowper, whose "Task" appeared in the +preceding year. But it was in Coleridge himself and his close +contemporaries and followers that the splendor of the new poetry showed +itself. He was two years younger than Wordsworth, a year younger than +Scott; he was sixteen at the birth of Byron, twenty at that of Shelley, +twenty-four at that of Keats; and he outlived all of them except +Wordsworth. His genius blossomed early. "The Ancient Mariner," his +greatest poem, was published some years before Wordsworth's "Ode on the +Intimations of Immortality" was written, or Scott's "Lay of the Last +Minstrel." He was in the prime of life, or what should have been the +prime of life--forty years old--when Byron burst into sudden fame with +the first two cantos of "Childe Harold" in 1812; he was forty-six when +Keats published "Endymion"; he was fifty-one when Shelley was drowned. +And of all this gifted company Coleridge, though not the strongest +character or the most prolific poet, was the profoundest intellect and +the _most originative poetic spirit_. + +There was little hint, however, of future greatness or of fellowship +with great names in his birth and early circumstances. His father was a +country clergyman and schoolmaster in the village of Ottery St. Mary, in +Devonshire, a simple-hearted unworldly man, full of curious learning and +not very attentive to practical affairs. His mother managed the +household and brought up the children. Both his parents were of simple +West-country stock; but his father, having a natural turn for study and +having done well in his early manhood as a schoolmaster, went at the age +of thirty-one as a sizar, or poor student, to Sidney-Sussex College, +Cambridge, took orders, and was afterwards given the living of Ottery +St. Mary. Here he continued his beloved work of teaching, in addition to +his pastoral duties, and by means of this combination won the humble +livelihood which, through his wife's careful economy, sufficed for +rearing his large family. Coleridge tells us that his father "had so +little of parental ambition in him that he had destined his children to +be blacksmiths, etc." (though he had "resolved that I should be a +parson"), "and had accomplished his intention but for my mother's pride +and spirit of aggrandizing her family." Several of the children rewarded +their mother's care by distinguishing themselves in a modest way in the +army or in the church, but the only one about whom the world is curious +now was the youngest of the ten, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was born +at Ottery St. Mary, October 21, 1772. + +The essential traits of his later character appeared in his early +childhood. Almost from infancy he lived in his imagination rather than +in the world of reality. "The schoolboys drove me from play, and were +always tormenting me, and hence I took no pleasure in boyish sports, but +read incessantly.... I became a _dreamer_, and acquired an indisposition +to all bodily activity; and I was fretful, and inordinately +passionate." "Sensibility, imagination, vanity, sloth," were "prominent +and manifest" in his character before he was eight years old. Such is +his own account of his childhood, written to his friend Poole in 1797; +and it is an accurate description, as far as it goes, of the grown man. +But of the religious temper, too, the love of freedom and of virtue, the +hatred of injustice, cruelty, and falsehood that guided his uneven steps +through all the pitiful struggle of his middle life, of the conscience +that made his weakness hell to him--of these, too, we may be sure that +the beginnings were to be seen in the boy at Ottery St. Mary, as indeed +they were before his eyes in the person of his father, who, if not a +first-rate genius, was, says his son, "a first-rate Christian." + +The good vicar died in 1781; and the next year, a "presentation" to +Christ's Hospital having been secured for him, little Samuel, not yet +eleven years old, went up to London to enter the famous old city school. +Here, + + "In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim," + +where he + + "Saw nought lovely but the sky and stars," + +one of some seven hundred Blue-Coat boys, Coleridge lived for nine +years. + +Most of the boys at Christ's Hospital, then as now, were given a +"commercial" education (which none the less included a very thorough +training in Latin); but a few of the most promising students were each +year selected by the masters for a classical training in preparation for +the universities, whence they were known as Grecians. Coleridge was +elected a Grecian in 1788. The famous Boyer--famous for his enthusiasm +alike in teaching the classics and in wielding the birch--laid the +foundation of Coleridge's later scholarship. Here, too, Coleridge did a +great amount of reading not laid down in the curriculum,--Latin and +Greek poetry and philosophy, mediaeval science and metaphysics--and won +the approval of his teachers by the excellence of his verses in Greek +and Latin, such as boys at school and students at the universities were +expected to write in those days. In the great city school, as in the +Devonshire vicarage, he lived in the imagination, inert of body and +rapacious of intellect; but he was solitary no longer, having found his +tongue and among his more intellectual schoolfellows an interested +audience. While yet a boy, he would hold an audience spellbound by his +eloquent declamation or the fervor of his argument till, as Lamb, who +was one of his hearers, tells us, "the walls of the old Grey Friars +re-echoed to the accents of the _inspired charity boy_!" That is the way +his conversation,--or monologue, as it often was,--affected not boys +only, but men, and especially young men, to his dying day. He cast a +spell upon men by his speech; upon his schoolfellows, upon young men at +the universities in the Pantisocracy days, upon Lloyd and Poole at +Nether Stowey, upon earnest young thinkers in his last days at Highgate; +so that even if he had never written "The Ancient Mariner" and the +_Biographia, Literaria_ he would still be remembered for the inspiration +of his talk. + +Further details of the life at Christ's Hospital must be sought in +Lamb's two essays, especially that on "Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty +Years Ago." In 1791, having secured a Christ's Hospital "exhibition," he +entered Jesus College, Cambridge. + +His university life extended over three years, from October, 1791, to +December, 1794. It was an unhappy time for him and an uneasy time for +his respectable relatives, for reasons that were partly in his own +nature and partly in the temper of the times. + +Even Boyer's severe training, while it had made him a hard student and +an unusual scholar for his years, had failed to give him what he most +needed as a balance to his intellect and imagination, stability of +character. There is evidence that after the first few months, during +which the habits of his hard school life had not yet broken, the new +liberty of university life led him into extravagance, if not +dissipation. Work he doubtless did (he won the Browne medal for a Greek +ode on the slave-trade in 1792), but fitfully, giving less and less +attention to his regular studies and more to conviviality and, above +all, to dreams of literary fame. He wrote verses after various models, +sentimental, fanciful, or gallant; he was enthusiastic in praise of a +contemporary sonneteer, the Rev. William Bowles, whose "divine +sensibility" seemed to him the height of poetic feeling; and in +connection with Wordsworth's younger brother Christopher, who entered +Cambridge in 1793, he formed a literary society that discussed, among +other things, Wordsworth's volume of early poetry, "Descriptive +Sketches," published in that year. Wordsworth himself was a Cambridge +man, but had taken his degree in 1791 and gone abroad, so that the two +men whose personal friendship was to mean so much in English poetry did +not meet until 1796. Already in 1793, however, Coleridge had developed +political theories, or rather sympathies, which were preparing him for +fellowship with Wordsworth. + +The French Revolution, which, after years of preparation, took concrete +shape in 1789, did not look to young Englishmen in 1791-4 as it looks to +us now, nor even as it was to look to those same Englishmen in 1800. In +those first years warm-hearted young enthusiasts at the universities saw +in the violence of their fellow-men across the Channel only the +struggles of the beautiful Spirit of Liberty bursting the chains of +age-long tyranny and corruption and calling men up to the heights to +breathe diviner air. + + "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, + But to be young was very Heaven!" + +wrote Wordsworth afterwards; and in the glow of his young idealism he +had gone over to France in the autumn of 1791 and was on the point of +throwing in his lot with the revolutionists, when his parents compelled +his return by cutting off his supplies. And many who, like Coleridge, +merely watched from afar shared his faith that a new order of things was +to be established, wherein Love should be Law and man's inhumanity to +man become but a memory of things outworn. + +Less generous men, with a selfish interest in established privileges; +timid men, who looked with terror upon any prospect of change; older and +wiser men, who better understood the foundations of social order and the +nature of man--all these looked with distrust upon the revolutionary +idealism that was spreading from France through the younger generation +of Englishmen. The new notions of liberty, it was felt, threatened not +only the vested rights of property and the prescriptions of rank, but +the Church, too, and religion. Some of the would-be reformers were +avowed atheists; some (Coleridge and his friends, for instance, in the +Pantisocracy period) were communists. In general, they ascribed all the +evils of society to "institutions," and wanted them abolished. + +Just how far Coleridge had gone in this direction by the autumn of 1793 +we do not know; far enough at least to disturb his view of the future, +to worry his elder brother George, a clergyman and school-teacher, who +had in some measure filled a father's place to the young genius, and, +most important of all, to alarm and distress a gentle girl in London. +For before he left Christ's Hospital for Cambridge he had become +intimate at the house of a Mrs. Evans, and most of the letters preserved +from his first two years at the University were addressed to her or to +one of her two daughters, Anne and Mary. With the latter Coleridge was +in love; and that she had some regard for him is apparent from a letter +she sent him in 1794. Before that, however, Coleridge had taken a step +that seemed likely to close at once his college career and his prospects +of literary fame. The reasons have not been recorded: probably pecuniary +embarrassment, the yeasty state of his religious and political ideas, +and impatience or despondency over his love-affair with Mary Evans, +combined to precipitate his flight; what we know is that he ran away +from Cambridge and in December, 1793, enlisted as a dragoon in the +army. + +Coleridge had hardly taken the step before he repented of it. His +letters to his brother George, who with other friends bestirred himself +for Coleridge's release as soon as his whereabouts was discovered, are +rather distressing in their self-abasement. The efforts of his friends +were successful and in April he returned to the University, where a +public admonition was the extent of his punishment, and he continued in +receipt of his Christ's Hospital exhibition. + +But Coleridge's college days were practically over. He was now nearly +twenty-two years old, and the revolutionary unrest which had doubtless +contributed to his first escapade soon resulted in the formation of +schemes that took him away from Cambridge for good and all. In June, +1794, he made a visit to an old schoolfellow at Oxford. Here he met +Robert Southey of Balliol College. A friendship sprang up between them +out of which, before the end of the summer, grew the Utopian scheme of +Pantisocracy. A company of gentlemen and ladies were to emigrate to +America, take up lands in the Susquehanna valley, and there establish an +ideal community in which all should bear rule equally and find happiness +in a life of justice, labor, and love. The education of the young in the +principles of ideal humanity was an important part of the scheme. We are +reminded of the Brook Farm experiment in New England a generation later, +which bears a daughter's likeness to Pantisocracy, the chief difference +being that the New England enthusiasts were mature men and women and +really put the idea into practice, whereas the Pantisocrats were for the +most part collegians and never got beyond the stage of talking and +writing about their plans. The scheme was further elaborated at Bristol, +where Coleridge, returning from a vacation tour in Wales, again met +Southey, and at Bath, the home of Southey and of Southey's betrothed and +her sister, Edith and Sarah Fricker--"two sisters, milliners of Bath," +as Byron contemptuously called them. + +To the other sister, Sarah, Coleridge rather precipitately engaged +himself. His love for Mary Evans was not dead, but he seems to have +despaired of winning her and to have determined, by uniting himself +domestically with Southey and his friends, to make retreat from their +communistic scheme impossible. A few weeks later he is back at +Cambridge, tortured apparently between his old love and his new +engagement. Mary Evans has written to him deploring his wild notions and +the mad plan of Pantisocracy, yet confident that he has "too much +sensibility to be an infidel." Southey has reproved him rather sharply +for failing to write to his betrothed at Bath. Our next glimpse of him +is at London, discussing poetry and philosophy with Lamb at the +"Salutation and Cat" tavern and perhaps trying to get a sight of Mary +Evans. In December he is again at Bristol, in lively correspondence with +Southey about democracy, Pantisocracy, and poetry, but at the same time +he addresses a last appeal to Miss Evans. Her answer is kind, but final; +that chapter is closed, and Coleridge writes to Southey that he will "do +his duty," by which he means apparently that he will be faithful to +Pantisocracy and marry Sarah Fricker. + +The Pantisocracy scheme could not in the nature of things be long-lived. +As a matter of fact it lasted little more than a year, ending in a +rupture between the two leading spirits just when they became +brothers-in-law. Coleridge spent the summer of 1795 in Bristol in +company with Southey, writing and lecturing. In October he was married +to Sarah Fricker in "St. Mary's Redcliff, poor Chatterton's church." In +November Southey married Edith Fricker and set sail for Lisbon, where +his uncle was the English chaplain; and Pantisocracy was dead. + +The break with Southey was the natural result of attempting to force +through a scheme impracticable in itself and doubly impracticable for +the men who conceived it. Its collapse did not altogether sever their +literary relations. The collaboration begun in "The Fall of Robespierre" +(Cambridge, 1794) was continued in Southey's "Joan of Arc" (1796), to +which Coleridge contributed the part afterwards printed (with some +additions) as "The Destiny of Nations," and in Coleridge's first volume +of "Poems" (Bristol, 1796). A more important contributor to this volume, +however, was Charles Lamb, whose initials were appended to four of the +pieces. A second edition appeared in June, 1797, with eleven additions +from Coleridge besides verses by Lamb and Charles Lloyd, all under the +title: "Poems by S.T. Coleridge. Second Edition. To which are added +Poems by Charles Lamb, and Charles Lloyd." The publisher of both +editions was Joseph Cottle, a bookseller of Bristol, who played the part +of provincial Murray to the young poets in these years. + +Meanwhile Coleridge, after a period of lecturing and projecting, had as +we have seen married Sarah Fricker, with whom he was now very much in +love, and had begun housekeeping in a cottage at Clevedon near the +Bristol Channel. The beauty of the place and his happiness there are +celebrated in "The Aeolian Harp" and "Reflections on Leaving a Place of +Retirement" (better known by its opening words, "Low was our pretty +cot"). His next residence was in Bristol--rather a base of operations +than a home, for Coleridge was on the road much of the time, lecturing, +preaching, soliciting subscriptions for his political and philosophical +paper "The Watchman" (which ran from March to May, 1796), and trying in +various other ways to provide for his family, which was increased by the +birth of a son in September, 1796. At last in December he secured the +little cottage at Nether Stowey in the Quantock Hills (south of the +Bristol Channel, in Somerset), close to the house of his beloved friend, +Thomas Poole, where he lived until his departure for Germany in +September, 1798. + + +II. AT NETHER STOWEY + + +The Stowey period was the blossoming time of Coleridge's genius. All the +poems in this volume except the last four, and besides these "This +Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," "Frost at Midnight," and "Fears in +Solitude"--the bulk of his achievement in poetry--were either written or +begun in 1797 and 1798. It will be proper, then, to dwell a little on +his circumstances, his friends, and his ideas during these two years. + +The means of livelihood for himself and his family when he went to +Stowey were a subscription of about £40 that Poole and some friends got +together for him, £20 that Cottle paid for the second edition of the +"Poems," the promise of £80 from the father of Charles Lloyd, who was to +live with him and study under his direction, and such money as he could +earn by reviews and magazine articles, which he estimated at £40 a year; +not a munificent provision for a household of three adults and a child. +But the theories of the simple life that had made Pantisocracy seem a +feasible project still inspired him with confidence. "Sixteen +shillings," he wrote to Poole, "would cover all the weekly expenses of +my wife, infant, and myself. This I say from my wife's own +calculations." Further, he will support himself by the labor of his +hands. "If you can instruct me to manage an acre and a half of land, and +to raise in it, with my own hands, all kinds of vegetables and grain, +enough for myself and my wife and sufficient to feed a pig or two with +the refuse, I hope that you will have served me _most_ effectually by +placing me out of the necessity of being served." This was in December, +just before he moved to Stowey. In February he wrote from his new home +to another friend: "From seven till half past eight I work in my garden; +from breakfast till twelve I read and compose, then read again, feed the +pigs, poultry, etc., till two o'clock; after dinner work again till tea; +from tea till supper, _review_. So jogs the day, and I am happy.... I +raise potatoes and all manner of vegetables, have an orchard, and shall +raise corn with the spade, enough for my family. We have two pigs, and +ducks and geese. A cow would not answer the keep: we have whatever milk +we want from T. Poole." + +There is a suspicious regularity about this schedule. Lamb wrote from +London in January: "Is it a farm that you have got? And what does your +worship know about farming?" His agricultural activity, in the month of +February, must have been chiefly prospective; and we may safely assume +that Poole supplied other things besides milk, and that the poet spent +more time reading, dreaming, and talking than he did raising potatoes. A +good deal of time must have been spent in the actual composition of his +poetry, including his play "Osorio," which was written in 1797, and in +studying the landscape beauties of the Quantocks. After the coming of +the Wordsworths to Alfoxden he spent much of the time walking between +Alfoxden and Stowey, or further afield with Wordsworth and his sister. +"My walks," he wrote afterwards, "were almost daily on the top of +Quantock, and among its sloping coombs. With my pencil and +memorandum-book in my hand, I was making studies, as the artists call +them, and often moulding them into verse with the objects and imagery +immediately before my eyes." This does not sound much like "raising corn +with the spade." + +On Sundays he would sometimes preach before such Unitarian +congregations, within walking distance, as cared to hear him. But as he +would take no pay for his services his preaching contributed nothing +toward the support of his family. Lloyd, who was epileptic and subject +to moody variation in his attachments, was but an irregular housemate +after the first few months, and his contribution to the household +expenses was correspondingly uncertain. The future looked so dark in +October, 1797, that in spite of misgivings and former scruples he had +concluded that he "must become a Unitarian minister, as a less evil than +starvation." Accordingly he was in Shrewsbury in January, 1798, +preaching in the Unitarian church and on the point of accepting the +pastorate at a salary of £150 a year, when the sky brightened in another +quarter. Thomas and Josiah Wedgwood, sons of the famous potter and +friends of Thomas Poole, offered him an equal sum annually as a free +gift. They were wealthy men, well able to afford it; they attached no +condition to the gift except that he should devote himself entirely to +the study of poetry and philosophy, which was precisely what he wanted +to do; and he was not long in determining to accept the offer. "I +accepted it," he wrote to Wordsworth while still at Shrewsbury, "on the +presumption that I had talents, honesty, and propensities to perseverant +effort." The propensities, alas, remained propensities, never acquiring +the force of habit. The pension, however, continued to be paid in full +until 1812, when Josiah Wedgwood withdrew his half of it. The other +half, upon the death of Thomas Wedgwood in 1805, had been secured to +Coleridge for life; and this annuity must have constituted the chief +reliance of Mrs. Coleridge for many years. + +If Coleridge did not prosper financially, he was at least fortunate in +his friends; and a man's friends are after all the best testimony to the +character of his mind and heart. When he went to Stowey in December, +1796, he was again on good terms with Southey, though the enthusiasm of +their first fellowship was gone. The friendship with Lamb, begun in +their school-days and renewed at the "Salutation and Cat" in 1794, was +maintained by an eager correspondence and by Lamb's visit to Stowey in +July, 1797; and although Lloyd's vagaries led to a coolness between the +old friends in the following year, the breach was soon healed, and the +friendship continued till death. Another with whom Coleridge maintained +a voluminous correspondence in 1796-7 was John Thelwall, theoretical +democrat, atheist, and admirer of Godwin, whose visit to Coleridge and +Wordsworth in the summer of 1797 so shocked the good conservatives of +the neighborhood that Wordsworth had to leave Alfoxden in consequence of +it. But without doubt the dearest and most influential friend Coleridge +had before the Wordsworths came into his life was Thomas Poole. It was +in order to be in daily intercourse with Poole that he moved to Stowey; +and Poole's hesitation about securing the cottage for him, arising, +Coleridge seemed to fear, from imperfect confidence and friendship, was +a source of agonized apprehension to the sensitive poet. When we +consider that Poole was a self-educated man, a Somersetshire tanner with +no claim to literary genius or philosophical acquirements, Coleridge's +devotion to him and dependence on him bring out in a strong light the +substantial, elemental character of the man. "O Poole!" Coleridge wrote +to him from Germany afterwards, "you are a noble heart as ever God +made!" Poole had indeed in a marked degree the genius for friendship. +Strength of character, sympathy, and self-effacing devotion, combined +with prudence and sincerity, made this man a tower of refuge for the +unstable spirit of the poet. + +No other single relation, however, can compare in importance, for +Coleridge's poetic development, with that which sprang up in the summer +of 1797 between him and William Wordsworth. Just when they first met is +not recorded. We have seen that Coleridge was acquainted with +Wordsworth's younger brother in his college days, and discussed with him +Wordsworth's first published poems. In January, 1797, he told Cottle +that he wished to submit his "Visions of the Maid of Arc" to Wordsworth +for criticism. The earliest definite record of their personal +acquaintance is a letter Coleridge wrote to Cottle while on a visit to +Wordsworth at Racedown (just over the Somerset border in Dorsetshire) +early in June. About the beginning of July he is again at Racedown; and +when he returns he brings Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy with him for +a visit. On the 7th Lamb arrived for his long-planned reunion with +Coleridge. The second week of July, 1797, was thus a rich and +long-remembered time for all of them, despite the fact that Mrs. +Coleridge "accidentally emptied a skillet of boiling milk" on her +husband's foot, which confined him "during the whole time of Charles +Lamb's stay." The others took long walks in the neighborhood, amid such +scenery as is described in "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," a poem +that admirably voices the happiness, of those days of spiritual +fellowship. The Wordsworths did not return to Racedown. "By a +combination of curious circumstances a gentleman's seat, with a park and +woods, elegantly and completely furnished,... in the most beautiful and +romantic situation by the seaside, four miles from Stowey--this we have +got for Wordsworth at the _rent of twenty-three pounds a year, taxes +included_!" Coleridge triumphantly announced to Southey; and in this +house, the Manor of Alfoxden, the Wordsworths remained for a year, in +daily companionship with Coleridge and surrounded by scenes of natural +beauty that have left a lasting mark on the work of both poets. + +What the friendship with Coleridge meant to Wordsworth may best be seen +in "The Prelude: or, Growth of a Poet's Mind," Wordsworth's greatest +long poem, written some years afterwards and addressed throughout to +Coleridge. + + "There is no grief, no sorrow, no despair, + No languor, no dejection, no dismay, + No absence scarcely can there be, for those + Who love as we do." + +What Wordsworth was to Coleridge is more important for us here. The +admiration which the brilliant child of genius felt for the great +preacher-poet is chiefly, one feels, an admiration for his character. As +a matter of fact, Wordsworth had written nothing, up to his coming to +Alfoxden, that would have preserved his name as a poet, nothing so +noteworthy or promising as what Coleridge had already written. But +Coleridge felt in this lean and thoughtful young man a strength of mind, +a depth and sureness of heart that compelled his allegiance and even +imparted, for the time, some of that resolution in which he was by +nature so sadly deficient. The character of their friendship is to be +seen not only in the published work of the two poets from this time on +(notably in "Dejection"), but perhaps even more clearly in Dorothy +Wordsworth's Journal and in Coleridge's letters. "I speak with +heart-felt sincerity," he wrote to Cottle in June, 1797, "and (I think) +unblinded judgment, when I tell you that I feel myself _a little man by +his side_, and yet do not think myself the less man than I formerly +thought myself.... T. Poole's opinion of Wordsworth is that he is the +greatest man he ever knew; I coincide." Wordsworth's influence is +evident in a letter from Coleridge to his brother George in April, 1798: +"I love fields and woods and mountains with almost a visionary fondness. +And because I have found benevolence and quietness growing within me as +that fondness has increased, therefore I should wish to be the means of +implanting it in others, and to destroy the bad passions not by +combating them but by keeping them in inaction." Under the calming and +clarifying influence of the stronger Northern spirit the fever of his +revolutionary dreams abated, he found happiness in the conscious +exercise of his poetic powers, and for one year in his troubled +existence his genius showed itself in all its splendor. + +The immediate poetic result of their friendship was the "Lyrical +Ballads," published by Cottle in September, 1798. The origin of the work +has been described both by Wordsworth (in a prefatory note to "We Are +Seven") and by Coleridge (in the _Biographia Literaria_, chap. xiv.). At +first, they were to collaborate in writing a poem the proceeds of which +should pay the expenses of a little tour they were making when the plan +was thought of, in November, 1797; and thus "The Ancient Mariner" was +begun. As this poem grew under Coleridge's "shaping-spirit of +imagination" Wordsworth saw that he "could only be a clog" upon its +progress, and it was resigned to Coleridge. The plan was then enlarged +to include a volume illustrating "two cardinal points of poetry, the +power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to +the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by +the modifying colours of imagination." Wordsworth was to illustrate the +former principle, Coleridge the latter, and the proceeds of the book +were to go toward the expenses of a trip to Germany, decided on in the +spring of 1798. The bulk of the volume was Wordsworth's, and was +typically Wordsworthian, ranging from such simple ballads of humble +incident as "Goody Blake" and "The Idiot Boy" to the magnificent blank +verse of "Tintern Abbey"; Coleridge's share consisted of a brief poem +called "The Nightingale," two short extracts from "Osorio," and "The +Rime of the Ancyent Marinere." + +Apart from the "Lyrical Ballads" Coleridge conceived and finished +between June, 1797, and the departure for Germany in 1798, and published +in the latter year, "Fire, Famine, and Slaughter," "Frost at Midnight," +"Fears in Solitude," and "France." He conceived and partly executed, but +did not then publish, "Christabel," "Kubla Khan," "Love," "The Ballad of +the Dark Ladie," and "The Three Graves." Thus, all Coleridge's best +poetry, with the exception of those three saddest of voices out of a +broken life, "Dejection" (1802), the lines to Wordsworth on hearing him +read "The Prelude" (1807), and "Youth and Age" (1823-32), belongs either +wholly or in its inception to the year of his fellowship with the +Wordsworths in the Quantock Hills. + +Of his political, religious, and literary opinions at this time he has +left a fairly adequate account in his published writings and his +correspondence, especially in the _Biographia Literaria_ and in the +letter to the Rev. George Coleridge referred to above. The first year of +his married life saw him still, in spite of the failure of Pantisocracy, +an eager visionary reformer upborne by generous enthusiasm and ardent +religious feeling. "O! never can I remember those days," he wrote in the +_Biographia_, "with either shame or regret. For I was most sincere, most +disinterested! My opinions were indeed in many and most important points +erroneous; but my heart was single. Wealth, rank, life itself, then +seemed cheap to me, compared with the interest of (what I believed to +be) the truth, and the will of my Maker." However much he may have +consorted with unbelievers like Thelwall and distressed his good brother +George by his heterodoxy, he was by nature deeply religious. He tried in +his letters to recover Thelwall from his "atheism," though he heartily +approved a sentiment expressed by the latter: "He who thinks and _feels_ +will be virtuous; and he who is absorbed in self will be vicious, +whatever may be his speculative opinions." Godwin's system of "Justice," +with its soulless logic, he abhorred. He preached often in Unitarian +churches. To young Hazlitt, who heard him preach in January, 1798, from +the text "And He went up into the mountain to pray, _Himself, alone_," +it seemed "as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human +heart, and as if that prayer might have floated in solemn silence +through the universe." In politics he was, when he went to Stowey, +"almost equidistant from all the three prominent parties, the Pittites, +the Foxites, and the Democrats"; he was "a vehement anti-ministerialist, +but after the invasion of Switzerland, a more vehement anti-Gallican +[see the last two stanzas of "France"], and still more intensely an +anti-Jacobin." Under Wordsworth's influence his thoughts turned in great +measure from contemporary politics to more fundamental matters. Always +his poetry had been the utterance of his essential being. "I feel +strongly and I think strongly," he wrote to Thelwall in 1796, "but I +seldom feel without thinking or think without feeling. Hence, though my +poetry has in general a hue of tenderness or passion over it, yet it +seldom exhibits unmixed and simple tenderness and passion. My +philosophical opinions are blended with or deduced from my feelings." +Wordsworth gave his feelings a new object and his philosophy a higher +aim. In April of the second year at Stowey, in the letter to his brother +already quoted, Coleridge wrote: "I have for some time past withdrawn +myself totally from the consideration of _immediate causes_, which are +infinitely complex and uncertain, to muse on fundamental and general +causes, the 'causae causarum.' I devote myself to such works as encroach +not on the anti-social passions--in poetry, to elevate the imagination +and set the affections in right tune by the beauty of the inanimate +impregnated as with a living soul by the presence of life--in prose to +the seeking with patience and a slow, very slow mind, 'Quid sumus, et +quidnam victuri gignimus,'--what our faculties are and what they are +capable of becoming." This last sentence is a sort of half-prophetic +summary of his life's work; but the poetry soon gave way to the prose, +and he never again so nearly realized his poetical ideal as he had +already done in "The Ancient Mariner." + +Of his person and the impression he made upon people at this time there +are various contemporary accounts. To Thelwall, in November, 1796, he +sent the following description of himself: "... my face, unless when +animated by immediate eloquence, expresses great sloth, and great, +indeed almost idiotic good-nature. 'Tis a mere carcass of a face; fat, +flabby, and expressive chiefly of inexpression. Yet I am told that my +eyes, eyebrows, and forehead are physiognomically good; but of this the +deponent knoweth not. As to my shape, 'tis a good shape enough if +measured, but my gait is awkward, and the walk of the whole man +indicates _indolence capable of energies_.... I cannot breathe through +my nose, so my mouth, with sensual thick lips, is almost always open. In +conversation I am impassioned, and oppose what I deem error with an +eagerness which is often mistaken for personal asperity; but I am ever +so swallowed up in the _thing_ said that I forget my _opponent_. Such am +I." The Rev. Leapidge Smith, in his "Reminiscences of an Octogenarian," +remembered him as "a tall, dark, handsome young man, with long, black, +flowing hair; eyes not merely dark, but black, and keenly penetrating; a +fine forehead, a deep-toned, harmonious voice; a manner never to be +forgotten, full of life, vivacity, and kindness; dignified in person +and, added to all these, exhibiting the elements of his future +greatness."[1] Hazlitt, in "My First Acquaintance with Poets" (a paper +that every student of Coleridge's life and poetry should read), +describing him as he appeared on his visit to Hazlitt's father at Wem in +1798, says: "His complexion was at that time clear, and even bright. His +forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with large +projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them like a sea with +darkened lustre.... His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his +chin good-humored and round, but his nose, the rudder of the face, the +index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing--like what he has done." +And Dorothy Wordsworth (to close with a contemporary and sympathetic +impression) set him down in her journal after their first meeting at +Racedown thus: "He is a wonderful man. His conversation teems with soul, +mind, and spirit.... At first I thought him very plain, that is for +about three minutes: he is pale, thin, has a wide mouth, thick lips, and +not very good teeth, longish, loose-growing, half-curling, rough black +hair. But if you hear him speak for five minutes you think no more of +them. His eye is large and full, and not very dark, but grey[2]--such an +eye as would receive from a heavy soul the dullest expression; but it +speaks every emotion of his animated mind; it has more of 'the poet's +eye in a fine frenzy rolling' than I ever witnessed. He has fine dark +eyebrows, and an overhanging forehead." The friendly and keen-sighted +woman gives a more sympathetic picture than the others; but there must +have been truth, too, in the view of the equally keen-sighted and less +friendly Hazlitt, whose description accords well with Coleridge's +self-portraiture, and in the last sarcastic item, too well, with the +remainder of the poet's career. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: "Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge," ed. by E.H. +Coleridge, Vol. I., p. 180, note.] + +[Footnote 2: The uncertainty as to the color of his eyes is a tribute to +their expressiveness. Carlyle described him in 1824 as having "a pair of +strange brown, timid, yet earnest-looking eyes." Emerson visited him in +1833 and found him "with bright blue eyes and fine clear complexion."] + + + + +III. THE REST OF THE STORY + + +Coleridge lived for thirty-six years after he left Stowey for Germany in +1798. His fame as a poet grew as the world became acquainted with and +learned to feel the peculiar charm of his poetry, and he was even more +famous, for a while, as a literary critic and a moral philosopher. But +they were years of weak-willed wandering, of vast hazy plans and feeble +performance, lighted only here and there by glimpses of fragmentary +accomplishment, and that seldom in poetry. Keats died at twenty-six, +leaving behind him a body of poetry hardly less wonderful than Coleridge +had fashioned at the same age; and another poet sang of him: + + "The bloom, whose petals, nipt before they blew, + Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste." + +In Coleridge the poet died at nearly the same age, almost as completely +as if the man himself had passed "within the twilight chamber ... of +white Death"; and "Dejection" is that poet's dirge. The remaining years +need therefore but few words. + +Coleridge had taken opium, perhaps as early as his school-days, for +relief from neuralgia. He had recourse to it in March, 1796, for +sleeplessness; in the following November, for relief from violent +nervous pains; and near the close of the Stowey period, in May, 1798, +when the vagaries of Lloyd, the estrangement from Lamb, domestic +anxiety, and physical suffering had reduced him to a state of extreme +nervous wretchedness, he again took refuge in opiates, of which "Kubla +Khan" is partly the result. He returned from Germany in 1799, worked for +a while on a newspaper in London and on a translation of Schiller's +"Wallenstein," and in the summer of 1800 removed to Keswick in +Cumberland, in the Lake Country, where the Wordsworths had already +established themselves. Here, in the autumn of 1800, he strove to +finish "Christabel," and did finish the second part. In the winter and +spring he suffered from a complicated illness, in which he again had +recourse to laudanum; and from the spring of 1801 he was confirmed in +the opium habit, sinking often to pitiful depths of moral and physical +misery. He was in the Mediterranean, chiefly at Malta, from 1804 to +1806. His wife and children remained at Keswick, where Southey and his +family had become co-tenants with them of Greta Hall. Southey, it might +almost be said, took care of Coleridge's family henceforth; for +Coleridge had begun to find his own fireside an intolerable place as +early as 1802, lived little at home, and made a formal separation from +his wife in 1808,--though they saw each other occasionally after that +and the Wedgwood annuity continued to be paid to Mrs. Coleridge. In 1809 +he was living with the Wordsworths at Grasmere, where he wrote several +numbers of a politico-philosophical paper called "The Friend." About the +close of 1810 he was taken in hand by a Mr. and Mrs. Morgan of +Hammersmith, near London, under whose care he kept the opium in check +sufficiently to give his famous lectures on the "Principles of Poetry" +in the winter of 1811-12, and another series in the early summer on +Shakespeare. In the winter following, his play of "Remorse," a recast of +the "Osorio" of 1797, was acted in London with some success. In the +winter of 1813-14 he lectured, in a "conversational" fashion, at +Bristol. He also wrote irregularly for the London papers during these +years. But his studies, since his return from Germany, had been directed +to metaphysics, and especially to the philosophical bases of poetry and +theology; and the last twenty years of his life, at least, were occupied +with plans for a great philosophical work covering these two fields of +thought. One of the fragments of the great work that actually came to +light, the _Biographia Literaria_, seems to have been sent to the +printers in 1815. A collected edition of his poetry was also begun while +he was under the Morgans' care. + +From 1816 till his death in 1834 he lived in comparative peace, if not +in happiness, with a Mr. Gilman of Highgate near London, an apothecary. +Gilman and his wife were able so far to wean him from the drug, or to +regulate his use of it, that he brought to the birth something of his +vast plans in criticism and philosophy, notably the _Biographia +Literaria_ (1817) and the "Aids to Reflection" (1825). The beginning of +his stay with Gilman was also marked by the publication of "Christabel" +and "Kubla Khan" (1816), and of a collected edition of his other poems +(including "The Ancient Mariner," considerably revised) under the title +"Sibylline Leaves" (1817). But the poems that were not finished in the +first great period at Stowey remained unfinished. He talked divinely +("an archangel a little damaged," Lamb said), and both by his talk and +his metaphysical writings profoundly influenced the literature and +philosophy of the century, both in England and America; but the poet in +him was dead. + + "Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain, + And genius given, and knowledge won in vain; + And all which I had culled in woodwalks wild, + And all which patient toil had reared, and all + Commune with _thee_ had opened out--but flowers + Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier, + In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!"[1] + +It would be a mistake to ascribe the paralysis of Coleridge's powers of +constructive imagination exclusively to laudanum. Rather the resort to +narcotics and the inability to control his creative faculty are alike +symptoms of a temperamental malady which had its roots in his nature +close to the seat of that special faculty. Under a favorable conjunction +of outward circumstance and inward state, imagination came; it possessed +him, and he labored in it, happily. Afterwards he could revise what he +had shaped, analyze it philosophically, perfect some details of it, but +he could not proceed in the creative act after the inspiration had left +him. His own description of his nature--"_indolence capable of +energies_"--is accurate as far as it goes. The opium, resorted to often, +no doubt, to quicken the dreams in his brain as well as to relieve his +bodily suffering, helped to enfeeble his will; but the "indolence" was +in him before he became addicted to opium, and he was never "capable of +energies" at the call of duty, but only at the call of his "shaping +spirit," over whose coming and going he had no control. + +Poetically it is perhaps as well. Had he been like his friend Wordsworth +in strength and steadiness of purpose--which is to suppose him another +nature than he was--his life would have been happier and more edifying, +but he would hardly have given us anything better than "Christabel" and +"The Ancient Mariner." Romantic poetry of the higher type is essentially +the creature of mood. Even Wordsworth's long and conscientious labors +produced but a small bulk of poetry of this character, amid dreary +reaches of uninspired preaching. Coleridge waited--in despondency often, +in self-upbraidings, in the temporary deception of opium dreams with +their consequent misery--for the return of the spirit; and it did not +come. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: From the lines addressed to Wordsworth after hearing him +read "The Prelude," in 1807.] + + + + +II. COLERIDGE'S POEMS. + + +"THE ANCIENT MARINER" + +"The Ancient Mariner" was first printed in the first edition of "Lyrical +Ballads," 1798, again with considerable changes in the second edition, +1800, and without further significant change in the editions of 1802 and +1805. Its fifth appearance was in "Sibylline Leaves," 1817, again with +some important changes, and the addition of the Latin motto and the +marginal gloss. In the "Poetical Works," 1828, and again in the +"Poetical Works," 1829, the poem appeared in its final form as we now +have it,--differing very little from the form it had in "Sibylline +Leaves." One or two significant minor changes will be mentioned in the +notes. + +Coleridge's own account of the genesis of the poem, given in the +_Biographia Literaria_ nearly twenty years later, is interesting. +"During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our +conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, +the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence +to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty +by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm, which +accidents of light and shade, which moonlight or sunset, diffused over a +known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability +of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested +itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might +be composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to +be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to +consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of +such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing +them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being +who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself +under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be +chosen from ordinary life; the characters and incidents were to be such +as will be found in every village and its vicinity where there is a +meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them when +they present themselves. + +"In this idea originated the 'Lyrical Ballads'; in which it was agreed +that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters +supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our +inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to +procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of +disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. +Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, +to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a +feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention +from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the wonders and +loveliness of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for +which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, +we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither +feel nor understand. + +"With this view I wrote 'The Ancient Mariner,' and was preparing, among +other poems, 'The Dark Ladie,' and the 'Christabel,' in which I should +have more nearly realized my ideal than I had done in my first attempt. +But Mr. Wordsworth's industry had proved so much more successful, and +the number of his poems so much greater, that my compositions, instead +of forming a balance, appeared rather an interpolation of heterogeneous +matter. Mr. Wordsworth added two or three poems written in his own +character, in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction which is +characteristic of his genius [among them the "Lines composed a few miles +above Tintern Abbey"]. In this form the 'Lyrical Ballads' were +published." + +Lyrical they hardly were, in any current meaning of that word; they were +narrative. But they were ballads as the word was then understood. The +two cardinal points of poetry that Coleridge says they had in view in +this partnership production were both believed to be special marks of +the ballad; the charm of homeliness and simplicity, and the spell of the +supernatural and romantic. Bishop Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English +Poetry," 1765, had created a taste for the traditional poetry of humble +folk. Spreading to Germany and uniting there with the sentimental +sensationalism of the eighteenth century, this taste found expression in +Burger's "Lenore," which in turn had a powerful influence in England, +five distinct translations of it appearing in 1796. Of the distinction +so much insisted on by later analysts of the true popular ballad--its +communal origin, its impersonality, its freedom from adornment, its lack +of conscious art--the Englishman of Coleridge's time took no account. +"The Ancient Mariner" is not a ballad in the sense in which "Sir Patrick +Spens" or "Young Waters" is a ballad. It is in the highest degree a work +of conscious and individual art. It is rather to be classed, like +"Christabel," as a romance. But it was conceived and written under the +influence of the "ballad revival," and bears many marks of that +influence both in its general structure and in its details of +workmanship. + +Much of the archaic diction and antique spelling, as well as the ruder +grotesquerie, that in the first edition proclaimed its relation to the +pseudo-balladry of the time disappeared in the later editions. But the +archaisms, the "unpoetical" diction, and especially the disregard of +tense coherence in the poem as we now have it, contribute greatly to the +atmosphere of romance--as of a story removed alike from the commonplace +experience of every day and from familiar literary conventions--which it +was Coleridge's intention to produce. By a few devotional +ejaculations--"Heaven's Mother send us grace!" "To Mary Queen the praise +be given!"--we are made to feel that the Ancient Mariner lived before +the Reformation, in the ages of wonder and faith. Repetition, as in many +stanzas of Part IV., is a device caught from the folk-ballad and +modified to produce the effect of a spell, which is so strong a mark of +the poem. The abrupt opening, the unannounced transitions in dialogue, +the omission of all but the vital incidents of the story, all belong to +the ballad style. The verse form is what is known as the ballad stanza +(stanza of four lines--a line of four accents followed by one of three, +the second and fourth lines riming) variously extended and modified to +suit the mood of the passage. The prose summary in the form of a +marginal gloss, first added in the edition of 1817, is a practice taken +from early printed books, but not from balladry, which is normally oral. + +Of the literary qualities of the poem much might be said, but I call +attention here to but two: the organic structure of the story and the +character of the imagery, two important aspects of creative imagination. +The seven parts are seven stages of the narrative, each, except the +last, closing with a reference to the Mariner's sin. The story proceeds +like the successive acts of a play. In Part I. the deed is committed; in +Part II. the punishment begins; in Part III. the punishment reaches its +climax. Part IV. brings the "turn"; in the crisis of his sufferings +comes the consciousness of fellowship with other creatures and +repentance for his cruelty. Parts V. and VI. relate his penance begun, +and his return by supernatural agencies to the world of human +fellowship; and Part VII. brings us back to the opening scene, closing +the whole with a moral. The moral is so plainly set forth that one +wonders how Mrs. Barbauld could ever have complained, as Coleridge tells +us she did, that the poem "had no moral." His reply is worth recording: +"I told her that in my opinion the poem had too much; and that the only, +or chief fault, if I might say so, was the obtrusion of the moral +sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle or cause of action in a +work of such pure imagination. It ought to have had no more moral than +the Arabian Nights' tale of the merchant's sitting down to eat dates by +the side of a well, and throwing the shells aside, and lo! a genie +starts up, and says he _must_ kill the aforesaid merchant, because one +of the date shells had, it seems, put out the eye of the genie's son." +But the poet of 1798 knew better than the metaphysician of 1830. The +moral is as essential a part of the whole poem as moral consciousness is +of man; without it the poem would be without the coherence of human +interest which alone can secure for "these shadows of imagination" +"poetic faith." The moral, really, is suffused throughout the work, is +the blood of its being; that it should be formulated at the close is +quite in accord with the simplicity which marked the whole conception of +the "Lyrical Ballads," and is moreover perfectly harmonious with the +spirit of the poem itself. There have been poets who seemed to be +without the moral sense, and who have written poetry quite free from any +moral, like Poe and his landscape visions, but wonderful as they are, +they are abnormal, and are less great as they are less completely human. +It may be that Wordsworth, as one infers from recollections of the +composition of the poem, suggested the moral plot; but if so it entered +at once and completely into Coleridge's imagination and governed the +shaping of the poem from the start. In all the very considerable changes +and omissions that the poem underwent after it was first printed, there +was none that either retrenched from or added to the moral +interpretation of the tale. + +Of its imagery the most evident characteristic is what may be called the +anthropomorphic treatment of nature. This, although in accord with +modern conceptions of primitive culture, is not at all a mark of the +popular ballad. Sun, and moon, and storm-wind, and ocean are in +folk-song sun and moon and wind and water and nothing more; but in "The +Ancient Mariner" they are living beings. + + "And now the Storm-blast came, and he + Was tyrannous and strong: + He struck with his o'ertaking wings, + And chased us south along." + + "And straight the Sun was flecked with bars, + (Heaven's Mother send us grace!) + As if through a dungeon-grate he peered + With broad and burning face." + + "Still as a slave before his lord, + The ocean hath no blast; + His great bright eye most silently + Up to the Moon is cast-- + + "If he may know which way to go; + For she guides him smooth or grim. + See, brother, see! how graciously + She looketh down on him." + +This is the most noticeable of the "modifying colours of imagination" +in "The Ancient Mariner." The practice might be classed as a sort of +personification; but how utterly different in its effect from the +conventional "literary" personifications of the eighteenth century--of +Gray in the "Elegy," for instance! Grandeur, and Envy, and Honour, in +that admirable poem, are not real persons to the imagination; the +abstraction remains an abstraction. But in Coleridge's poem all nature +is alive with the life of men. Other elements of "that synthetic and +magical power to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of +imagination," and which blends "the idea with the image" and "the sense +of novelty and freshness with old and familiar objects" will be felt as +the poem is studied. + +Wordsworth related in after years that the suggestion for the poem came +from a dream of a phantom ship told to Coleridge by a friend, and that +he (Wordsworth) proposed the shooting of the albatross, the revenge of +the "tutelary spirits," and the "navigation of the ship by the dead +men," and contributed the fourth stanza of the poem and the last two +lines of the first stanza of Part IV. He had been reading Shelvocke's +"Voyages," a book in which he had found a description of albatrosses as +they are seen in far southern waters. Other reading that may have +suggested some of the scenery is described in the "Notes" to the Globe +edition of Coleridge's poems. There are also passages and situations in +the last two acts of Wordsworth's play, "The Borderers," which Coleridge +read with great admiration in the summer of 1797, that have evident +kinship with "The Ancient Mariner," and Wordsworth's "Peter Bell" +(composed at Alfoxden, but printed many years later) suggests what the +story might have become if Coleridge instead of Wordsworth had withdrawn +from collaboration. + + + + +"CHRISTABEL" AND "KUBLA KHAN" + + +"Christabel" and "Kubla Khan" were first printed in 1816, in a pamphlet +along with "The Pains of Sleep," a sort of contrast to "Kubla Khan" +composed in 1803. In the Preface to this pamphlet Coleridge informs us +that the first part of "Christabel" was written at Stowey in 1797 and +the second part at Keswick, Cumberland, in 1800. The poem was intended +originally for the "Lyrical Ballads," and it was with the hope of +finishing it for the second edition that Coleridge took it up again in +the fall of 1800. There is a good deal of uncertainty as to just how +much of the work was done at that time. In two letters of that period he +speaks of it as "running up to 1300 lines," and "swelled into a poem of +1400 lines," so that it is no longer suitable for the "Lyrical Ballads"; +but hardly half of this amount was printed in the 1816 pamphlet or has +ever been found since. One suspects that already in 1800 dreams and +projects had begun to be confounded with performance. In the latter of +the two letters mentioned above he relates how his "verse-making +faculties returned" to him, after long and unsuccessful struggles with +"barrenness" and deep "dejection," as the result of drinking, "at the +house of a neighbouring clergyman, ... so much wine, that I found some +effort and dexterity requisite to balance myself on the hither edge of +sobriety." On the whole, it seems probable that "Christabel" owes little +to the forced efforts of his first year in the Lake country. Like most +of the other poems in this volume, it is a product of the great year at +Stowey. He himself told a friend in later years: "I had the whole of the +two cantos in my mind before I began it," adding very truly, "certainly +the first canto is more perfect, has more of the true wild weird spirit +than the last." + +Down to the close of his life he dreamed of finishing this work. He +amused his listeners at Highgate with a continuation of the plot; and +in 1833 he declared that if he "were perfectly free from vexation and +were in the _ad libitum_ hearing of fine music" he could yet finish +"Christabel," "for I have, as I always had, the whole plan entire from +beginning to end in my mind; but I fear I could not carry on with equal +success the execution of the idea." Wordsworth had a different +recollection. He told Coleridge's nephew in 1836 that he did not think +Coleridge "had ever conceived, in his own mind, any definite plan for +it; that the poem had been composed while they were in habits of daily +intercourse, and almost in his presence, and when there was the most +unreserved intercourse between them as to all their literary projects +and productions, and he had never heard from him any plan for finishing +it"; and added, what is fully borne out by a study of Coleridge's life: +"schemes of this sort passed rapidly and vividly through his mind, and +so impressed him, that he often fancied he had arranged things, which +really, and upon trial, proved to be mere embryos." + + "The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower + Unfinished must remain," + +wrote Longfellow, alluding to "The Dolliver Romance" that Hawthorne left +incomplete at his death. There is strong kinship, moral and artistic, +between Coleridge and Hawthorne; both believed that the heart is more +than the head, and neither could force his imagination to work under +unfavorable conditions. But Hawthorne's failure of imagination came at +the end of a fruitful and consistent career, and his life failed with +it; in Coleridge the poet died half a lifetime before the man, and left +the man--the preacher and philosopher--to lament his loss. + +Whether or not Coleridge had the story complete in his mind, what we +have is a fragment, and does not enable us to divine, as some broken +statues do, the plan of the whole. What it gives us is the romantic +mood, the sense of "witchery by daylight," and this it does more +hauntingly than anything else in the English language. It is a series +of magical and unforgetable pictures. It owes a good deal to the old +verse romances and ballads that so impressed the imagination in those +days of the mediaeval revival, but it was itself a far stronger +influence. It operated as an original force, both by its form and by its +spirit, upon the poetic imagination of the first half of the nineteenth +century more widely and deeply than the work of any other man, Burns and +Keats not excepted. Scott heard it read from manuscript, and the "Lay of +the Last Minstrel," with the series of verse romances that followed, may +almost be called a result of that reading; the verse form of Scott's +romances certainly is. Poe's poetry is as far as the poles removed from +Scott's; yet a close study of Poe's work shows the influence of +"Christabel" to be even deeper here than in the "Lay of the Last +Minstrel." + +Coleridge was fully aware of a special power, both of imagination and of +verse-music, in the poem. His attempts to complete it in 1800 brought +persistently to his mind the project of a philosophy of poetry, and +especially of this poem, as we may infer from a letter to Poole in +March, 1801: "I shall ... immediately publish my 'Christabel,' with two +essays annexed to it, on the 'Preternatural' and on 'Metre.'" When the +two cantos were at last printed in 1816, Coleridge wrote in the Preface: +"The metre of the 'Christabel' is not, properly speaking, irregular, +though it may seem so from its being founded on a new principle: namely, +that of counting in each line the accents, not the syllables. Though the +latter may vary from seven to twelve, yet in each line the accents will +be found to be only four. Nevertheless this occasional variation in +number of syllables is not introduced wantonly, or for the mere ends of +convenience, but in correspondence with some transition, in the nature +of the imagery or passion." This is not to be taken quite literally. The +accentual principle was assuredly nothing new in English verse, and +syllable-counting, though introduced by Chaucer, had to be reintroduced +by the Renaissance poets and did not become an unquestioned convention +till the latter part of the seventeenth century. But the return to free +accentual verse in the "Christabel" was an innovation at the beginning +of the nineteenth century. It is to be noted, too, that there are lines +of three and even of two accents in Part I. + +In chap. XV. of the _Biographia Literaria_, in a list of the "specific +symptoms of poetic power" in Shakespeare's early work, Coleridge places +first "the perfect sweetness of the versification; its adaptation to the +subject; and the power displayed in varying the march of the words.... +The sense of musical delight, with the power of producing it, is a gift +of imagination; and this, together with the power of reducing multitude +into unity of effect, and modifying a series of thoughts by some one +predominant thought or feeling, may be cultivated and improved, but can +never be learnt. It is in these that _Poeta nascitur non fit_." + +"Kubla Khan" is the remembered fragment of a dream. All that we know +about it is contained in the note Coleridge prefixed to it in the +pamphlet of 1816. In the summer of 1798 (Coleridge says 1797, but this +seems to have been a slip of his memory[1]) "the author, then in ill +health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, +on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a +slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects +of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading +the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in 'Purchas's +Pilgrimage': 'Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a +stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were +inclosed with a wall.' The author continued for about three hours in a +profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he +has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than +from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called +composition in which all the images rose up before him as _things_, +with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any +sensation or consciousness of effort. On awaking he appeared to himself +to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, +and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here +preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on +business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his +return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, +that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the +general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or +ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the +images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, +alas! without the after restoration of the latter!" + +Opinion will ever vary as to its poetic worth. Coleridge himself +professed to consider it "rather as a psychological curiosity" than as a +thing "of any supposed _poetic_ merits"; to Lamb he repeated it "so +enchantingly that it irradiates and brings heaven and elysian bowers +into any parlour when he sings or says it," and it has been a sort of +touchstone of romantic taste ever since. It supremely illustrates that +"sense of musical delight, with the power of producing it," which the +poet declared to be a gift of the imagination that can never be learnt. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: See notes to this poem in the Globe edition, and E.H. +Coleridge's "Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge," Vol. I, p. 245, note.] + + + + +"FRANCE: AN ODE" + + +This ode was written in February, 1798, and first printed in the +"Morning Post" for April 16 of that year, under the significant title of +"Recantation." In the autumn it was printed with its present title in a +pamphlet together with "Fears in Solitude," another political poem, and +"Frost at Midnight," a poem on his infant child. In October, 1802, it +was reprinted in the "Post" with a prose "Argument" (see notes), less +necessary for the readers of that time than it may be now. Coleridge, +like Wordsworth, had welcomed the French Revolution as ushering in an +era of light and love in human society; both, though Wordsworth more +profoundly, had been depressed by the excesses of 1793-4, and by the +lust of conquest which became more and more evident under the Directory; +and when at last in February, 1798, the French armies invaded +Switzerland, the ancient sacred home of liberty in Europe, Coleridge +"recanted" in this ode. + +Political poetry is likely to lose its power with the passing of the +events and passions that give it birth; it retains its power just in +proportion as it is built on lasting and universal interests of the +heart of man. That "France" has retained its position as one of the +great odes of the English language is due not only to the loftiness of +its thought and the splendor of its imagery, but even more to the fact +that it turns from the political excitement of the hour to the grandeur +and beauty of nature and to those aspirations and ideals whose home is +"in the heart of man." + + + + +"LOVE" + + +From the second edition of "Lyrical Ballads," 1800. It was planned by +Coleridge as an introduction to the ballad of "The Dark Ladie," which +was never completed, but of which some fifteen stanzas were printed in +the 1834 edition of his "Poetical Works." Its composition cannot be +accurately dated. It is conceived in the general spirit of the ballads +but is simpler, more purely a poem of sentiment, than either +"Christabel" or "The Ancient Mariner," and makes no use of the +supernatural. Its simplicity and absolute purity of tone are, however, +something more than a negative virtue. Coleridge himself declared of it +and "The Ancient Mariner" that they might be excelled, but could not be +imitated. + + + + +"DEJECTION: AN ODE" + + +This ode was written in April, 1802, at a time when, after sickness, +opium, domestic unhappiness and the consequent paralysis of his poetic +faculty had driven him to seek distraction in the study of metaphysics, +he made a visit to Wordsworth at Dove Cottage and in that vitalizing +presence experienced a brief return of his powers--enough to give +wonderful expression to perhaps the saddest thoughts that ever visited +ungoverned genius. The earliest known form of the poem, preserved in a +letter to W. Sotheby of July 19, 1802, shows (what is apparent enough to +one familiar with the relations existing between the two poets) that it +was conceived as a letter to Wordsworth, who is addressed in this +earliest version as "Dearest Poet," "Wordsworth," and "William." It was +first printed in the "Morning Post" for October 4, 1802, with "Edmund" +for Wordsworth's name and with some omissions, but with the strong +personal feeling undiminished; and in its present form (that is, with +the parts omitted in the 1802 print restored, but with the substitution +of "Lady" for "Edmund" and with numerous other omissions and changes, +notably in the last stanza, all tending to depersonalize the poem) in +"Sibylline Leaves," 1816. In 1810 a hint given by Wordsworth, with the +best intentions, to a third person concerning the real nature of +Coleridge's troubles, was reported, or rather misreported, to Coleridge, +and an estrangement fraught with deep grief to both ensued. The breach +was healed, as much as such wounds may be, by the mediation of a common +friend in 1812; but the old glad and fruitful fellowship could never be +restored. Coleridge wrote to Poole, February 13, 1813: "A reconciliation +has taken place, but the _feeling_, which I had previous to that moment, +... that, I fear, never can return. All outward actions, all inward +wishes, all thoughts and admirations will be the same--_are_ the same, +but--aye, there remains an immedicable _But_." + +"Dejection" is distinguished from the other poems in this volume by +containing, along with its wonderful interpretation of outward nature +into harmony with his own else unutterable sadness, Coleridge's--and +perhaps all poets'--essential philosophy of poetry. It was natural that +the metaphysics in which he had been immersed should color his thought; +but literature affords few if any instances of metaphysics so +transformed into poetry in the crucible of feeling as is afforded by +stanza V. of this ode. + + + + +"YOUTH AND AGE" AND "WORK WITHOUT HOPE" + + +In these two poems Coleridge has left a record of the sadness of a life +lived + +"In darkness, with the light of youth gone out," + +or returning only in glimpses that showed what he had lost. In these +latter years he was busy enough in an incoherent, visionary fashion, and +did even write and publish (though in characteristically fragmentary +form) a work that made a great impression on young men in the second +quarter of the century, his "Aids to Reflection"; but his activity was +philosophical and theological, not poetic, and even in that field the +product fell far short of his plans and promises. The inner and real +life of the man is revealed, now as always, in his poetry; and amidst +what profound dejection it glimmers on, these two brief poems show. + +"Youth and Age" was written in 1823--"an _air_ that whizzed ... right +across the diameter of my brain ... over the summit of Quantock at +earliest dawn just between the nightingale that I stopt to hear in the +copse at the foot of Quantock, and the first sky-lark that was a +song-fountain, dashing up and sparkling to the ear's eye, ... out of +sight, over the cornfields on the descent of the mountain on the other +side--out of sight, tho' twice I beheld its mute shoot downward in the +sunshine like a falling star of silver"--so he described the conception +of the poem in the original MS., printed by Mr. Campbell in the Notes to +the Globe edition. It was a flash of poignant memory of the old days at +Stowey. The first thirty-eight lines were printed in 1828, and the whole +poem (including the last six lines, which were not in the original +draft) in 1834. + +"Work Without Hope" was written, Coleridge says, "on the 21st February, +1827," and was first printed in 1828. + + + + +THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER + + + + +THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER + + +IN SEVEN PARTS + + +Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum +universitate. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit? et gradus +et cognationes et discrimina et singulorum munera? Quid agunt? quae loca +habitant? Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit ingenium humanum, nunquam +attigit. Juvat, interea, non diffiteor, quandoque in animo, tanquam in +tabulâ, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contemplari: ne mens +assuefacta hodiernae vitae minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat +in pusillas cogitationes. Sed veritati interea invigilandum est, +modusque servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a nocte, distinguamus--T. +BURNET, _Archaeol. Phil_, p. 68. + + + +PART I + +[Sidenote: An ancient Mariner meeteth three Gallants bidden to a +wedding-feast, and detaineth one.] + + It is an ancient Mariner, + And he stoppeth one of three. + "By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, + Now wherefore stopp'st thou me? + + The bridegroom's doors are opened wide, 5 + And I am next of kin; + The guests are met, the feast is set: + May'st hear the merry din." + + He holds him with his skinny hand, + "There was a ship," quoth he. 10 + "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!" + Eftsoons his hand dropt he. + +[Sidenote: The Wedding-Guest is spellbound by the eye of the old +seafaring man, and constrained to hear his tale.] + + He holds him with his glittering eye-- + The Wedding-Guest stood still, + And listens like a three years' child: 15 + The Mariner hath his will. + + The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone: + He cannot choose but hear; + And thus spake on that ancient man, + The bright-eyed Mariner. 20 + + "The ship was cheered, the harbor cleared, + Merrily did we drop + Below the kirk, below the hill, + Below the lighthouse top. + +[Sidenote: The Mariner tells how the ship sailed southward with a good +wind and fair weather, till it reached the Line.] + + The sun came up upon the left, 25 + Out of the sea came he! + And he shone bright, and on the right + Went down into the sea. + + Higher and higher every day, + Till over the mast at noon--" 30 + The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast, + For he heard the loud bassoon. + +[Sidenote: The Wedding-Guest heareth the bridal music; but the Mariner +continueth his tale.] + + The bride hath paced into the hall, + Red as a rose is she; + Nodding their heads before her goes 35 + The merry minstrelsy. + + The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast, + Yet he cannot choose but hear; + And thus spake on that ancient man, + The bright-eyed Mariner. 40 + +[Sidenote: The ship driven by a storm toward the south pole.] + + "And now the Storm-blast came, and he + Was tyrannous and strong: + He struck with his o'ertaking wings, + And chased us south along. + + With sloping masts and dipping prow, 45 + As who pursued with yell and blow + Still treads the shadow of his foe, + And forward bends his head, + The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, + And southward aye we fled. 50 + + And now there came both mist and snow, + And it grew wondrous cold: + And ice, mast-high, came floating by, + As green as emerald. + +[Sidenote: The land of ice, and of fearful sounds where no living thing +was to be seen.] + + And through the drifts the snowy clifts 55 + Did send a dismal sheen: + Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken-- + The ice was all between. + + The ice was here, the ice was there, + The ice was all around: 60 + It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, + Like noises in a swound! + +[Sidenote: Till a great sea-bird, called the Albatross, came through the +snow-fog, and was received with great joy and hospitality.] + + At length did cross an Albatross, + Thorough the fog it came; + As if it had been a Christian soul, 65 + We hailed it in God's name. + + It ate the food it ne'er had eat, + And round and round it flew. + The ice did split with a thunder-fit; + The helmsman steered us through! 70 + +[Sidenote: And lo! the Albatross proveth a bird of good omen, and +followeth the ship as it returned northward through fog and floating +ice.] + + And a good south wind sprung up behind; + The Albatross did follow, + And every day, for food or play, + Came to the mariners' hollo! + + In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, 75 + It perched for vespers nine; + Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, + Glimmered the white moon-shine." + +[Sidenote: The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of +good omen.] + + "God save thee, ancient Mariner! + From the fiends, that plague thee thus!-- 80 + Why look'st thou so?"--"With my cross-bow + I shot the Albatross. + + + +PART II + + The Sun now rose upon the right: + Out of the sea came he, + Still hid in mist, and on the left 85 + Went down into the sea. + + And the good south wind still blew behind, + But no sweet bird did follow, + Nor any day for food or play + Came to the mariners' hollo! 90 + +[Sidenote: His shipmates cry out against the ancient Mariner, for +killing the bird of good luck.] + + And I had done a hellish thing, + And it would work 'em woe: + For all averred, I had killed the bird + That made the breeze to blow. + Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, 95 + That made the breeze to blow! + +[Sidenote: But when the fog cleared off, they justify the same, and thus +make themselves accomplices in the crime.] + + Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, + The glorious Sun uprist: + Then all averred, I had killed the bird + That brought the fog and mist. 100 + 'T was right, said they, such birds to slay, + That bring the fog and mist. + +[Sidenote: The fair breeze continues; the ship enters the Pacific Ocean, +and sails northward, even till it reaches the Line.] + + The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, + The furrow followed free; + We were the first that ever burst 105 + Into that silent sea. + +[Sidenote: The ship hath been suddenly becalmed.] + + Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, + 'T was sad as sad could be; + And we did speak only to break + The silence of the sea! 110 + + All in a hot and copper sky, + The bloody Sun, at noon, + Right up above the mast did stand, + No bigger than the Moon. + + Day after day, day after day, 115 + We stuck, nor breath nor motion; + As idle as a painted ship + Upon a painted ocean. + +[Sidenote: And the Albatross begins to be avenged.] + + Water, water, every where, + And all the boards did shrink; 120 + Water, water, every where + Nor any drop to drink. + + The very deep did rot: O Christ! + That ever this should be! + Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs 125 + Upon the slimy sea. + + About, about, in reel and rout + The death-fires danced at night; + The water, like a witch's oils, + Burnt green, and blue and white. 130 + +[Sidenote: A Spirit had followed them: one of the invisible inhabitants +of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels, concerning whom the +learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael +Psellus, may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no +climate or element without one or more.] + + And some in dreams assured were + Of the Spirit that plagued us so; + Nine fathom deep he had followed us + From the land of mist and snow. + + And every tongue, through utter drought, 135 + Was withered at the root; + We could not speak, no more than if + We had been choked with soot. + +[Sidenote: The shipmates, in their sore distress, would fain throw the +whole guilt on the ancient Mariner: in sign whereof they hang the dead +sea-bird round his neck.] + + Ah! well-a-day! what evil looks + Had I from old and young! 140 + Instead of the cross, the Albatross + About my neck was hung. + + + +PART III + +[Sidenote: The ancient Mariner beholdeth a sign in the element afar +off.] + + There passed a weary time. Each throat + Was parched, and glazed each eye. + A weary time! a weary time! 145 + How glazed each weary eye, + When looking westward, I beheld + A something in the sky. + + At first it seemed a little speck, + And then it seemed a mist; 150 + It moved and moved, and took at last + A certain shape, I wist. + + A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist! + And still it neared and neared: + As if it dodged a water-sprite, 155 + It plunged and tacked and veered. + +[Sidenote: At its nearer approach, it seemeth him to be a ship; and at a +dear ransom he freeth his speech from the bonds of thirst.] + + With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, + We could nor laugh nor wail; + Through utter drought all dumb we stood! + I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, 160 + And cried, A sail! a sail! + +With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, +Agape they heard me call: + +[Sidenote: A flash of joy;] + +[Sidenote: And horror follows. For can it be a ship that comes onward +without wind or tide?] + + Gramercy! they for joy did grin, + And all at once their breath drew in, 165 + As they were drinking all. + + + See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more! + Hither to work us weal; + Without a breeze, without a tide, + She steadies with upright keel! 170 + + The western wave was all a-flame. + The day was well nigh done! + Almost upon the western wave + Rested the broad bright Sun; + When that strange shape drove suddenly 175 + Betwixt us and the Sun; + +[Sidenote: It seemeth him but the skeleton of a ship.] + + And straight the Sun was flecked with bars, + (Heaven's Mother send us grace!) + As if through a dungeon-grate he peered + With broad and burning face. 180 + + Alas (thought I, and my heart beat loud) + How fast she nears and nears! + Are those her sails that glance in the Sun, + Like restless gossameres? + +[Sidenote: And its ribs are seen as bars on the face of the setting Sun. +The Spectre-Woman and her Deathmate, and no other on board the +skeleton-ship.] + + Are those her ribs through which the Sun 185 + Did peer, as through a grate? + And is that Woman all her crew? + Is that a Death? and are there two? + Is Death that woman's mate? + +[Sidenote: Like vessel, like crew!] + + Her lips were red, her looks were free, 190 + Her locks were yellow as gold: + Her skin was as white as leprosy, + The Night-mare Life-in-Death was she, + Who thicks man's blood with cold. + +[Sidenote: Death and Life-in-Death have diced for the ship's crew, and +she (the latter) winneth the ancient Mariner.] + + The naked hulk alongside came, 195 + And the twain were casting dice; + 'The game is done! I've won! I've won!' + Quoth she, and whistles thrice. + +[Sidenote: No twilight within the courts of the Sun.] + + The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out; + At one stride comes the dark; 200 + With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea, + Off shot the spectre-bark. + +[Sidenote: At the rising of the moon.] + + We listened and looked sideways up! + Fear at my heart, as at a cup, + My life-blood seemed to sip! 205 + The stars were dim, and thick the night, + The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white; + From the sails the dew did drip-- + Till clomb above the eastern bar + The horned Moon, with one bright star 210 + Within the nether tip. + +[Sidenote: One after another,] + + One after one, by the star-dogged Moon, + Too quick for groan or sigh, + Each turned his face with a ghastly pang, + And cursed me with his eye. 215 + +[Sidenote: His shipmates drop down dead.] + + Four times fifty living men, + (And I heard nor sigh nor groan) + With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, + They dropped down one by one. + +[Sidenote: But Life-in-Death begins her work on the ancient Mariner.] + + The souls did from their bodies fly,-- 220 + They fled to bliss or woe! + And every soul, it passed me by, + Like the whizz of my cross-bow!" + + + +PART IV + +[Sidenote: The Wedding-Guest feareth that a Spirit is talking to him;] + + "I Fear thee, ancient Mariner! + I fear thy skinny hand! 225 + And thou art long, and lank, and brown, + As is the ribbed sea-sand. + + I fear thee and thy glittering eye, + And thy skinny hand, so brown."-- + "Fear me not, fear not, thou wedding-guest! 230 + This body dropt not down. + +[Sidenote: But the ancient Mariner assureth him of his bodily life, and +proceedeth to relate his horrible penance.] + + Alone, alone, all, all alone, + Alone on the wide, wide sea! + And never a saint took pity on + My soul in agony. 235 + +[Sidenote: He despiseth the creatures of the calm.] + + The many men, so beautiful! + And they all dead did lie: + And a thousand thousand slimy things + Lived on; and so did I. + +[Sidenote: And envieth that they should live, and so many lie dead.] + + I looked upon the rotting sea, 240 + And drew my eyes away; + I looked upon the rotting deck, + And there the dead men lay. + + I looked to heaven, and tried to pray; + But or ever a prayer had gusht, 245 + A wicked whisper came, and made + My heart as dry as dust. + + I closed my lids, and kept them close, + And the balls like pulses beat; + For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky 250 + Lay like a load on my weary eye, + And the dead were at my feet. + +[Sidenote: But the curse liveth for him in the eye of the dead men.] + + The cold sweat melted from their limbs, + Nor rot nor reek did they: + The look with which they looked on me + Had never passed away. + + An orphan's curse would drag to hell + A spirit from on high; + But oh! more horrible than that + Is a curse in a dead man's eye! + Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, + And yet I could not die. + +[Sidenote: In his loneliness and fixedness he yearneth towards the +journeying Moon, and the stars that still sojourn, yet still move +onward; and every where the blue sky belongs to them, and is their +appointed rest, and their native country and their own natural homes, +which they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected and +yet there is a silent joy at their arrival.] + + The moving Moon went up the sky, + And nowhere did abide: + Softly she was going up, + And a star or two beside-- + + Her beams bemocked the sultry main, + Like April hoar-frost spread; + But where the ship's huge shadow lay, + The charmed water burnt alway + A still and awful red. + +[Sidenote: By the light of the Moon he beholdeth God's creatures of the +great calm.] + + Beyond the shadow of the ship, + I watched the water-snakes: + They moved in tracks of shining white, + And when they reared, the elfish light + Fell off in hoary flakes. + + Within the shadow of the ship + I watched their rich attire: + Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, + They coiled and swam; and every track 280 + Was a flash of golden fire. + +[Sidenote: Their beauty and their happiness.] + +[Sidenote: He blesseth them in his heart.] + + O happy living things! no tongue + Their beauty might declare: + A spring of love gushed from my heart, + And I blessed them unaware: 285 + Sure my kind saint took pity on me, + And I blessed them unaware. + +[Sidenote: The spell begins to break.] + + The selfsame moment I could pray; + And from my neck so free + The Albatross fell off, and sank 290 + Like lead into the sea. + + + +PART V + + Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing, + Beloved from pole to pole! + To Mary Queen the praise be given! + She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, 295 + That slid into my soul. + +[Sidenote: By grace of the holy Mother, the ancient Mariner is refreshed +with rain.] + + The silly buckets on the deck, + That had so long remained, + I dreamt that they were filled with dew; + And when I awoke, it rained. 300 + + My lips were wet, my throat was cold, + My garments all were dank; + Sure I had drunken in my dreams, + And still my body drank. + + I moved, and could not feel my limbs: 305 + I was so light--almost + I thought that I had died in sleep, + And was a blessed ghost. + +[Sidenote: He heareth sounds and seeth strange sights and commotions in +the sky and the element.] + + And soon I heard a roaring wind: + It did not come anear; 310 + But with its sound it shook the sails, + That were so thin and sere. + + The upper air burst into life! + And a hundred fire-flags sheen, + To and fro they were hurried about! 315 + And to and fro, and in and out, + The wan stars danced between. + + And the coming wind did roar more loud, + And the sails did sigh like sedge; + And the rain poured down from one black cloud; 320 + The Moon was at its edge. + + The thick black cloud was cleft, and still + The Moon was at its side. + Like waters shot from some high crag, + The lightning fell with never a jag, 325 + A river steep and wide. + +[Sidenote: The bodies of the ship's crew are inspired, and the ship +moves on;] + + The loud wind never reached the ship, + Yet now the ship moved on! + Beneath the lightning and the Moon + The dead men gave a groan. 330 + + They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, + Nor spake, nor moved their eyes; + It had been strange, even in a dream, + To have seen those dead men rise. + + The helmsman steered, the ship moved on; 335 + Yet never a breeze up blew; + The mariners all 'gan work the ropes, + Where they were wont to do; + They raised their limbs like lifeless tools-- + We were a ghastly crew. 340 + + The body of my brother's son + Stood by me, knee to knee: + The body and I pulled at one rope, + But he said nought to me." + +[Sidenote: But not by the souls of the men, nor by daemons of earth or +middle air, but by a blessed troop of angelic spirits, sent down by the +invocation of the guardian saint.] + + "I fear thee, ancient Mariner!" 345 + "Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest! + 'T was not those souls that fled in pain, + Which to their corses came again, + But a troop of spirits blest: + + For when it dawned--they dropped their arms, + And clustered round the mast; 350 + Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, + And from their bodies passed. + + Around, around, flew each sweet sound, + Then darted to the Sun; 355 + Slowly the sounds came back again, + Now mixed, now one by one. + + Sometimes a-dropping from the sky + I heard the sky-lark sing; + Sometimes all little birds that are, 350 + How they seemed to fill the sea and air + With their sweet jargoning! + + And now 't was like all instruments, + Now like a lonely flute; + And now it is an angel's song, 365 + That makes the heavens be mute. + + It ceased; yet still the sails made on + A pleasant noise till noon, + A noise like of a hidden brook + In the leafy month of June, 370 + That to the sleeping woods all night + Singeth a quiet tune. + + Till noon we quietly sailed on, + Yet never a breeze did breathe: + Slowly and smoothly went the ship, 375 + Moved onward from beneath. + +[Sidenote: The lonesome Spirit from the south-pole carries on the ship +as far as the Line, in obedience to the angelic troop, but still +requireth vengeance.] + + Under' the keel nine fathom deep, + From the land of mist and snow, + The spirit slid: and it was he + That made the ship to go. 380 + The sails at noon left off their tune, + And the ship stood still also. + + The Sun, right up above the mast, + Had fixed her to the ocean: + But in a minute she 'gan stir, 385 + With a short uneasy motion-- + Backwards and forwards half her length + With a short uneasy motion. + + Then like a pawing horse let go, + She made a sudden bound: 390 + It flung the blood into my head, + And I fell down in a swound. + +[Sidenote: The Polar Spirit's fellow-daemons, the invisible inhabitants +of the element, take part in his wrong; and two of them relate, one to +the other, that penance long and heavy for the ancient Mariner hath been +accorded to the Polar Spirit, who returneth southward.] + + How long in that same fit I lay, + I have not to declare; + But ere my living life returned, 395 + I heard and in my soul discerned + Two voices in the air. + + 'Is it he?' quoth one, 'Is this the man? + By him who died on cross, + With his cruel bow he laid full low 400 + The harmless Albatross. + + The spirit who bideth by himself + In the land of mist and snow, + He loved the bird that loved the man + Who shot him with his bow?' 405 + + The other was a softer voice, + As soft as honey-dew: + Quoth he, 'The man hath penance done, + And penance more will do.' + + + +PART VI + +FIRST VOICE + + 'But tell me, tell me! speak again, 410 + Thy soft response renewing-- + What makes that ship drive on so fast? + What is the ocean doing?' + +SECOND VOICE + + 'Still as a slave before his lord, + The ocean hath no blast; 415 + His great bright eye most silently + Up to the Moon is cast-- + + If he may know which way to go; + For she guides him smooth or grim. + See, brother, see! how graciously 420 + She looketh down on him.' + +FIRST VOICE + +[Sidenote: The Mariner hath been cast into a trance; for the angelic +power causeth the vessel to drive northward faster than human life could +endure.] + + 'But why drives on that ship so fast? + Without or wave or wind?' + +SECOND VOICE + + 'The air is cut away before, + And closes from behind. 425 + + Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high! + Or we shall be belated: + For slow and slow that ship will go, + When the Mariner's trance is abated. + +[Sidenote: The supernatural motion is retarded; the Mariner awakes, and +his penance begins anew.] + + I woke, and we were sailing on 430 + As in a gentle weather: + 'T was night, calm night, the moon was high, + The dead men stood together. + + All stood together on the deck, + For a charnel-dungeon fitter: 435 + All fixed on me their stony eyes, + That in the Moon did glitter. + + The pang, the curse, with which they died, + Had never passed away: + I could not draw my eyes from theirs, 440 + Nor turn them up to pray. + +[Sidenote: The curse is finally expiated.] + + And now this spell was snapt: once more + I viewed the ocean green, + And looked far forth, yet little saw + Of what had else been seen-- 445 + + Like one, that on a lonesome road + Doth walk in fear and dread, + And having once turned round walks on, + And turns no more his head; + Because he knows, a frightful fiend 450 + Doth close behind him tread. + + But soon there breathed a wind on me, + Nor sound nor motion made: + Its path was not upon the sea, + In ripple or in shade. 455 + + It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek + Like a meadow-gale of spring-- + It mingled strangely with my fears, + Yet it felt like a welcoming. + + Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship, 460 + Yet she sailed softly too: + Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze-- + On me alone it blew. + +[Sidenote: And the ancient Mariner beholdeth his native country.] + + Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed + The light-house top I see? 465 + Is this the hill? is this the kirk? + Is this mine own countree? + + We drifted o'er the harbor-bar, + And I with sobs did pray-- + O let me be awake, my God! 470 + Or let me sleep alway. + + The harbor-bay was clear as glass, + So smoothly it was strewn! + And on the bay the moonlight lay, + And the shadow of the Moon. 475 + + The rock shone bright, the kirk no less, + That stands above the rock: + The moonlight steeped in silentness + The steady weathercock. + + And the bay was white with silent light 480 + Till rising from the same, + +[Sidenote: The angelic spirits leave the dead bodies,] + + Full many shapes, that shadows were, + In crimson colors came. + +[Sidenote: And appear in their own forms of light.] + + A little distance from the prow + Those crimson shadows were: 485 + I turned my eyes upon the deck-- + Oh, Christ! what saw I there! + + Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat, + And, by the holy rood! + A man all light, a seraph-man, 490 + On every corse there stood. + + This seraph-band, each waved his hand: + It was a heavenly sight! + They stood as signals to the land, + Each one a lovely light; 495 + + This seraph-band, each waved his hand, + No voice did they impart-- + No voice; but oh! the silence sank + Like music on my heart. + + But soon I heard the dash of oars, 500 + I heard the Pilot's cheer; + My head was turned perforce away, + And I saw a boat appear. + + The Pilot and the Pilot's boy, + I heard them coming fast: 505 + Dear Lord in Heaven! it was a joy + The dead men could not blast. + + I saw a third--I heard his voice: + It is the Hermit good! + He singeth loud his godly hymns 510 + That he makes in the wood. + He'll shrieve my soul, he'll wash away + The Albatross's blood. + + + +PART VII + +[Sidenote: The Hermit of the Wood,] + + This Hermit good lives in that wood + Which slopes down to the sea. 515 + How loudly his sweet voice he rears! + He loves to talk with marineres + That come from a far countree. + + He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve-- + He hath a cushion plump: 520 + It is the moss that wholly hides + The rotted old oak-stump. + + The skiff-boat neared: I heard them talk, + 'Why, this is strange, I trow! + Where are those lights, so many and fair, 525 + That signal made but now?' + +[Sidenote: Approacheth the ship with wonder.] + + 'Strange, by my faith!' the Hermit said-- + 'And they answered not our cheer! + The planks looked warped! and see those sails, + How thin they are and sere! 530 + I never saw aught like to them, + Unless perchance it were + + Brown skeletons of leaves that lag + My forest-brook along; + When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow, 535 + And the owlet whoops to the wolf below, + That eats the she-wolf's young.' + + 'Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look-- + (The Pilot made reply) + I am a-feared'--'Push on, push on!' 540 + Said the Hermit cheerily. + + The boat came closer to the ship, + But I nor spake nor stirred; + The boat came close beneath the ship, + And straight a sound was heard. 545 + +[Sidenote: The ship suddenly sinketh.] + + Under the water it rumbled on, + Still louder and more dread: + It reached the ship, it split the bay; + The ship went down like lead. + +[Sidenote: The ancient Mariner is saved in the Pilot's boat.] + + Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound, 550 + Which sky and ocean smote, + Like one that hath been seven days drowned + My body lay afloat; + But swift as dreams, myself I found + Within the Pilot's boat. 555 + + Upon the whirl, where sank the ship, + The boat spun round and round; + And all was still, save that the hill + Was telling of the sound. + + I moved my lips--the Pilot shrieked 560 + And fell down in a fit; + The holy Hermit raised his eyes, + And prayed where he did sit. + + I took the oars: the Pilot's boy, + Who now doth crazy go, 565 + Laughed loud and long, and all the while + His eyes went to and fro. + 'Ha! ha!' quoth he, 'full plain I see, + The Devil knows how to row.' + + And now, all in my own countree, 570 + I stood on the firm land! + The Hermit stepped forth from the boat, + And scarcely he could stand. + +[Sidenote: The ancient Mariner earnestly entreateth the Hermit to +shrieve him; and the penance of life falls on him.] + + 'O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!' + The Hermit crossed his brow. 575 + 'Say quick,' quoth he, 'I bid thee say-- + What manner of man art thou?' + + Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched + With a woful agony, + Which forced me to begin my tale; 580 + And then it left me free. + +[Sidenote: And ever and anon throughout his future life an agony +constraineth him to travel from land to land,] + + Since then, at an uncertain hour, + That agony returns: + And till my ghastly tale is told, + This heart within me burns. 585 + + I pass, like night, from land to land; + I have strange power of speech; + That moment that his face I see, + I know the man that must hear me: + To him my tale I teach. 590 + + What loud uproar bursts from that door! + The wedding-guests are there: + But in the garden-bower the bride + And bride-maids singing are: + And hark the little vesper bell, 595 + Which biddeth me to prayer! + + O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been + Alone on a wide, wide sea: + So lonely 't was, that God himself + Scarce seemed there to be. 600 + + O sweeter than the marriage-feast, + 'T is sweeter far to me, + To walk together to the kirk + With a goodly company!-- + + To walk together to the kirk, 605 + And all together pray, + While each to his great Father bends, + Old men, and babes, and loving friends + And youths and maidens gay! + +[Sidenote: And to teach, by his own example, love and reverence to all +things that God made and loveth.] + + Farewell, farewell! but this I tell 610 + To thee, thou Wedding-Guest! + He prayeth well, who loveth well + Both man and bird and beast. + + He prayeth best, who loveth best + All things both great and small; 615 + For the dear God who loveth us, + He made and loveth all." + + The Mariner, whose eye is bright, + Whose beard with age is hoar, + Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest 620 + Turned from the bridegroom's door. + + He went like one that hath been stunned, + And is of sense forlorn: + A sadder and a wiser man, + He rose the morrow morn. 625 + + + + +CHRISTABEL + + +PART THE FIRST + + 'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, + And the owls have awakened the crowing cock. + Tu--whit!----Tu--whoo! + And hark, again! the crowing cock, + How drowsily it crew. 5 + + Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, + Hath a toothless mastiff, which + From her kennel beneath the rock + Maketh answer to the clock, + Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; 10 + Ever and aye, by shine and shower, + Sixteen short howls, not over loud; + Some say, she sees my lady's shroud. + + Is the night chilly and dark? + The night is chilly, but not dark. 15 + The thin gray cloud is spread on high, + It covers but not hides the sky. + The moon is behind, and at the full; + And yet she looks both small and dull. + The night is chill, the cloud is gray: 20 + 'T is a month before the month of May, + And the Spring comes slowly up this way. + + The lovely lady, Christabel, + Whom her father loves so well, + What makes her in the wood so late, 25 + A furlong from the castle gate? + She had dreams all yesternight + Of her own betrothed knight; + And she in the midnight wood will pray + For the weal of her lover that's far away. 30 + + She stole along, she nothing spoke, + The sighs she heaved were soft and low, + And naught was green upon the oak + But moss and rarest mistletoe: + She kneels beneath the huge oak tree, 35 + And in silence prayeth she. + + The lady sprang up suddenly, + The lovely lady, Christabel! + It moaned as near, as near can be, + But what it is she cannot tell.-- 40 + On the other side it seems to be, + Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree. + + The night is chill; the forest bare; + Is it the wind that moaneth bleak? + There is not wind enough in the air 45 + To move away the ringlet curl + From the lovely lady's cheek-- + There is not wind enough to twirl + The one red leaf, the last of its clan, + That dances as often as dance it can, 50 + Hanging so light, and hanging so high, + On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky. + + Hush, beating heart of Christabel! + Jesu, Maria, shield her well! + She folded her arms beneath her cloak, 55 + And stole to the other side of the oak. + What sees she there? + + There she sees a damsel bright, + Drest in a silken robe of white, + That shadowy in the moonlight shone: 60 + The neck that made that white robe wan, + Her stately neck, and arms were bare; + Her blue-veined feet unsandal'd were, + And wildly glittered here and there + The gems entangled in her hair. 65 + I guess, 'twas frightful there to see + A lady so richly clad as she-- + Beautiful exceedingly! + + "Mary mother, save me now!" + Said Christabel, "And who art thou?" 70 + + The lady strange made answer meet, + And her voice was faint and sweet:-- + "Have pity on my sore distress, + I scarce can speak for weariness: + Stretch forth thy hand, and have no fear!" 75 + Said Christabel, "How camest thou here?" + And the lady, whose voice was faint and sweet, + Did thus pursue her answer meet:-- + + "My sire is of a noble line, + And my name is Geraldine: 80 + Five warriors seized me yestermorn, + Me, even me, a maid forlorn: + They choked my cries with force and fright, + And tied me on a palfrey white. + The palfrey was as fleet as wind, 85 + And they rode furiously behind. + They spurred amain, their steeds were white: + And once we crossed the shade of night. + As sure as Heaven shall rescue me, + I have no thought what men they be; 90 + Nor do I know how long it is + (For I have lain entranced I wis) + + Since one, the tallest of the five, + Took me from the palfrey's back, + A weary woman, scarce alive. 95 + Some muttered words his comrades spoke: + He placed me underneath this oak; + He swore they would return with haste; + Whither they went I cannot tell-- + I thought I heard, some minutes past, 100 + Sounds as of a castle bell. + Stretch forth thy hand," thus ended she, + "And help a wretched maid to flee." + + Then Christabel stretched forth her hand, + And comforted fair Geraldine: 105 + "O well, bright dame! may you command + The service of Sir Leoline; + And gladly our stout chivalry + Will he send forth and friends withal + To guide and guard you safe and free 110 + Home to your noble father's hall." + + She rose: and forth with steps they passed + That strove to be, and were not, fast. + Her gracious stars the lady blest, + And thus spake on sweet Christabel: 115 + "All our household are at rest, + The hall as silent as the cell; + Sir Leoline is weak in health, + And may not well awakened be, + But we will move as if in stealth, 120 + And I beseech your courtesy, + This night, to share your couch with me." + + They crossed the moat, and Christabel + Took the key that fitted well; + A little door she opened straight, 125 + All in the middle of the gate; + The gate that was ironed within and without, + Where an army in battle array had marched out. + The lady sank, belike through pain, + And Christabel with might and main 130 + Lifted her up, a weary weight, + Over the threshold of the gate: + Then the lady rose again, + And moved, as she were not in pain. + + So free from danger, free from fear, 135 + They crossed the court: right glad they were. + And Christabel devoutly cried + To the lady by her side, + "Praise we the Virgin all divine + Who hath rescued thee from thy distress!" 140 + "Alas, alas!" said Geraldine, + "I cannot speak for weariness." + So free from danger, free from fear, + They crossed the court: right glad they were. + + Outside her kennel, the mastiff old 145 + Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold. + The mastiff old did not awake, + Yet she an angry moan did make! + And what can ail the mastiff bitch? + Never till now she uttered yell 150 + Beneath the eye of Christabel. + Perhaps it is the owlet's scritch: + For what can ail the mastiff bitch? + + They passed the hall, that echoes still, + Pass as lightly as you will! 155 + The brands were flat, the brands were dying, + Amid their own white ashes lying; + But when the lady passed, there came + A tongue of light, a fit of flame; + And Christabel saw the lady's eye, 160 + And nothing else saw she thereby, + Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall, + Which hung in a murky old niche in the wall. + "O softly tread," said Christabel, + "My father seldom sleepeth well." 165 + + Sweet Christabel her feet doth bare, + And jealous of the listening air + They steal their way from stair to stair, + Now in glimmer, and now in gloom, + And now they pass the Baron's room, 170 + As still as death, with stifled breath + And now have reached her chamber door; + And now doth Geraldine press down + The rushes of the chamber floor. + + The moon shines dim in the open air, 175 + And not a moonbeam enters here. + But they without its light can see + The chamber carved so curiously, + Carved with figures strange and sweet, + All made out of the carver's brain, 180 + For a lady's chamber meet: + The lamp with twofold silver chain + Is fastened to an angel's feet. + + The silver lamp burns dead and dim; + But Christabel the lamp will trim. 185 + She trimmed the lamp, and made it bright, + And left it swinging to and fro, + While Geraldine, in wretched plight, + Sank down upon the floor below. + + "O weary lady, Geraldine, 190 + I pray you, drink this cordial wine! + It is a wine of virtuous powers; + My mother made it of wild flowers." + + "And will your mother pity me, + Who am a maiden most forlorn? 195 + Christabel answered--"Woe is me! + She died the hour that I was born. + I have heard the gray-haired friar tell + How on her death-bed she did say, + That she should hear the castle-bell 200 + Strike twelve upon my wedding-day. + O mother dear! that thou wert here!" + "I would," said Geraldine, "she were!" + + But soon with altered voice, said she-- + "Off, wandering mother! Peak and pine! 205 + I have power to bid thee flee." + Alas! what ails poor Geraldine? + Why stares she with unsettled eye? + Can she the bodiless dead espy? + And why with hollow voice cries she, 210 + "Off, woman, off! this hour is mine-- + Though thou her guardian spirit be, + Off, woman, off! 'tis given to me." + + Then Christabel knelt by the lady's side, + And raised to heaven her eyes so blue-- 215 + "Alas!" said she, "this ghastly ride-- + Dear lady! it hath wildered you!" + The lady wiped her moist cold brow, + And faintly said, "'Tis over now!" + + Again the wild-flower wine she drank: 220 + Her fair large eyes 'gan glitter bright, + And from the floor whereon she sank, + The lofty lady stood upright: + She was most beautiful to see, + Like a lady of a far countree. 225 + And thus the lofty lady spake-- + "All they who live in the upper sky, + Do love you, holy Christabel! + And you love them, and for their sake + And for the good which me befell, 230 + Even I in my degree will try, + Fair maiden, to requite you well. + But now unrobe yourself; for I + Must pray, ere yet in bed I lie." + + Quoth Christabel, "So let it be!" 235 + And as the lady bade, did she. + Her gentle limbs did she undress, + And lay down in her loveliness. + + But through her brain of weal and woe + So many thoughts moved to and fro, 240 + That vain it were her lids to close; + So half-way from the bed she rose, + And on her elbow did recline + To look at the Lady Geraldine. + + Beneath the lamp the lady bowed, 245 + And slowly rolled her eyes around; + Then drawing in her breath aloud, + Like one that shuddered, she unbound + The cincture from beneath her breast: + Her silken robe, and inner vest, 250 + Dropt to her feet, and full in view, + Behold! her bosom and half her side-- + A sight to dream of, not to tell! + O shield her! shield sweet Christabel! + + Yet Geraldine nor speaks nor stirs; 255 + Ah! what a stricken look was hers! + Deep from within she seems half-way + To lift some weight with sick assay, + And eyes the maid and seeks delay; + Then suddenly, as one defied, 260 + Collects herself in scorn and pride, + And lay down by the Maiden's side!-- + And in her arms the maid she took, + Ah wel-a-day! + And with low voice and doleful look 265 + These words did say: + "In the touch of this bosom there worketh a spell, + Which is lord of thy utterance, Christabel! + Thou knowest to-night, and wilt know to-morrow, + This mark of my shame, this seal of my sorrow; 270 + But vainly thou warrest, + For this is alone in + Thy power to declare, + That in the dim forest + Thou heard'st a low moaning, 275 + And found'st a bright lady, surpassingly fair; + And didst bring her home with thee in love and in charity, + To shield her and shelter her from the damp air." + + + +THE CONCLUSION TO PART THE FIRST + + It was a lovely sight to see + The lady Christabel, when she 280 + Was praying at the old oak tree. + Amid the jagged shadows + Of mossy leafless boughs, + Kneeling in the moonlight, + To make her gentle vows; 285 + Her slender palms together prest, + Heaving sometimes on her breast; + Her face resigned to bliss or bale-- + Her face, oh call it fair not pale, + And both blue eyes more bright than clear, 290 + Each about to have a tear. + + With open eyes (ah woe is me!) + Asleep, and dreaming fearfully, + Fearfully dreaming, yet, I wis, + Dreaming that alone, which is-- 295 + O sorrow and shame! Can this be she, + The lady, who knelt at the old oak tree? + And lo! the worker of these harms, + That holds the maiden in her arms, + Seems to slumber still and mild, 300 + As a mother with her child. + + A star hath set, a star hath risen, + O Geraldine! since arms of thine + Have been the lovely lady's prison. + O Geraldine! one hour was thine-- 305 + Thou 'st had thy will! By tairn and rill, + The night-birds all that hour were still. + But now they are jubilant anew, + From cliff and tower, tu--whoo! tu--whoo! + Tu--whoo! tu--whoo! from wood and fell! 310 + + And see! the lady Christabel + Gathers herself from out her trance; + Her limbs relax, her countenance + Grows sad and soft; the smooth thin lids + Close o'er her eyes; and tears she sheds-- 315 + Large tears that leave the lashes bright! + And oft the while she seems to smile + As infants at a sudden light! + + Yea, she doth smile, and she doth weep, + Like a youthful hermitess, 320 + Beauteous in a wilderness, + Who, praying always, prays in sleep. + And, if she move unquietly, + Perchance, 'tis but the blood so free + Comes back and tingles in her feet. 325 + No doubt, she hath a vision sweet. + What if her guardian spirit 'twere, + What if she knew her mother near? + But this she knows, in joys and woes, + That saints will aid if men will call: 330 + For the blue sky bends over all! + + + +PART THE SECOND + + "Each matin bell," the Baron saith, + "Knells us back to a world of death." + These words Sir Leoline first said, + When he rose and found his lady dead: 335 + These words Sir Leoline will say + Many a morn to his dying day! + + And hence the custom and law began + That still at dawn the sacristan, + Who duly pulls the heavy bell, 340 + Five and forty beads must tell + Between each stroke--a warning knell, + Which not a soul can choose but hear + From Bratha Head to Wyndermere. + + Saith Bracy the bard, "So let it knell! 345 + And let the drowsy sacristan + Still count as slowly as he can! + There is no lack of such, I ween, + As well fill up the space between. + In Langdale Pike and Witch's Lair, 350 + And Dungeon-ghyll so foully rent, + With ropes of rock and bells of air + Three sinful sextons' ghosts are pent, + Who all give back, one after t' other, + The death-note to their living brother; 355 + And oft too, by the knell offended, + Just as their one! two! three! is ended, + The devil mocks the doleful tale + With a merry peal from Borrowdale." + + The air is still! through mist and cloud 360 + That merry peal comes ringing loud; + And Geraldine shakes off her dread, + And rises lightly from the bed; + Puts on her silken vestments white, + And tricks her hair in lovely plight, 365 + And nothing doubting of her spell + Awakens the lady Christabel. + "Sleep you, sweet lady Christabel? + I trust that you have rested well." + + And Christabel awoke and spied 370 + The same who lay down by her side-- + O rather say, the same whom she + Raised up beneath the old oak tree! + Nay, fairer yet! and yet more fair! + For she belike hath drunken deep 375 + Of all the blessedness of sleep! + And while she spake, her looks, her air, + Such gentle thankfulness declare, + That (so it seemed) her girded vests + Grew tight beneath her heaving breasts. 380 + "Sure I have sinn'd!" said Christabel, + "Now heaven be praised if all be well!" + And in low faltering tones, yet sweet, + Did she the lofty lady greet + With such perplexity of mind 385 + As dreams too lively leave behind. + + So quickly she rose, and quickly arrayed + Her maiden limbs, and having prayed + That He, who on the cross did groan, + Might wash away her sins unknown, 390 + She forthwith led fair Geraldine + To meet her sire, Sir Leoline. + + The lovely maid and the lady tall + Are pacing both into the hall, + And pacing on through page and groom, 395 + Enter the Baron's presence-room. + + The Baron rose, and while he prest + His gentle daughter to his breast, + With cheerful wonder in his eyes + The lady Geraldine espies, 400 + And gave such welcome to the same, + As might beseem so bright a dame! + + But when he heard the lady's tale, + And when she told her father's name, + Why waxed Sir Leoline so pale, 405 + Murmuring o'er the name again, + Lord Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine? + + Alas! they had been friends in youth; + But whispering tongues can poison truth; + And constancy lives in realms above; 410 + And life is thorny; and youth is vain; + And to be wroth with one we love + Doth work like madness in the brain. + And thus it chanced, as I divine, + With Roland and Sir Leoline. 415 + Each spake words of high disdain + And insult to his heart's best brother: + They parted--ne'er to meet again! + But never either found another + To free the hollow heart from paining-- 420 + They stood aloof, the scars remaining, + Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; + A dreary sea now flows between. + But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, + Shall wholly do away, I ween, 425 + The marks of that which once hath been. + + Sir Leoline, a moment's space, + Stood gazing on the damsel's face: + And the youthful Lord of Tryermaine + Came back upon his heart again. 430 + + O then the Baron forgot his age, + His noble heart swelled high with rage; + He swore by the wounds in Jesu's side + He would proclaim it far and wide, + With trump and solemn heraldry, 435 + That they, who thus had wronged the dame + Were base as spotted infamy! + "And if they dare deny the same, + My herald shall appoint a week, + And let the recreant traitors seek 440 + My tourney court--that there and then + I may dislodge their reptile souls + From the bodies and forms of men!" + He spake: his eye in lightning rolls! + For the lady was ruthlessly seized; and he kenned 445 + In the beautiful lady the child of his friend! + + And now the tears were on his face, + And fondly in his arms he took + Fair Geraldine, who met the embrace, + Prolonging it with joyous look. 450 + Which when she viewed, a vision fell + Upon the soul of Christabel, + The vision of fear, the touch and pain! + She shrunk and shuddered, and saw again-- + (Ah, woe is me! Was it for thee, 455 + Thou gentle maid! such sights to see?) + + Again she saw that bosom old, + Again she felt that bosom cold, + And drew in her breath with a hissing sound: + Whereat the Knight turned wildly round, 460 + And nothing saw, but his own sweet maid + With eyes upraised, as one that prayed. + + The touch, the sight, had passed away, + And in its stead that vision blest, + Which comforted her after-rest, 465 + While in the lady's arms she lay, + Had put a rapture in her breast, + And on her lips and o'er her eyes + Spread smiles like light! + With new surprise, + "What ails then my beloved child?" 470 + The Baron said--His daughter mild + Made answer, "All will yet be well!" + I ween, she had no power to tell + Aught else: so mighty was the spell. + + Yet he, who saw this Geraldine, 475 + Had deemed her sure a thing divine. + Such sorrow with such grace she blended, + As if she feared she had offended + Sweet Christabel, that gentle maid! + And with such lowly tones she prayed 480 + She might be sent without delay + Home to her father's mansion. + "Nay! + Nay, by my soul!" said Leoline. + "Ho! Bracy the bard, the charge be thine! + Go thou, with music sweet and loud, 485 + And take two steeds with trappings proud, + And take the youth whom thou lov'st best + To bear thy harp, and learn thy song, + And clothe you both in solemn vest, + And over the mountains haste along, 490 + Lest wandering folk, that are abroad, + Detain you on the valley road. + + "And when he has crossed the Irthing flood, + My merry bard! he hastes, he hastes + Up Knorren Moor, through Halegarth Wood, 495 + And reaches soon that castle good + Which stands and threatens Scotland's wastes. + + "Bard Bracy! bard Bracy! your horses are fleet, + Ye must ride up the hall, your music so sweet, + More loud than your horses' echoing feet! 500 + And loud and loud to Lord Roland call, + 'Thy daughter is safe in Langdale hall! + Thy beautiful daughter is safe and free-- + Sir Leoline greets thee thus through me. + He bids thee come without delay 505 + With all thy numerous array + And take thy lovely daughter home: + And he will meet thee on the way + With all his numerous array + White with their panting palfreys' foam': 510 + And, by mine honour! I will say, + That I repent me of the day + When I spake words of fierce disdain + To Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine!-- + --For since that evil hour hath flown, 515 + Many a summer's sun hath shone; + Yet ne'er found I a friend again + Like Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine." + + The lady fell, and clasped his knees, + Her face upraised, her eyes o'erflowing; 520 + And Bracy replied, with faltering voice, + His gracious hail on all bestowing; + "Thy words, thou sire of Christabel, + Are sweeter than my harp can tell; + Yet might I gain a boon of thee, 525 + This day my journey should not be, + So strange a dream hath come to me; + That I had vowed with music loud + To clear yon wood from thing unblest, + Warned by a vision in my rest! 530 + For in my sleep I saw that dove, + That gentle bird, whom thou dost love, + And call'st by thy own daughter's name-- + Sir Leoline! I saw the same, + Fluttering, and uttering fearful moan, 535 + Among the green herbs in the forest alone. + Which when I saw and when I heard, + I wondered what might ail the bird; + For nothing near it could I see, + Save the grass and green herbs underneath the old tree. 540 + + "And in my dream, methought, I went + To search out what might there be found; + And what the sweet bird's trouble meant, + That thus lay fluttering on the ground. + I went and peered, and could descry 545 + No cause for her distressful cry; + But yet for her dear lady's sake + I stooped, methought, the dove to take, + When lo! I saw a bright green snake + Coiled around its wings and neck. 550 + Green as the herbs on which it couched, + Close by the dove's its head it crouched; + And with the dove it heaves and stirs, + Swelling its neck as she swelled hers! + I woke; it was the midnight hour, 555 + The clock was echoing in the tower; + But though my slumber was gone by, + This dream it would not pass away-- + It seems to live upon my eye! + And thence I vowed this self-same day 560 + With music strong and saintly song + To wander through the forest bare, + Lest aught unholy loiter there." + + Thus Bracy said: the Baron, the while, + Half-listening heard him with a smile; 565 + Then turned to Lady Geraldine, + His eyes made up of wonder and love; + And said in courtly accents fine, + "Sweet maid, Lord Roland's beauteous dove, + With arms more strong than harp or song, 570 + Thy sire and I will crush the snake!" + He kissed her forehead as he spake, + And Geraldine in maiden wise + Casting down her large bright eyes, + With blushing cheek and courtesy fine 575 + She turned her from Sir Leoline; + Softly gathering up her train, + That o'er her right arm fell again; + And folded her arms across her chest, + And couched her head upon her breast, 580 + And looked askance at Christabel-- + Jesu, Maria, shield her well! + + A snake's small eye blinks dull and shy, + And the lady's eyes they shrunk in her head, + Each shrunk up to a serpent's eye, 585 + And with somewhat of malice, and more of dread, + At Christabel she looked askance!-- + One moment--and the sight was fled! + But Christabel in dizzy trance + Stumbling on the unsteady ground 590 + Shuddered aloud, with a hissing sound; + And Geraldine again turned round, + And like a thing, that sought relief, + Full of wonder and full of grief, + She rolled her large bright eyes divine 595 + Wildly on Sir Leoline. + + The maid, alas! her thoughts are gone, + She nothing sees--no sight but one! + The maid, devoid of guile and sin, + I know not how, in fearful wise, 600 + So deeply had she drunken in + That look, those shrunken serpent eyes, + That all her features were resigned + To this sole image in her mind: + And passively did imitate 605 + That look of dull and treacherous hate! + And thus she stood, in dizzy trance, + Still picturing that look askance + With forced unconscious sympathy + Full before her father's view-- 610 + As far as such a look could be + In eyes so innocent and blue! + + And when the trance was o'er, the maid + Paused awhile, and inly prayed: + Then falling at the Baron's feet, 615 + "By my mother's soul, do I entreat + That thou this woman send away!" + She said: and more she could not say: + For what she knew she could not tell, + O'er-mastered by the mighty spell. 620 + + Why is thy cheek so wan and wild, + Sir Leoline? Thy only child + Lies at thy feet, thy joy, thy pride, + So fair, so innocent, so mild; + The same, for whom thy lady died! 625 + O, by the pangs of her dear mother + Think thou no evil of thy child! + For her, and thee, and for no other, + She prayed the moment ere she died: + Prayed that the babe for whom she died, 630 + Might prove her dear lord's joy and pride! + That prayer her deadly pangs beguiled, + Sir Leoline! + And wouldst thou wrong thy only child, + Her child and thine? 635 + + Within the Baron's heart and brain + If thoughts, like these, had any share, + They only swelled his rage and pain, + And did but work confusion there. + + His heart was cleft with pain and rage, 640 + His cheeks they quivered, his eyes were wild, + Dishonoured thus in his old age; + Dishonour'd by his only child, + And all his hospitality + To the insulted daughter of his friend 645 + By more than woman's jealousy + Brought thus to a disgraceful end-- + He rolled his eye with stern regard + Upon the gentle minstrel bard, + And said in tones abrupt, austere-- 650 + "Why, Bracy! dost thou loiter here? + I bade thee hence!" The bard obeyed; + And turning from his own sweet maid, + The aged knight, Sir Leoline, + Led forth the lady Geraldine! 655 + + + +THE CONCLUSION TO PART THE SECOND + + A little child, a limber elf, + Singing, dancing to itself, + A fairy thing with red round cheeks, + That always finds, and never seeks, + Makes such a vision to the sight 660 + As fills a father's eyes with light; + And pleasures flow in so thick and fast + Upon his heart, that he at last + Must needs express his love's excess + With words of unmeant bitterness. 665 + Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together + Thoughts so all unlike each other; + To mutter and mock a broken charm, + To dally with wrong that does no harm. + Perhaps 'tis tender too and pretty 670 + At each wild word to feel within + A sweet recoil of love and pity. + And what, if in a world of sin + (O sorrow and shame should this be true!) + Such giddiness of heart and brain 675 + Comes seldom save from rage and pain, + So talks as it's most used to do. + + + + +KUBLA KHAN + + In Xanadu did Kubla Khan + A stately pleasure-dome decree: + Where Alph, the sacred river, ran + Through caverns measureless to man + Down to a sunless sea. 5 + So twice five miles of fertile ground + With walls and towers were girdled round: + And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills, + Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; + And here were forests ancient as the hills, 10 + Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. + + But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted + Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! + A savage place! as holy and enchanted + As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted 15 + By woman wailing for her demon-lover! + And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, + As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, + A mighty fountain momently was forced: + Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst 20 + Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, + Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail: + And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever + It flung up momently the sacred river. + Five miles meandering with a mazy motion 25 + Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, + Then reached the caverns measureless to man, + And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: + And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far + Ancestral voices prophesying war! 30 + + The shadow of the dome of pleasure + Floated midway on the waves; + Where was heard the mingled measure + From the fountain and the caves. + It was a miracle of rare device, 35 + A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! + + A damsel with a dulcimer + In a vision once I saw: + It was an Abyssinian maid, + And on her dulcimer she played, 40 + Singing of Mount Abora. + Could I revive within me. + Her symphony and song, + To such a deep delight 'twould win me, + That with music loud and long, 45 + I would build that dome in air, + That sunny dome! those caves of ice! + And all who heard should see them there, + And all should cry, Beware! Beware! + His flashing eyes, his floating hair! 50 + Weave a circle round him thrice, + And close your eyes with holy dread, + For he on honey-dew hath fed, + And drunk the milk of Paradise. + + + + +LOVE + + All thoughts, all passions, all delights, + Whatever stirs this mortal frame, + All are but ministers of Love, + And feed his sacred flame. + + Oft in my waking dreams do I 5 + Live o'er again that happy hour, + When midway on the mount I lay, + Beside the ruined tower. + + The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene, + Had blended with the lights of eve; 10 + And she was there, my hope, my joy, + My own dear Genevieve! + + She leant against the armed man, + The statue of the armed knight; + She stood and listened to my lay, 15 + Amid the lingering light. + + Few sorrows hath she of her own. + My hope! my joy! my Genevieve! + She loves me best, whene'er I sing + The songs that make her grieve. 20 + + I played a soft and doleful air, + I sang an old and moving story-- + An old rude song, that suited well + That ruin wild and hoary. + + She listened with a flitting blush, 25 + With downcast eyes and modest grace; + For well she knew, I could not choose + But gaze upon her face. + + I told her of the Knight that wore + Upon his shield a burning brand; 30 + And that for ten long years he wooed + The Lady of the Land. + + I told her how he pined: and ah! + The deep, the low, the pleading tone + With which I sang another's love, 35 + Interpreted my own. + + She listened with a flitting blush, + With downcast eyes, and modest grace + And she forgave me, that I gazed + Too fondly on her face! 40 + + But when I told the cruel scorn + That crazed that bold and lovely Knight, + And that he crossed the mountain-woods, + Nor rested day nor night; + + That sometimes from the savage den, 45 + And sometimes from the darksome shade, + And sometimes starting up at once + In green and sunny glade,-- + + There came and looked him in the face + An angel beautiful and bright; 50 + And that he knew it was a Fiend, + This miserable Knight! + + And that unknowing what he did, + He leaped amid a murderous band, + And saved from outrage worse than death 55 + The Lady of the Land! + + And how she wept, and clasped his knees; + And how she tended him in vain-- + And ever strove to expiate + The scorn that crazed his brain;-- 60 + + And that she nursed him in a cave; + And how his madness went away, + When on the yellow forest-leaves + A dying man he lay;-- + + His dying words--but when I reached 65 + That tenderest strain of all the ditty, + My faltering voice and pausing harp + Disturbed her soul with pity! + + All impulses of soul and sense + Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve; 70 + The music and the doleful tale, + The rich and balmy eve; + + And hopes, and fears that kindle hope, + An undistinguishable throng, + And gentle wishes long subdued, 75 + Subdued and cherished long! + + She wept with pity and delight, + She blushed with love, and virgin-shame; + And like the murmur of a dream, + I heard her breathe my name. 80 + + Her bosom heaved--she stepped aside, + As conscious of my look she stepped-- + Then suddenly, with timorous eye + She fled to me and wept. + + She half enclosed me with her arms, 85 + She pressed me with a meek embrace; + And bending back her head, looked up, + And gazed upon my face. + + 'Twas partly love, and partly fear, + And partly 'twas a bashful art, 90 + That I might rather feel, than see, + The swelling of her heart. + + I calmed her fears, and she was calm, + And told her love with virgin pride; + And so I won my Genevieve, 95 + My bright and beauteous Bride. + + + + +FRANCE: AN ODE + + + +I + + Ye Clouds! that far above me float and pause, + Whose pathless march no mortal may control! + Ye Ocean-Waves! that, wheresoe'er ye roll, + Yield homage only to eternal laws! + Ye Woods! that listen to the night-birds' singing, 5 + Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined, + Save when your own imperious branches swinging, + Have made a solemn music of the wind! + Where, like a man beloved of God, + Through glooms, which never woodman trod, 10 + How oft, pursuing fancies holy, + My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound, + Inspired, beyond the guess of folly, + By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound! + O ye loud Waves! and O ye Forests high! 15 + And O ye Clouds that far above me soared! + Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky! + Yea, every thing that is and will be free! + Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be, + With what deep worship I have still adored 20 + The spirit of divinest Liberty. + + + +II + + When France in wrath her giant-limbs upreared, + And with that oath, which smote air, earth, and sea, + Stamped her strong foot and said she would be free, + Bear witness for me, how I hoped and feared! 25 + + With what a joy my lofty gratulation + Unawed I sang, amid a slavish band: + And when to whelm the disenchanted nation, + Like fiends embattled by a wizard's wand, + The Monarchs marched in evil day, 30 + And Britain joined the dire array; + Though dear her shores and circling ocean, + Though many friendships, many youthful loves + Had swoln the patriot emotion + And flung a magic light o'er all her hills and groves; 35 + Yet still my voice, unaltered, sang defeat + To all that braved the tyrant-quelling lance, + And shame too long delayed and vain retreat! + For ne'er, O Liberty! with partial aim + I dimmed thy light or damped thy holy flame; 40 + But blessed the paeans of delivered France, + And hung my head and wept at Britain's name. + + + +III + + "And what," I said, "though Blasphemy's loud scream + With that sweet music of deliverance strove! + Though all the fierce and drunken passions wove 45 + A dance more wild than e'er was maniac's dream! + Ye storms, that round the dawning east assembled, + The Sun was rising, though ye hid his light!" + And when, to soothe my soul, that hoped and trembled, + The dissonance ceased, and all seemed calm and bright; 50 + When France her front deep-scarred and gory + Concealed with clustering wreaths of glory; + When, insupportably advancing, + Her arm made mockery of the warrior's ramp; + While timid looks of fury glancing, 55 + Domestic treason, crushed beneath her fatal stamp, + Writhed like a wounded dragon in his gore; + Then I reproached my fears that would not flee; + "And soon," I said, "shall Wisdom teach her lore + In the low huts of them that toil and groan! 60 + And, conquering by her happiness alone, + Shall France compel the nations to be free, + Till Love and Joy look round, and call the Earth their own." + + + +IV + + Forgive me, Freedom! O forgive those dreams! + I hear thy voice, I hear thy loud lament, 65 + From bleak Helvetia's icy caverns sent-- + I hear thy groans upon her blood-stained streams! + Heroes, that for your peaceful country perished, + And ye that, fleeing, spot your mountain-snows + With bleeding wounds; forgive me, that I cherished 70 + One thought that ever blessed your cruel foes! + To scatter rage and traitorous guilt + Where Peace her jealous home had built; + A patriot-race to disinherit + Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear; 75 + And with inexpiable spirit + To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer-- + O France, that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind, + And patriot only in pernicious toils! + Are these thy boasts, Champion of human kind? 80 + To mix with Kings in the low lust of sway, + Tell in the hunt, and share the murderous prey; + To insult the shrine of Liberty with spoils + From freemen torn; to tempt and to betray? + + + +V + + The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain, 85 + Slaves by their own compulsion! In mad game + They burst their manacles and wear the name + Of Freedom, graven on a heavier chain! + O Liberty! with profitless endeavour + Have I pursued thee, many a weary hour; 90 + But thou nor swell'st the victor's strain, nor ever + Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power. + + Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee, + (Nor prayer, nor boastful name delays thee) + Alike from Priestcraft's harpy minions, 95 + And factious Blasphemy's obscener slaves, + Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions, + The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves! + And there I felt thee!--on that sea-cliff's verge, + Whose pines, scarce travelled by the breeze above, 100 + Had made one murmur with the distant surge! + Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare, + And shot my being through earth, sea and air, + Possessing all things with intensest love, + O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there. 105 + + + + +DEJECTION: AN ODE + +WRITTEN APRIL 4, 1802 + + Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon, + With the old Moon in her arms; + And I fear, I fear, my Master dear! + We shall have a deadly storm. + +_Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence._ + + + +I + + Well! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made + The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence, + This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence + Unroused by winds, that ply a busier trade + Than those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes, 5 + Or the dull sobbing draft, that moans and rakes + Upon the strings of this Aeolian lute, + Which better far were mute. + For lo! the New-moon winter-bright! + And overspread with phantom light, 10 + (With swimming phantom light o'erspread + But rimmed and circled by a silver thread) + I see the old Moon in her lap, foretelling + The coming-on of rain and squally blast. + And oh! that even now the gust were swelling, 15 + And the slant night-shower driving loud and fast! + Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awed, + And sent my soul abroad, + Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give, + Might startle this dull pain, and make it move so and live! 20 + + + +II + + A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, + A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, + Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, + In word, or sigh, or tear-- + O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood, 25 + To other thoughts by yonder throstle wooed, + All this long eve, so balmy and serene, + Have I been gazing on the western sky, + And its peculiar tint of yellow green: + And still I gaze--and with how blank an eye! 30 + And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, + That give away their motion to the stars; + Those stars, that glide behind them or between, + Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen: + Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew 35 + In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue; + I see them all so excellently fair, + I see, not feel, how beautiful they are! + + + +III + + My genial spirits fail; + And what can these avail 40 + To lift the smothering weight from off my breast? + It were a vain endeavour, + Though I should gaze for ever + On that green light that lingers in the west: + I may not hope from outward forms to win 45 + The passion and the life, whose fountains are within. + + + +IV + + O Lady! we receive but what we give, + And in our life alone does Nature live: + Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud! + And would we aught behold, of higher worth. 50 + + Than that inanimate cold world allowed + To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd, + Ah, from the soul itself must issue forth + A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud + Enveloping the Earth-- 55 + And from the soul itself must there be sent + A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, + Of all sweet sounds the life and element! + + + +V + + O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me + What this strong music in the soul may be! 60 + What, and wherein it doth exist, + This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist, + This beautiful and beauty-making power. + Joy, virtuous Lady! Joy that ne'er was given, + Save to the pure, and in their purest hour, 65 + Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and shower, + Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power, + Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower, + A new Earth and new Heaven, + Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud-- 70 + Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud-- + We in ourselves rejoice! + And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, + All melodies the echoes of that voice, + All colours a suffusion from that light. 75 + + + +VI + + There was a time when, though my path was rough, + This joy within me dallied with distress, + And all misfortunes were but as the stuff + Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness: + For hope grew round me, like the twining vine, 80 + And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine. + + But now afflictions bow me down to earth: + Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth; + But oh! each visitation + Suspends what nature gave me at my birth, 85 + My shaping spirit of Imagination. + For not to think of what I needs must feel, + But to be still and patient, all I can; + And haply by abstruse research to steal + From my own nature all the natural man-- 90 + This was my sole resource, my only plan: + Till that which suits a part infects the whole, + And now is almost grown the habit of my soul. + + + +VII + + Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind, + Reality's dark dream! 95 + I turn from you, and listen to the wind, + Which long has raved unnoticed. What a scream + Of agony by torture lengthened out + That lute sent forth! Thou Wind, that rav'st without, + Bare crag, or mountain-tairn, or blasted tree, 100 + Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb, + Or lonely house, long held the witches' home, + Methinks were fitter instruments for thee, + Mad Lutanist! who in this month of showers, + Of dark-brown gardens, and of peeping flowers, 105 + Mak'st Devils' yule, with worse than wintry song, + The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves among. + Thou Actor, perfect in all tragic sounds! + Thou mighty Poet, even to frenzy bold! + What tell'st thou now about? 110 + 'Tis of the rushing of an host in rout, + With groans of trampled men, with smarting wounds-- + At once they groan with pain, and shudder with the cold! + + But hush! there is a pause of deepest silence! + And all that noise, as of a rushing crowd, 115 + With groans, and tremulous shudderings--all is over-- + It tells another tale, with sounds less deep and loud! + A tale of less affright, + And tempered with delight, + As Otway's self had framed the tender lay, 120 + 'Tis of a little child + Upon a lonesome wild, + Not far from home, but she hath lost her way: + And now moans low in bitter grief and fear, + And now screams loud, and hopes to make her mother hear. 125 + + + +VIII + + 'Tis midnight, but small thoughts have I of sleep: + Full seldom may my friend such vigils keep! + Visit her, gentle Sleep! with wings of healing, + And may this storm be but a mountain-birth, + May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling, 130 + Silent as though they watched the sleeping Earth! + With light heart may she rise, + Gay fancy, cheerful eyes, + Joy lift her spirit, joy attune her voice; + To her may all things live, from pole to pole, 135 + Their life the eddying of her living soul! + O simple spirit, guided from above, + Dear Lady! friend devoutest of my choice, + Thus mayest thou ever, evermore rejoice. + + + + +YOUTH AND AGE + + Verse, a breeze mid blossoms straying, + Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee-- + Both were mine! Life went a-maying + With Nature, Hope, and Poesy, + When I was young! 5 + + _When_ I was young?--Ah, woful When! + Ah! for the change 'twixt Now and Then! + This breathing house not built with hands, + This body that does me grievous wrong, + O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands, 10 + How lightly _then_ it flashed along:-- + Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore, + On winding lakes and rivers wide, + That ask no aid of sail or oar, + That fear no spite of wind or tide! 15 + Nought cared this body for wind or weather + When Youth and I lived in 't together. + + Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like; + Friendship is a sheltering tree; + O! the joys, that came down shower-like, 20 + Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty, + Ere I was old! + + _Ere_ I was old? Ah woful Ere, + Which tells me Youth 's no longer here! + O Youth! for years so many and sweet, 25 + 'Tis known, that thou and I were one, + I'll think it but a fond conceit-- + It cannot be that thou art gone! + Thy vesper-bell hath not yet tolled:-- + And thou wert aye a masker bold! 30 + What strange disguise hast now put on, + To _make believe_, that thou art gone? + I see these locks in silvery slips, + This drooping gait, this altered size: + But Spring-tide blossoms on thy lips, 35 + And tears take sunshine from thine eyes! + Life is but thought: so think I will + That Youth and I are house-mates still. + + Dew-drops are the gems of morning, + But the tears of mournful eve! 40 + Where no hope is, life 's a warning + That only serves to make us grieve, + When we are old: + That only serves to make us grieve + With oft and tedious taking-leave, 45 + Like some poor nigh-related guest, + That may not rudely be dismist; + Yet hath outstayed his welcome while, + And tells the jest without the smile. + + + + +WORK WITHOUT HOPE + +LINES COMPOSED 21ST FEBRUARY 1827 + + + All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair-- + The bees are stirring--birds are on the wing-- + And Winter slumbering in the open air, + Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! + And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, 5 + Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing. + + Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow, + Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow. + Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may, + For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away! 10 + With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll: + And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul? + Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, + And Hope without an object cannot live. + + + + +EPITAPH + + Stop, Christian passer-by!--Stop, child of God, + And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod + A poet lies, or that which once seemed he.-- + O, lift one thought in prayer for S.T.C.; + That he who many a year with toil of breath 5 + Found death in life, may here find life in death! + Mercy for praise--to be forgiven for fame + He ask'd, and hoped, through Christ. + Do thou the same! + + + + +NOTES + + +THE ANCIENT MARINER + + +The Latin motto is condensed, by omission, from about a page of Thomas +Burnet's _Archaeologiae Philosophicae: sive Doctrina Antiqua de Rerum +Originibus_, published in London in 1692. Burnet was Master of +Charterhouse from 1685 till his death in 1715, and enjoyed considerable +reputation as a man of curious learning. In the _Archaeologiae_ he +professed to reconcile a former work of his on the origins of the world +with the account given in Genesis. The quotation is from chapter VII. of +book I., "De Hebraeis, eorumque Cabalâ," and may be translated thus: "I +easily believe that the invisible natures in the universe are more in +number than the visible. But who shall tell us all the kinds of them? +the ranks and relationships, the peculiar qualities and gifts of each? +what they do? where they dwell? Man's wit has ever been circling about +the knowledge of these things, but has never attained to it. Yet in the +meanwhile I will not deny that it is profitable to contemplate from time +to time in the mind, as in a picture, the idea of a larger and better +world; lest the mind, becoming wonted to the little things of everyday +life, grow narrow and settle down altogether to mean businesses. At the +same time, however, we must watch for the truth, and observe method, so +as to distinguish the certain from the uncertain, day from night." + +Instead of this motto the first edition had an Argument prefixed, as +follows: + +"How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold +Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course +to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange +things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back +to his own Country." + +This was somewhat enlarged in the second edition (1800), and dropped +thereafter. + +*Page 3*, LINE 12--*eftsoons*. Anglo-Saxon _eftsona (eft_ +afterwards, again, + _sona_ soon), reënforced by the adverbial genitive +ending _-s._ Coleridge found the word in Spenser and the old ballads. + +4, 23--*kirk*. The Scotch and Northern English form of "church." The +old ballads had been preserved chiefly in the North; hence this Northern +form came to be looked on as the proper word for church in the ballad +style. + +41, marginal gloss--*driven*. All editions down to Campbell's had +"drawn;" but this he believes to have been a misprint, since the +narrative seems to require "driven." + +5, 55--*clifts*. This word arose from a confusion of "cliff," a +precipice, and "cleft," a fissure. It was "exceedingly common in the +16th-18th cent.," according to the New English Dict., which gives +examples from Captain John Smith, Marlowe, and Defoe. + +62--*swound*. An archaic form of "swoon," found in Elizabethan +English. + +64--*thorough*. "Through" and "thorough" are originally the same +word, and in Shakespeare's time both forms were used for the +preposition. Cf. Puck's song in "Midsummer Night's Dream," "Thorough +bush, thorough briar." + +67--*eat*. This form (pronounced _et_) is still in use in England and +New England for the past tense of the verb, though in America the form +"ate" is now preferred. "Eat" as past participle, however, was archaic +or rude even in Coleridge's time. + +76--*vespers*. Properly a liturgical term, meaning the daily evening +service in church; then in a more general way "evening." The Century +Dict. gives no examples of its use as a nautical term. Probably +Coleridge used it to give a suggestion of ante-Reformation times. The +more familiar word for the evening service in the English Church is +"even-song," but Coleridge in line 595 prefers "the little vesper bell" +for its suggestion of medievalism. + +6, 97--*like God's own head*. The comparison is the converse of that +in the Bible, Matthew xvii., 2, Revelations I., 16, where the +countenance of Christ glorified is said to shine "as the sun" (Sykes). + +98--*uprist*. This word was used in Middle English as a noun, and +regularly as the 3d pers. sing. pres. ind. of the verb "uprise." In "The +Reves Tale" line 329, however, Chaucer uses, it in a context of past +tenses, as Coleridge does here, as if it were a weak preterit; and +Chaucer uses "rist up" in the same way several times (Sykes). + +104--*The furrow followed free*. This was changed in "Sibylline +Leaves" to "The furrow streamed off free," because, Coleridge tells us, +"from the ship itself the _Wake_ appears like a brook flowing off from +the stern." In the case of modern steamboats at least it would be more +correct to say that the wake, as seen from the stern of the boat, looks +like a brook _following_ the boat. The original reading was restored in +the editions of 1828 and 1829. + +7, 123--*The very deep did rot*, etc. The ship becalmed in tropic +seas, and the slimy things engendered there, were a vision in +Coleridge's mind before "The Ancient Mariner" was thought of. In the +lines contributed to Southey's "Joan of Arc" in 1796 (published, with +additions, as "The Destiny of Nations" in "Sibylline Leaves"), in an +allegoric passage on Chaos and Love, he wrote: + + "As what time, after long and pestful calms, + With slimy shapes and miscreated life + Poisoning the vast Pacific, the fresh breeze + Wakens the merchant sail uprising." + +The same subject had occupied Wordsworth's imagination before he and +Coleridge came together at Stowey; see Wordsworth's "The Borderers," Act +iv. + +125--*slimy things*. Strange creatures, the spawn of the rotting sea, +for which the Mariner has no name. + +131, marginal gloss--*Josephus, Michael Psellus*. The only "learned +Jew, Josephus," that we know of is the historian of that name who lived +in the first century of our era; but little has been found in his works +to justify this reference. The "Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael +Psellus," was a Byzantine teacher of the eleventh century who wrote a +dialogue in which demons are classified according to the element in +which they live (Cooper; Sykes). + +8, 152--*I wist*. "Wist" is properly the past tense of an old verb +"wit," to know. But Coleridge seems to use "I wist" here as equivalent +to "I wis" (see "Christabel," l. 92), which is a form of "iwis," an +adverb meaning "certainly." + +157--*with throats unslaked*, etc. A remarkable instance of +onomatopoeia. + +9, 164--*gramercy*. An exclamation, meaning originally "much thanks" +(Old French _grand merci_), and so used by Shakespeare ("Merchant of +Venice" II., 2, 128, "Richard III" III., 2, 108). But in the ballads it +is often a mere exclamation of wonder and surprise, and so Coleridge +uses it here,--*grin*. Coleridge says ("Table Talk" May 31, 1830): "I +took the thought of 'grinning for joy' from my companion's remark to me, +when we had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon [in Wales, in the summer of +1794], and were nearly dead with thirst. We could not speak from the +constriction, till we found a little puddle under a stone. He said to +me: 'You grinned like an idiot.' He had done the same." To "grin" was +originally to snarl and show the teeth as animals do when angry. "They +go to and fro in the evening: they grin like a dog, and run about +through the city," Ps. LIX., 6, Prayer-Book Version, where the King +James Version has "make a noise like a dog." Hence idiots, stupid +people, foolish people, all who are or who demean themselves below the +dignity of man, _grin_ rather than smile; and so the Mariner's +companions, their muscles stiffened by drought, could show their +gladness only by the contortions of a grin, not by a natural smile of +joy. + +169--*Without a breeze, without a tide*. The Phantom Ship is a +wide-spread sailor's superstition that has been often used in the +romantic literature of the nineteenth century. See Scott's "Rokeby," +Canto II. xi; Marryat's "Phantom Ship;" Poe's "MS. Found in a Bottle;" +and Longfellow's "Ballad of Carmilhan" (in "Tales of a Wayside Inn," +Second Day). It is seen in storms, driving by with all sails set, and is +generally held to be an omen of disaster. Coleridge has shaped the +legend to his own purposes. The ship appears in a calm, not in a storm, +and sailing without, rather than against, wind and tide; and instead of +a crew of dead men it carries only Death and Life-in-Death. Possibly he +was acquainted with a form of the legend found in Bechstein's _Deutsches +Sagenbuch_ (pointed out by Dr. Sykes), in which "Falkenberg, for murder +of his brother, is condemned to sail a spectral bark, attended only by +his good and his evil spirit, who play dice for his soul." + +185--*Are those her ribs*, etc. Instead of this stanza the first +edition had these two: + + "Are those _her_ naked ribs, which fleck'd + The sun that did behind them peer? + And are those two all, all the crew, + That woman and her fleshless Pheere? + + "His bones are black with many a crack, + All black and bare, I ween; + Jet-black and bare, save where with rust + Of mouldy damps and charnel crust + They're patch'd with purple and green" + +And again after line 198 the first edition had this stanza: + + "A gust of wind sterte up behind + And whistled thro' his bones; + Thro' the holes of his eyes and the hole of his mouth + Half-whistles and half-groans." + +But this crude grotesquerie of horror--quite in the taste of that day, +the day of "Monk" Lewis and Mrs. Radcliffe--Coleridge's finer poetical +judgment soon rejected. + +190--*Her lips were red*, etc. Life-in-Death--who wins the Mariner, +while Death wins his shipmates--is conceived as a witch, something after +the fashion of Geraldine in "Christabel" or Duessa in "The Faerie +Queene," but wilder, stranger than either; a thing of startling and evil +beauty. Spenser's pages of description, however, give no such vivid +image of loathsome loveliness as do the first three lines of this +stanza. "Her skin was as white as leprosy" is a feat in suggestion. + +10, 199, marginal gloss--*within the courts of the Sun*. Between the +tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. + +210--*with one bright star Within the nether tip*. An interesting +case of poetical illusion. No one, of course, ever saw a star _within_ +the tip of the horned moon. Yet a good many readers, until reminded of +their astronomy, think they have seen this phenomenon. Coleridge +apparently knew that the human mind would receive it as experience. The +phrase is no slip on his part; the earlier editions had instead "almost +atween the tips," which is astronomically justifiable, but in "Sibylline +Leaves" and later he wrote it as in the text. + +222--*And every soul, it passed me by, Like the whizz of my +cross-bow!* It was an ancient belief, imaginatively revived by +romantic poets, that when a person died his soul could be seen, or +heard, or both, as it left the body, Cf. Keats's "Eve of St. Agnes," +first stanza; Rossetti's "Sister Helen;" and Kipling's "Danny Deever." + +11, 226--*And thou art long*, etc. "For the last two lines of this +stanza," runs. Coleridge's note to the passage in "Sibylline Leaves," "I +am indebted to Mr. Wordsworth. It was on a delightful walk from Nether +Stowey to Dulverton, with him and his sister, in the autumn of 1797, +that this poem was planned, and in part composed." Wordsworth in later +years declared that he contributed also lines 13-16, "and four or five +lines more in different parts of the poem, which I could not now point +out." + +245--*or ever*. "Or" here is not the adversative conjunction but an +entirely different word, an archaic variant of "ere," meaning "before." + +250--*For the sky and the sea*, etc. Another instance of the sound +fitting the sense. The rocking rhythm of the line is the rhythm of his +fevered pulse. The poem is full of this quality. + +13, 297--*silly*. This word meant in Old English timely (from _soel_, +time, occasion) hence fortunate, blessed. From this was developed, under +the influence of medieval religious teaching, the meaning innocent, +harmless, simple; and from this again our modern meaning, foolish, +simple in a derogatory sense. Chaucer has the word in all these +meanings, and also in another, a modification of the second--wretched, +pitiable. Another shade of the same meaning appears in Spenser's "silly +bark," i.e. _frail_ ship, and in Burns's "To a Mouse": + + "Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin! + Its silly wa's the win's are strewin'!" + +"The epithet may be due either to the gush of love that has filled the +Mariner's heart, or to his noticing the buckets, long useless, frail, +now filled with water" (Sykes); very likely to both together. + +14, 314--*fire-flags*. The notion of the "fire-flags" "hurried about" +was probably suggested to Coleridge by the description of the Northern +Lights (_aurora borealis_) in Hearne's "Journey ... to the Northern +Ocean," a book printed in 1795 and known to both Wordsworth and +Coleridge before 1798. Hearne says: "I can positively affirm that in +still nights I have frequently heard them make a rustling and crackling +noise, like the waving of a large flag in a fresh gale of wind." See +also Wordsworth's "Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman" (Cooper). + +15, 358--*Sometimes a-dropping*, etc. The Mariner's sin was that in +wanton cruelty he took the life of a friendly fellow-creature; his +punishment is to live with dead men round him and the dead bird on his +breast, in such solitude that "God himself scarce seemed there to be," +until he learns to feel the _sacredness of life_ even in the +water-snakes, the "slimy things" that coil in the rotting sea; and the +stages of his penance are marked by suggestions of his return to the +privilege of human fellowship. The angels' music is like the song of the +skylark, the sails ripple like a leaf-hidden brook--recollections of his +happy boyhood in. England; and finally comes the actual land breeze, and +he is in his "own countree." Observe the marginal gloss to line 442. + +17, 407--*honey-dew*. See note on "Kubla Khan," line 53. + +416--*His great bright eye*, etc. Dorothy Wordsworth in her Journal, +February 27, 1798, describes the look of the sea by moonlight, "big and +white, swelled to the very shores, but round and high in the middle." + +20, 512--*shrieve*. To hear confession and pronounce absolution, one +of the duties of the priesthood in the Catholic church. The word is more +often spelled _shrive. Shrift_ is the abstract noun derived from it. + +21, 523--*skiff-boat*. A pleonastic compound; a skiff is a boat. +Coleridge is fond of such formations. See for example II. 41, 77, 472 of +this poem and II. 46, 649 of "Christabel" (Cooper). + +535--*ivy-tod*. A clump or bush of ivy. Cf. Spenser's "Shepheards +Calender," March, II. 67 ff.: + + "At length within an Yvie todde + (There shrouded was the little God) + I heard a busie bustling." + +23, 607--*While each to his great Father bends*, etc. Cf. the 148th +Psalm (Prayer-Book Version) v. 12: "Young men and maidens, old men and +children, praise the name of the Lord: for his name only is excellent, +and his praise above heaven and earth." + + +CHRISTABEL + +25,6-7--This couplet ran as follows in the first edition: + + "Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, + Hath a toothless mastiff bitch." + +In the editions of 1828 and 1829 Coleridge changed it to the form +printed in the text; "but _bitch_ has been restored in all subsequent +editions except Mr. Campbell's" (Garnett). + +16--*thin gray cloud*, etc. The "thin gray cloud," as also the +dancing leaf of ll. 49-52, was observed at Stowey. They are noted in +Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal, January 31 and March 7, 1798. + +26, 54--*Jesu*. This form of the word is nearer to the Hebrew +original than the more familiar _Jesus_. It is often (though not +exclusively) used in ejaculation and prayer, as here, and was perhaps +supposed to be the vocative form. + +27, 92--*I wis.* This is a misinterpretation of Middle English +_iwis_, from Old English _gewis_, "certainly." + +29, 129--*The lady sank,* etc. The threshold of a house is, in +folk-lore, a sacred place, and evil things cannot cross but have to be +carried over it. + +142--*I cannot speak,* etc. Geraldine blesses "her gracious stars" +(l. 114), but cannot join in praise to the Holy Virgin. + +30, 167--*And jealous of the listening air*. This line was not in the +first edition, but was added in the edition of 1828. + +32, 252--*Behold! her bosom and half her side*, etc. There exist at +least three versions of this passage. The text is that of the 1828 +edition. The edition of 1816 lacked ll. 255-61, having only these lines +between 253 and 262: + + "And she is to sleep by Christabel. + She took two paces, and a stride," etc. + +The third form is that of a MS. copy of the poem once the property of +Wordsworth's sister-in-law, Sarah Hutchinson, and recently published in +facsimile by Mr. E.H. Coleridge, which gives this reading for ll. 253-4: + + "Are lean and old and foul of hue, + And she is to sleep by Christabel." + +Coleridge seems to have tried both ways, that of revealing Geraldine's +loathsome secret and that of leaving it an unknown and nameless horror, +and finally to have chosen the latter, just as he rejected in later +editions the charnel-house particulars in the description of Death in +"The Ancient Mariner." Unquestionably he was right. The horror that is +merely suggested and left shrouded in mystery for the imagination to +work on is more powerful than that which is known. The suppressed line, +however, helps us in an age less familiar with notions of the +supernatural to understand what Geraldine is. The character is conceived +upon the general lines of Duessa in the first book of "The Faerie +Queene;" a being of great external loveliness, but within "full of all +uncleanness." Observe also that the thought, shrouded here, is half +revealed later (l. 457). + +35, 344--*Bratha Head, Wyndermere, Langdale Pike*, etc. For the +relation of the Second Part of the poem to the Lake country see +Introduction. All of the places named in these lines are near the +border-line between Cumberland and Westmoreland and within a dozen miles +of the Wordsworths' home at Grasmere. Keswick, which was the home of +Coleridge from 1800 to 1804, and of his wife and children for many years +thereafter, is on Derwent Water, in Cumberland, some ten miles north of +Grasmere. The little river Bratha runs into the upper or northern end of +Windermere, a larger lake lying about three miles below Grasmere and +connected with it by another stream. Langdale Pike (or Pikes, for there +are more than one) is the name of the steep hills at the head of +Langdale, on the Cumberland border. Dungeon-Ghyll is a ravine in +Langdale (see Wordsworth's "The Idle Shepherd Boys; or, Dungeon-Ghyll +Force"). Borrowdale lies over the border in Cumberland and slopes the +other way, toward Derwent Water. + +37, 407--*Lord Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine*. Sir Leoline lives at +"Langdale Hall," a supposed castle in the immediate vicinity of the +poets' homes; the friend of his youth, whose daughter Geraldine claims +to be, is given the name of a real family and an historical estate in +eastern Cumberland, Tryermaine in Gilsland, on the River Irthing, which +forms part of the boundary between Cumberland and Northumberland. Scott +in his notes to "The Bridal of Triermain" quotes as follows from Burns's +"Antiquities of Westmoreland and Cumberland": "After the death of +Gilmore, Lord of Tryermaine and Torcrossock, Hubert Vaux gave Tryermaine +and Torcrossock to his second son, Ranulph Vaux.... Ranulph, being Lord +of all Gilsland, gave Gilmore's land to his younger son, named +Roland.... And they were named Rolands successively, that were lords +thereof, until the reign of Edward the Fourth." + +44--*The Conclusion to Part the Second*. Campbell thought it "highly +improbable" that these lines were originally composed as a part of +"Christabel." In a letter to Southey, May 6, 1801, Coleridge speaks of +his eldest boy, Hartley, then in his fifth year: "Dear Hartley! we are +at times alarmed by the state of his health, but at present he is well. +If I were to lose him, I am afraid it would exceedingly deaden my +affection for any other children I may have." Then he writes the lines +that we now have as the Conclusion to Part the Second; and adds: "A very +metaphysical account of fathers calling their children rogues, rascals, +and little varlets, etc." + + +KUBLA KHAN + +Kubla Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, was a Mongolian conqueror who +stretched his empire from European Russia to the eastern shores of China +in the thirteenth century. His exploits, like those of his grandfather +and those of the Mohammedan Timur in the next century, made a deep +impression on the imagination of Western Europe. Compilers of +travellers's tales, like Hakluyt and Purchas, caught up eagerly whatever +they could find, history or legend, concerning the extent of his domain, +the methods of his government, or the splendors of his court. The +passage in "Purchas his Pilgrimage" to which Coleridge refers is as +follows: + +"In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace, encompassing sixteene +miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, +pleasant Springs, delightfull Streames, and all sorts of beasts of +chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous house of +pleasure" (quoted in the Notes of the Globe edition). + +Coleridge's poem, however, contains suggestions and reminiscences from +another part of Purchas's book, and probably from other books as well. +"It reads like an arras of reminiscences from several accounts of +natural or enchanted parks, and from various descriptions of that +elusive and danger-fraught garden which mystic geographers have studied +to locate from Florida to Cathay" (Cooper). + +The earthly paradise, which was closed to man indeed, but not destroyed, +when Adam and Eve were driven from its gates, has exercised the +imagination of the Christian world from the early Middle Ages. +Lactantius described it in the fourth century; the author of the +"Phoenix," probably in the eighth century, translated Lactantius' Latin +into Anglo-Saxon verse; Sir John Mandeville, in the fourteenth century, +though he did not reach it himself because he "was not worthy," gives an +account of it from what he has "heard say of wise Men beyond;" Milton +described it enchantingly in "Paradise Lost;" Dr. Johnson used a +modification of it in "Rasselas;" and William Morris in our own time +made it the framework for a delightful series of world-old tales. The +idea, indeed, is not peculiar to Christianity, but is probably to be +found in every civilization. Christian Europe has naturally located it +in the East; and since the Crusades, which brought Western Europe more +in contact with the East, various eastern legends have been attached to +or confounded with the original notion. One of these is the Abyssinian +legend of the hill Amara (cf. l. 41, where Coleridge's "Mount Abora" +seems to stand for Purchas's Amara). Amara in Purchas's account is a +hill in a great plain in Ethiopia, used as a prison for the sons of +Abyssinian kings. Its level top, twenty leagues in circuit and +surrounded by a high wall, is a garden of delight. "Heauen and Earth, +Nature and Industrie, have all been corriuals to it, all presenting +their best presents, to make it of this so louely presence, some taking +this for the place of our Forefathers Paradise." The sides of the hill +are of overhanging rock, "bearing out like mushromes, so that it is +impossible to ascend it" except by a passageway "cut out within the +Rocke, not with staires, but ascending little by little," and closed +above and below with gates guarded by soldiers. "Toward the South" of +the level top "is a rising hill ... yeelding ... a pleasant spring which +passeth through all that Plaine ... and making a Lake, whence issueth a +River, which having from these tops espied Nilus, never leaves seeking +to find him, whom he cannot leave both to seeke and to finde.... There +are no Cities on the top, but palaces, standing by themselves ... +spacious, sumptuous, and beautifull, where the Princes of the Royall +blood have their abode with their families." + +This legend looks backward to Mandeville, with whose account of the +Terrestrial Paradise it has much in common, and forward to Milton, who +used some of its elements in his description of Paradise in the fourth +book of "Paradise Lost." (See Professor Cooper's article in "Modern +Philology," III., 327 ff., from which this is condensed.) + +Mr. E.H. Coleridge (the poet's grandson) has recently shown that in the +winter of 1797-8 Coleridge read and made notes from a book, "Travels +through ... the Cherokee Country," by the American botanist William +Bartram. Chapter VII. of Bartram's book contains an account of some +natural wonders in the Cherokee country that almost certainly afforded +part of the imagery of "Kubla Khan." Bartram, says Mr. Coleridge, +"speaks of waters which 'descend by slow degrees through rocky caverns +into the bowels of the earth, whence they are carried by subterraneous +channels into other receptacles and basons.' He travels for several +miles over 'fertile eminences and delightful shady forests.' He is +enchanted by a 'view of a dark sublime grove;' of the grand fountain he +says that the 'ebullition is astonishing and continual, though its +greatest force of fury intermits' (note the word 'intermits') 'regularly +for the space of thirty seconds of time: the ebullition is perpendicular +upward, from a vast rugged orifice through a bed of rock throwing up +small particles of white shells.' He is informed by 'a trader' that when +the Great Sink was forming there was heard 'an inexpressible rushing +noise like a mighty hurricane or thunderstorm,' that 'the earth was +overflowed by torrents of water which came wave after wave rushing down, +attended with a terrific noise and tremor of the earth,' that the +fountain ceased to flow and 'sank into a huge bason of water;' but, as +he saw with his own eyes, 'vast heaps of fragments of rock' (Coleridge +writes 'huge fragments'), 'white chalk, stones, and pebbles had been +thrown up by the original outbursts and forced aside into the lateral +valleys.'" + +From these and from other like sources Coleridge's mind was no doubt +stored with suggestions of tropical wonder and loveliness, which fell +together--if his own account of the making of the poem is to be relied +on--into the kaleidoscopic beauty of "Kubla Khan." It is not unlikely, +too (cf. ll. 12-13), that the ash-tree dell at Stowey, which he had +already used for a scene of supernatural terror in "Osorio," bears some +part in his avowed dream of Xanadu. + +45, 3--*Alph, the sacred river.* This name seems to be of Coleridge's +own invention; at least it has not been pointed out where he found it. + +16--*demon-lover.* The demon-lover (or more often, with sexes +reversed, the fairy mistress) is a favorite theme of romance, taken from +folk-lore, where it appears in many forms. Cf. the ballads of "Thomas +Rymer," "Tam Lin," and "The Demon Lover," in Child's "English and +Scottish Popular Ballads," and Scott's "William and Helen" (a +translation of Burger's "Lenore"). + +46, 39, 41--*Abyssinian maid, Mount Abora.* See introductory note +above. + +53--*honey-dew.* A sweet sticky substance found on plants, deposited +there by the aphis or plant-louse. It was supposed to be the food of +fairies. Not improbably Coleridge was thinking of manna, a saccharine +exudation found upon certain plants in the East. Mandeville describes it +as found in "the Land of Job:" "This Manna is clept Bread of Angels. And +it is a white Thing that is full sweet and right delicious, and more +sweet than Honey or Sugar. And it Cometh of the Dew of Heaven that +falleth upon the Herbs in that Country. And it congealeth and becometh +all white and sweet. And Men put it in Medicines." + +53-4--*For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.* +Professor Cooper, in the article cited in the introductory note above, +points out that this part of the poem contains perhaps reminiscences of +the stories told of the Old Man of the Mountain. This was the title +popularly given to the head of a fanatical sect of Mohammedans in Syria +in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, whose method of getting rid of +their enemies has given us the word _assassin_. To quote from +Mandeville's "Travels," which has the essentials of the story, though +the chief is here called Gatholonabes, and his domain is not in Syria +but in the island Mistorak, "in the Lordship of Prester John:" + +"He had a full fair Castle and a strong in a Mountain, so strong and so +noble, that no Man could devise a fairer or a stronger. And he had made +wall all the Mountain about with a strong Wall and a fair. And within +those Walls he had the fairest Garden that any Man might behold.... + +"And he had also in that Place, the fairest Damsels that might be found, +under the Age of fifteen Years, and the fairest young Striplings that +Men might get, of that same Age. And they were all clothed in Cloths of +Gold, full richly. And he said that those were Angels. + +"And he had also made 3 Wells, fair and noble, and all environed with +Stone of Jasper, and of Crystal, diapered with Gold, and set with +precious Stones and great orient Pearls. And he had made a Conduit under +the Earth, so that the 3 Wells, at his List, should run, one Milk, +another Wine, and another Honey. And that Place he clept Paradise. + +"And when that any good Knight, that was hardy and noble, came to see +this Royalty, he would lead him into his Paradise, and show him these +wonderful Things for his Sport, and the marvellous and delicious Song of +divers Birds, and the fair Damsels, and the fair Wells of Milk, Wine and +Honey, plenteously running. And he would make divers Instruments of +Music to sound in an high Tower, so merrily, that it was Joy to hear; +and no Man should see the Craft thereof. And those, he said, were Angels +of God, and that Place was Paradise, that God had promised to his +Friends, saying, '_Dabo vobis Terram fluentem Lacte et Melle_' ('I shall +give thee a Land flowing with Milk and Honey'). And then would he make +them to drink of certain Drink [hashish, a narcotic drug, whence their +name of Assassins], whereof anon they should be drunk. And then would +they think it greater Delight than they had before. And then would he +say to them, that if they would die for him and for his Love, that after +their Death they should come to his Paradise; and they should be of the +Age of the Damsels, and they should play with them, and yet be Maidens. +And after that should he put them in a yet fairer Paradise, where that +they should see the God of Nature visibly, in His Majesty and in His +Bliss. And then would he show them his Intent, and say to them, that if +they would go slay such a Lord, or such a Man that was his Enemy or +contrarious to his List, that they should not therefore dread to do it +and to be slain themselves. For after their Death, he would put them in +another Paradise, that was an 100-fold fairer than any of the tother; +and there should they dwell with the most fairest Damsels that might be, +and play with them ever-more. + +"And thus went many divers lusty Pachelors to slay great Lords in divers +Countries, that were his Enemies, and made themselves to be slain, in +Hope to have that Paradise." + + +FRANCE: AN ODE + +When Coleridge republished this poem in the _Post_ in 1802 he prefixed +to it the following + + +ARGUMENT + +_First Stanza_. An invocation to those objects in Nature the +contemplation of which had inspired the Poet with a devotional love of +Liberty. _Second Stanza_. The exultation of the Poet at the commencement +of the French Revolution, and his unqualified abhorrence of the Alliance +against the Republic. _Third Stanza_. The blasphemies and horrors during +the domination of the Terrorists regarded by the Poet as a transient +storm, and as the natural consequence of the former despotism and of the +foul superstition of Popery. Reason, indeed, began to suggest many +apprehensions; yet still the Poet struggled to retain the hope that +France would make conquests by no other means than by presenting to the +observation of Europe a people more happy and better instructed than +under other forms of Government. _Fourth Stanza_. Switzerland, and the +Poet's recantation. _Fifth Stanza_. An address to Liberty, in which the +Poet expresses his conviction that those feelings and that grand _ideal_ +of Freedom which the mind attains by its contemplation of its individual +nature, and of the sublime surrounding objects (see stanza the first) do +not belong to men as a society, nor can possibly be either gratified or +realized under any form, of human government; but belong to the +individual man, so far as he is pure, and inflamed with the love and +adoration of God in Nature. + +51, 22--*When France in wrath*, etc. The storming of the Bastile took +place July 14, 1789. On the 4th of August feudal and manorial privileges +were swept away by the National Assembly; and on the 18th of August the +Assembly formally adopted a declaration of "the rights of man." In +September 1792 the National Convention abolished royalty and declared +France a republic. + +52, 26-7--*With what a joy my lofty gratulation Unawed I* sang. +Coleridge wrote a poem on the "Destruction of the Bastile," probably in +1789 or soon after (first printed in 1834); and in September, 1792, some +lines "To a Young Lady, with a Poem on the French Revolution" (first +printed in _The Watchman_ in 1796), in which he tells his emotions-- + + "When slumbering Freedom roused with high disdain + With giant fury burst her triple chain!" + +28--*the disenchanted nation*. "Disenchanted" because they found that +freedom, peace, and virtue were not to be secured by mere proclamation; +and that all Europe was not ready at the call of the revolutionists to +abolish prescriptive rights and establish republican forms of society. +In January 1793 Louis XVI was beheaded. The act was followed pretty +promptly by a coalition of England, Holland, Spain, Naples, and the +German states against the Republic. + +36--*Yet still my voice*. In "Religious Musings," 1794-6, and more +ardently in the parts that he contributed to Southey's "Joan of Arc," +1796. + +42--*Britain's name*. England was from the beginning the centre of +resistance to the violence and ambition of revolutionary France; and +Pitt, who controlled English policy in these years, was looked upon as a +cold-blooded agent of tyranny by the French republicans and their +English sympathizers. + +44--*sweet music of deliverance*. The French were so convinced that +their Revolution marked the beginning of a new era in human affairs that +they determined to have a new chronology. Accordingly a commission of +scientists was appointed to formulate a system, which was adopted in +October 1793. The "Era of the Republic" was to be counted from the +autumnal equinox, 1792. The year was divided into twelve months, as +before, but they were renamed (_Thermidor_ hot month, _Fructidor_ fruit +month, _Nivose_ snow month, &c.), and ran in periods of thirty days each +from the 22d of September. This left five days undistributed, which were +set apart as feast-days in celebration of five virtues or ideals. Each +month consisted of three decades, and each tenth day, or _decadis_, was +a holiday. The purpose of this was to eradicate the observance of the +Christian Sunday. This chronology was in actual use in France until +Napoleon put an end to it in 1806. + +The municipality of Paris in 1793 decreed that on the 10th of November +the worship of Reason should be inaugurated at Notre Dame. "On that day +the venerable cathedral was profaned by a series of sacrilegious +outrages unparalleled in the history of Christendom. A temple dedicated +to 'Philosophy' was erected on a platform in the middle of the choir ... +the Goddess of Reason, impersonated by Mademoiselle Maillard, a well +known figurante of the opera, took her seat upon a grassy throne in +front of the temple; ... and the multitude bowed the knee before her in +profound admiration.... At the close of this grotesque ceremony the +whole cortège proceeded to the hall of the Convention, carrying with +them their 'goddess,' who was borne aloft in a chair of state on the +shoulders of four men. Having deposited her in front of the president," +Chaumette, the spokesman of the procession, "harangued the Assembly.... +He proceeded to demand that the ci-devant metropolitan church should +henceforth be the temple of Reason and Liberty; which proposition was +immediately adopted. The 'goddess' was then conducted to the president, +and he and other officers of the House saluted her with the 'fraternal +kiss,' amid thunders of applause. After this, upon the motion of +Thuriot, the Convention in a body joined the mass of the people, and +marched in their company to the temple of Reason, to witness a +repetition of the impieties above described.... At St. Gervais a ball +was given in the chapel of the Virgin. In other churches theatrical +spectacles took place.... On Sunday, the 17th of November, all the +parish churches of Paris were closed by authority, with three +exceptions.... Religion was proscribed, churches closed, Christian +ordinances interdicted; the dreary gloom of atheistical despotism +overspread the land."--Jervis, "The Gallican Church and the Revolution," +quoted in Larned's "History for Ready Reference," p. 1300. The next +year, however, Robespierre had a decree passed of which the first +article was: "The French people acknowledge the existence of the Supreme +Being and the immortality of the soul;" and thereupon the inscriptions +_To Reason_ that had been placed upon the French churches were replaced +by others reading _To the Supreme Being_. + +50--*calm and bright*. After the downfall of Robespierre in 1794 +France gradually worked back to a less hysterical mood. In October 1795 +a new form of government known as the Directory was established, under +which the people enjoyed comparative safety at home and developed a +remarkable military efficiency against their foreign enemies. +Bonaparte's military genius brought him rapidly to the front in the wars +of the Directory. It was he that created the Cisalpine and Ligurine +"republics," and his policy directed the invasions of Rome and of +Switzerland. + +53, 66--*Helvetia*. In March, 1798, after having fostered or +compelled the formation of republics under French protection in Holland, +northern Italy, and Rome, the Directory, under pretence of defending the +republican rights of the Vaudois, made a concerted attack upon +Switzerland. Berne, the centre of resistance, was taken, despite the +heroic defence of the mountaineers who for five centuries had maintained +in "bleak Helvetia's icy caverns" a "shrine of liberty" for all Europe. + + +DEJECTION: AN ODE + +55, 1 of motto--*yestreen*. Abbreviation of "yester-even," yesterday +evening. + +58, 82--*But now afflictions*, etc. In March 1801 Coleridge wrote to +Godwin: "In my long illness I had compelled into hours of delight many a +sleepless, painful hour of darkness by chasing down metaphysical game, +and since then I have continued the hunt, until I found myself unaware +at the root of pure mathematics.... The poet is dead in me." And years +afterward in a letter to an artist friend, W. Collins (December, 1818): +"Poetry is out of the question. The attempt would only hurry me into +that sphere of acute feelings from which abstruse research, the mother +of self-oblivion, presents an asylum." + +95--*Reality's dark dream*! In the earlier forms of the poem the +lines corresponding to 94-5 stood thus: + + "Nay, wherefore did I let it haunt my mind, + This dark, distressful dream?" + +He seems to mean, "This loss of joy, of poetic power, is, must be, only +an evil dream, and I will shake it from my mind;" but he knows that it +is a reality, and so turns to forget it in the sensuous intoxication of +the wind's music. Or perhaps--for Coleridge is already a +metaphysician--reality is used here in opposition to ideality or +imagination; the truth of philosophy (cf. ll. 89-90) and the metaphysic +habit of mind that the study of it induces--what we call reality--is a +dream that has come between him and the world of the ideal in which he +had and used his "shaping spirit of imagination." The passage is +obscure. + +100--*Bare crag*, etc. The scenery here is that of the Lake country +where Coleridge and Wordsworth were then living--the former at Keswick +in Cumberland, the latter at Grasmere, Westmoreland. + +59, 120--*Otway*. Coleridge wrote originally, "As thou thyself [i.e. +Wordsworth--see next note] had'st fram'd the tender lay." This he +changed to "Edmund's self" when he first printed the poem in 1802; and +finally to "Otway's self." Thomas Otway was a dramatist of the time of +Charles II (born 1651, died 1685). He wrote, among other plays, two +tragedies of wonderful pathetic power, "The Orphan" and "Venice +Preserved." The theme and style of the former of these, especially, no +doubt suggested his name to Coleridge here. Otway's own career was +pathetic; he died young, neglected, and according to one story, starved. +To this story Coleridge alludes in one of his early poems, the "Monody +on the Death of Chatterton:" + + "While, 'mid the pelting of that merciless storm, + Sunk to the cold earth Otway's famished form!" + +121--*'T is of a little child*, etc. Alluding to Wordsworth's "Lucy +Gray," which had been published in the second edition of "Lyrical +Ballads," 1800. + + +YOUTH AND AGE + +60, 12--*trim skiffs*, etc. Fulton had invented the steamboat in +1807. The first regular steamboat in British waters was built in 1812. + +61, 34--*altered size*. Coleridge became very stout in his later +years. + + +WORK WITHOUT HOPE + +62, 5--*the sole unbusy thing*. Cf. George Herbert's "Employment:" + + "All things are busie; onely I + Neither bring hony with the bees, + Nor flowers to make that, nor the husbandrie + To water these." + +"I find more substantial comfort now," wrote Coleridge to his friend +Collins in 1818, "in pious George Herbert's 'Temple,' which I used to +read to amuse myself with his quaintness, in short, only to laugh at, +than in all the poetry since Milton." + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select +Poems, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLERIDGE *** + +***** This file should be named 11101-8.txt or 11101-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/1/0/11101/ + +Produced by Rick Niles, Kat Jeter, John Hagerson, Rosanna Yuen and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: + https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL + + diff --git a/old/11101-8.zip b/old/11101-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e253e58 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11101-8.zip diff --git a/old/11101.txt b/old/11101.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a794cea --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11101.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4990 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems +by Samuel Taylor Coleridge + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems + +Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge + +Release Date: February 15, 2004 [EBook #11101] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLERIDGE *** + + + + +Produced by Rick Niles, Kat Jeter, John Hagerson, Rosanna Yuen and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + +The Scribner English Classics + +EDITED BY + +FREDERICK H. SYKES, PH.D. +TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY + + + +COLERIDGE'S ANCIENT MARINER AND SELECT POEMS + + + +1908 + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE + + +The text of the poems in this volume is that of J. Dykes Campbell in the +Globe edition of Coleridge's poems. For the introduction I have depended +also largely upon his Memoir of Coleridge, and upon the two volumes of +the "Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge," edited by the poet's grandson, +Mr. E.H. Coleridge. In the Notes, as will be seen, I am indebted +particularly to the general editor of this series, Dr. F.H. Sykes, to +Dr. Lane Cooper of Cornell University, and again to Mr. Coleridge, +through whose kindness I have been able to get a reproduction of the +Marshmills crayon, undoubtedly the most satisfactory portrait of the +poet in existence, for the frontispiece. + +H.M.B. + + + + +CONTENTS + + BIBLIOGRAPHY + + INTRODUCTION: + + I. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE + II. COLERIDGE'S POEMS + + TEXT: + + THE ANCIENT MARINER + CHRISTABEL + KUBLA KHAN + LOVE + FRANCE: AN ODE + DEJECTION: AN ODE + YOUTH AND AGE + WORK WITHOUT HOPE + EPITAPH + + NOTES + + + + +*SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY* + + +EDITIONS: + +Globe Edition. Edited by J. Dykes Campbell. 1 vol. Muses' Library. +Edited by Richard Garnett. + +LIFE AND CRITICISM: + +Stephen, Leslie, Article "Coleridge" in "The Dictionary of National +Biography." + +H.D. Traill, "Coleridge" ("English Men of Letters Series"). + +Caine, T.H., "Coleridge" ("Great Writers Series"). + +Coleridge, S.T., "Biographia Literaria" ("Everyman's Library"). + +De Quincey, T., "Lake Poets." + +Hazlitt, W., "First Acquaintance with Poets." + +Cottle, J., "Reminiscences of Coleridge and Southey." + +Pater, W., "Appreciations." + +Shairp, J.C., "Studies in Poetry and Philosophy." + +Sarrazin, Gabriel, "La Renaissance de la Poesie Anglaise, 1798-1889." + +Brandl, Alois, "S.T. Coleridge and the English Romantic School." + +BIBLIOGRAPHY: + +Haney, J.L., "A Bibliography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge." + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +I. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE + + +I. THE BEGINNINGS + + +Coleridge lived in what may safely be called the most momentous period +of modern history. In the year following his birth Warren Hastings was +appointed first governor-general of India, where he maintained English +empire during years of war with rival nations, and where he committed +those acts of cruelty and tyranny which called forth the greatest +eloquence of the greatest of English orators, in the famous impeachment +trial at Westminster, when Coleridge was a sixteen-year-old schoolboy in +London. A few years before his birth the liberal philosophy of France +had found a popular voice in the writings of Rousseau, which became the +gospel of revolution throughout Europe in Coleridge's youth and early +manhood. "The New Heloise" in the field of sentiment and of the relation +of the sexes, "The Social Contract" In political theory, and "Emile" in +matters of education, were books whose influence upon Coleridge's +generation it would be hard to estimate. When Coleridge was four years +old the English colonies in America declared their independence and +founded a new nation upon the natural rights of man,--a nation that has +grown to be the mightiest and most beneficent on the globe. Coleridge +was seventeen when the French Revolution broke out; he was forty-three +when Napoleon was sent to St. Helena. He saw the whole career of the +greatest political upheaval and of the greatest military genius of the +modern world. Fox, Pitt, and Burke,--the greatest Liberal orator, the +greatest Parliamentary leader, and the greatest philosophic statesman +that England has produced--were at the height of their glory when +Coleridge went up to Cambridge in 1791. + +In literature--naturally, since literature is but an interpretation of +life--the age was not less remarkable. Dr. Johnson was still alive when +Coleridge came up to school at Christ's Hospital, Goldsmith had died +eight years before. But a new spirit was abroad in the younger +generation. Macpherson's "Fingal," alleged to be a translation from the +ancient Gaelic poet Ossian, had appeared in 1760; Thomas Percy's +"Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," a collection of folk-ballads and +rude verse-romances such as the common people cherished but critics had +long refused to consider as poetry, was published in 1765. These two +books were of prime importance in fostering a new taste in +literature,--a love of natural beauty, of simplicity, and of rude +strength. The new taste hailed with delight the appearance of a native +lyric genius in Burns, whose first volume of poems was printed in 1786. +It welcomed also the homely, simple sweetness, what Coleridge and Lamb +called the "divine chit-chat," of Cowper, whose "Task" appeared in the +preceding year. But it was in Coleridge himself and his close +contemporaries and followers that the splendor of the new poetry showed +itself. He was two years younger than Wordsworth, a year younger than +Scott; he was sixteen at the birth of Byron, twenty at that of Shelley, +twenty-four at that of Keats; and he outlived all of them except +Wordsworth. His genius blossomed early. "The Ancient Mariner," his +greatest poem, was published some years before Wordsworth's "Ode on the +Intimations of Immortality" was written, or Scott's "Lay of the Last +Minstrel." He was in the prime of life, or what should have been the +prime of life--forty years old--when Byron burst into sudden fame with +the first two cantos of "Childe Harold" in 1812; he was forty-six when +Keats published "Endymion"; he was fifty-one when Shelley was drowned. +And of all this gifted company Coleridge, though not the strongest +character or the most prolific poet, was the profoundest intellect and +the _most originative poetic spirit_. + +There was little hint, however, of future greatness or of fellowship +with great names in his birth and early circumstances. His father was a +country clergyman and schoolmaster in the village of Ottery St. Mary, in +Devonshire, a simple-hearted unworldly man, full of curious learning and +not very attentive to practical affairs. His mother managed the +household and brought up the children. Both his parents were of simple +West-country stock; but his father, having a natural turn for study and +having done well in his early manhood as a schoolmaster, went at the age +of thirty-one as a sizar, or poor student, to Sidney-Sussex College, +Cambridge, took orders, and was afterwards given the living of Ottery +St. Mary. Here he continued his beloved work of teaching, in addition to +his pastoral duties, and by means of this combination won the humble +livelihood which, through his wife's careful economy, sufficed for +rearing his large family. Coleridge tells us that his father "had so +little of parental ambition in him that he had destined his children to +be blacksmiths, etc." (though he had "resolved that I should be a +parson"), "and had accomplished his intention but for my mother's pride +and spirit of aggrandizing her family." Several of the children rewarded +their mother's care by distinguishing themselves in a modest way in the +army or in the church, but the only one about whom the world is curious +now was the youngest of the ten, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was born +at Ottery St. Mary, October 21, 1772. + +The essential traits of his later character appeared in his early +childhood. Almost from infancy he lived in his imagination rather than +in the world of reality. "The schoolboys drove me from play, and were +always tormenting me, and hence I took no pleasure in boyish sports, but +read incessantly.... I became a _dreamer_, and acquired an indisposition +to all bodily activity; and I was fretful, and inordinately +passionate." "Sensibility, imagination, vanity, sloth," were "prominent +and manifest" in his character before he was eight years old. Such is +his own account of his childhood, written to his friend Poole in 1797; +and it is an accurate description, as far as it goes, of the grown man. +But of the religious temper, too, the love of freedom and of virtue, the +hatred of injustice, cruelty, and falsehood that guided his uneven steps +through all the pitiful struggle of his middle life, of the conscience +that made his weakness hell to him--of these, too, we may be sure that +the beginnings were to be seen in the boy at Ottery St. Mary, as indeed +they were before his eyes in the person of his father, who, if not a +first-rate genius, was, says his son, "a first-rate Christian." + +The good vicar died in 1781; and the next year, a "presentation" to +Christ's Hospital having been secured for him, little Samuel, not yet +eleven years old, went up to London to enter the famous old city school. +Here, + + "In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim," + +where he + + "Saw nought lovely but the sky and stars," + +one of some seven hundred Blue-Coat boys, Coleridge lived for nine +years. + +Most of the boys at Christ's Hospital, then as now, were given a +"commercial" education (which none the less included a very thorough +training in Latin); but a few of the most promising students were each +year selected by the masters for a classical training in preparation for +the universities, whence they were known as Grecians. Coleridge was +elected a Grecian in 1788. The famous Boyer--famous for his enthusiasm +alike in teaching the classics and in wielding the birch--laid the +foundation of Coleridge's later scholarship. Here, too, Coleridge did a +great amount of reading not laid down in the curriculum,--Latin and +Greek poetry and philosophy, mediaeval science and metaphysics--and won +the approval of his teachers by the excellence of his verses in Greek +and Latin, such as boys at school and students at the universities were +expected to write in those days. In the great city school, as in the +Devonshire vicarage, he lived in the imagination, inert of body and +rapacious of intellect; but he was solitary no longer, having found his +tongue and among his more intellectual schoolfellows an interested +audience. While yet a boy, he would hold an audience spellbound by his +eloquent declamation or the fervor of his argument till, as Lamb, who +was one of his hearers, tells us, "the walls of the old Grey Friars +re-echoed to the accents of the _inspired charity boy_!" That is the way +his conversation,--or monologue, as it often was,--affected not boys +only, but men, and especially young men, to his dying day. He cast a +spell upon men by his speech; upon his schoolfellows, upon young men at +the universities in the Pantisocracy days, upon Lloyd and Poole at +Nether Stowey, upon earnest young thinkers in his last days at Highgate; +so that even if he had never written "The Ancient Mariner" and the +_Biographia, Literaria_ he would still be remembered for the inspiration +of his talk. + +Further details of the life at Christ's Hospital must be sought in +Lamb's two essays, especially that on "Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty +Years Ago." In 1791, having secured a Christ's Hospital "exhibition," he +entered Jesus College, Cambridge. + +His university life extended over three years, from October, 1791, to +December, 1794. It was an unhappy time for him and an uneasy time for +his respectable relatives, for reasons that were partly in his own +nature and partly in the temper of the times. + +Even Boyer's severe training, while it had made him a hard student and +an unusual scholar for his years, had failed to give him what he most +needed as a balance to his intellect and imagination, stability of +character. There is evidence that after the first few months, during +which the habits of his hard school life had not yet broken, the new +liberty of university life led him into extravagance, if not +dissipation. Work he doubtless did (he won the Browne medal for a Greek +ode on the slave-trade in 1792), but fitfully, giving less and less +attention to his regular studies and more to conviviality and, above +all, to dreams of literary fame. He wrote verses after various models, +sentimental, fanciful, or gallant; he was enthusiastic in praise of a +contemporary sonneteer, the Rev. William Bowles, whose "divine +sensibility" seemed to him the height of poetic feeling; and in +connection with Wordsworth's younger brother Christopher, who entered +Cambridge in 1793, he formed a literary society that discussed, among +other things, Wordsworth's volume of early poetry, "Descriptive +Sketches," published in that year. Wordsworth himself was a Cambridge +man, but had taken his degree in 1791 and gone abroad, so that the two +men whose personal friendship was to mean so much in English poetry did +not meet until 1796. Already in 1793, however, Coleridge had developed +political theories, or rather sympathies, which were preparing him for +fellowship with Wordsworth. + +The French Revolution, which, after years of preparation, took concrete +shape in 1789, did not look to young Englishmen in 1791-4 as it looks to +us now, nor even as it was to look to those same Englishmen in 1800. In +those first years warm-hearted young enthusiasts at the universities saw +in the violence of their fellow-men across the Channel only the +struggles of the beautiful Spirit of Liberty bursting the chains of +age-long tyranny and corruption and calling men up to the heights to +breathe diviner air. + + "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, + But to be young was very Heaven!" + +wrote Wordsworth afterwards; and in the glow of his young idealism he +had gone over to France in the autumn of 1791 and was on the point of +throwing in his lot with the revolutionists, when his parents compelled +his return by cutting off his supplies. And many who, like Coleridge, +merely watched from afar shared his faith that a new order of things was +to be established, wherein Love should be Law and man's inhumanity to +man become but a memory of things outworn. + +Less generous men, with a selfish interest in established privileges; +timid men, who looked with terror upon any prospect of change; older and +wiser men, who better understood the foundations of social order and the +nature of man--all these looked with distrust upon the revolutionary +idealism that was spreading from France through the younger generation +of Englishmen. The new notions of liberty, it was felt, threatened not +only the vested rights of property and the prescriptions of rank, but +the Church, too, and religion. Some of the would-be reformers were +avowed atheists; some (Coleridge and his friends, for instance, in the +Pantisocracy period) were communists. In general, they ascribed all the +evils of society to "institutions," and wanted them abolished. + +Just how far Coleridge had gone in this direction by the autumn of 1793 +we do not know; far enough at least to disturb his view of the future, +to worry his elder brother George, a clergyman and school-teacher, who +had in some measure filled a father's place to the young genius, and, +most important of all, to alarm and distress a gentle girl in London. +For before he left Christ's Hospital for Cambridge he had become +intimate at the house of a Mrs. Evans, and most of the letters preserved +from his first two years at the University were addressed to her or to +one of her two daughters, Anne and Mary. With the latter Coleridge was +in love; and that she had some regard for him is apparent from a letter +she sent him in 1794. Before that, however, Coleridge had taken a step +that seemed likely to close at once his college career and his prospects +of literary fame. The reasons have not been recorded: probably pecuniary +embarrassment, the yeasty state of his religious and political ideas, +and impatience or despondency over his love-affair with Mary Evans, +combined to precipitate his flight; what we know is that he ran away +from Cambridge and in December, 1793, enlisted as a dragoon in the +army. + +Coleridge had hardly taken the step before he repented of it. His +letters to his brother George, who with other friends bestirred himself +for Coleridge's release as soon as his whereabouts was discovered, are +rather distressing in their self-abasement. The efforts of his friends +were successful and in April he returned to the University, where a +public admonition was the extent of his punishment, and he continued in +receipt of his Christ's Hospital exhibition. + +But Coleridge's college days were practically over. He was now nearly +twenty-two years old, and the revolutionary unrest which had doubtless +contributed to his first escapade soon resulted in the formation of +schemes that took him away from Cambridge for good and all. In June, +1794, he made a visit to an old schoolfellow at Oxford. Here he met +Robert Southey of Balliol College. A friendship sprang up between them +out of which, before the end of the summer, grew the Utopian scheme of +Pantisocracy. A company of gentlemen and ladies were to emigrate to +America, take up lands in the Susquehanna valley, and there establish an +ideal community in which all should bear rule equally and find happiness +in a life of justice, labor, and love. The education of the young in the +principles of ideal humanity was an important part of the scheme. We are +reminded of the Brook Farm experiment in New England a generation later, +which bears a daughter's likeness to Pantisocracy, the chief difference +being that the New England enthusiasts were mature men and women and +really put the idea into practice, whereas the Pantisocrats were for the +most part collegians and never got beyond the stage of talking and +writing about their plans. The scheme was further elaborated at Bristol, +where Coleridge, returning from a vacation tour in Wales, again met +Southey, and at Bath, the home of Southey and of Southey's betrothed and +her sister, Edith and Sarah Fricker--"two sisters, milliners of Bath," +as Byron contemptuously called them. + +To the other sister, Sarah, Coleridge rather precipitately engaged +himself. His love for Mary Evans was not dead, but he seems to have +despaired of winning her and to have determined, by uniting himself +domestically with Southey and his friends, to make retreat from their +communistic scheme impossible. A few weeks later he is back at +Cambridge, tortured apparently between his old love and his new +engagement. Mary Evans has written to him deploring his wild notions and +the mad plan of Pantisocracy, yet confident that he has "too much +sensibility to be an infidel." Southey has reproved him rather sharply +for failing to write to his betrothed at Bath. Our next glimpse of him +is at London, discussing poetry and philosophy with Lamb at the +"Salutation and Cat" tavern and perhaps trying to get a sight of Mary +Evans. In December he is again at Bristol, in lively correspondence with +Southey about democracy, Pantisocracy, and poetry, but at the same time +he addresses a last appeal to Miss Evans. Her answer is kind, but final; +that chapter is closed, and Coleridge writes to Southey that he will "do +his duty," by which he means apparently that he will be faithful to +Pantisocracy and marry Sarah Fricker. + +The Pantisocracy scheme could not in the nature of things be long-lived. +As a matter of fact it lasted little more than a year, ending in a +rupture between the two leading spirits just when they became +brothers-in-law. Coleridge spent the summer of 1795 in Bristol in +company with Southey, writing and lecturing. In October he was married +to Sarah Fricker in "St. Mary's Redcliff, poor Chatterton's church." In +November Southey married Edith Fricker and set sail for Lisbon, where +his uncle was the English chaplain; and Pantisocracy was dead. + +The break with Southey was the natural result of attempting to force +through a scheme impracticable in itself and doubly impracticable for +the men who conceived it. Its collapse did not altogether sever their +literary relations. The collaboration begun in "The Fall of Robespierre" +(Cambridge, 1794) was continued in Southey's "Joan of Arc" (1796), to +which Coleridge contributed the part afterwards printed (with some +additions) as "The Destiny of Nations," and in Coleridge's first volume +of "Poems" (Bristol, 1796). A more important contributor to this volume, +however, was Charles Lamb, whose initials were appended to four of the +pieces. A second edition appeared in June, 1797, with eleven additions +from Coleridge besides verses by Lamb and Charles Lloyd, all under the +title: "Poems by S.T. Coleridge. Second Edition. To which are added +Poems by Charles Lamb, and Charles Lloyd." The publisher of both +editions was Joseph Cottle, a bookseller of Bristol, who played the part +of provincial Murray to the young poets in these years. + +Meanwhile Coleridge, after a period of lecturing and projecting, had as +we have seen married Sarah Fricker, with whom he was now very much in +love, and had begun housekeeping in a cottage at Clevedon near the +Bristol Channel. The beauty of the place and his happiness there are +celebrated in "The Aeolian Harp" and "Reflections on Leaving a Place of +Retirement" (better known by its opening words, "Low was our pretty +cot"). His next residence was in Bristol--rather a base of operations +than a home, for Coleridge was on the road much of the time, lecturing, +preaching, soliciting subscriptions for his political and philosophical +paper "The Watchman" (which ran from March to May, 1796), and trying in +various other ways to provide for his family, which was increased by the +birth of a son in September, 1796. At last in December he secured the +little cottage at Nether Stowey in the Quantock Hills (south of the +Bristol Channel, in Somerset), close to the house of his beloved friend, +Thomas Poole, where he lived until his departure for Germany in +September, 1798. + + +II. AT NETHER STOWEY + + +The Stowey period was the blossoming time of Coleridge's genius. All the +poems in this volume except the last four, and besides these "This +Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," "Frost at Midnight," and "Fears in +Solitude"--the bulk of his achievement in poetry--were either written or +begun in 1797 and 1798. It will be proper, then, to dwell a little on +his circumstances, his friends, and his ideas during these two years. + +The means of livelihood for himself and his family when he went to +Stowey were a subscription of about L40 that Poole and some friends got +together for him, L20 that Cottle paid for the second edition of the +"Poems," the promise of L80 from the father of Charles Lloyd, who was to +live with him and study under his direction, and such money as he could +earn by reviews and magazine articles, which he estimated at L40 a year; +not a munificent provision for a household of three adults and a child. +But the theories of the simple life that had made Pantisocracy seem a +feasible project still inspired him with confidence. "Sixteen +shillings," he wrote to Poole, "would cover all the weekly expenses of +my wife, infant, and myself. This I say from my wife's own +calculations." Further, he will support himself by the labor of his +hands. "If you can instruct me to manage an acre and a half of land, and +to raise in it, with my own hands, all kinds of vegetables and grain, +enough for myself and my wife and sufficient to feed a pig or two with +the refuse, I hope that you will have served me _most_ effectually by +placing me out of the necessity of being served." This was in December, +just before he moved to Stowey. In February he wrote from his new home +to another friend: "From seven till half past eight I work in my garden; +from breakfast till twelve I read and compose, then read again, feed the +pigs, poultry, etc., till two o'clock; after dinner work again till tea; +from tea till supper, _review_. So jogs the day, and I am happy.... I +raise potatoes and all manner of vegetables, have an orchard, and shall +raise corn with the spade, enough for my family. We have two pigs, and +ducks and geese. A cow would not answer the keep: we have whatever milk +we want from T. Poole." + +There is a suspicious regularity about this schedule. Lamb wrote from +London in January: "Is it a farm that you have got? And what does your +worship know about farming?" His agricultural activity, in the month of +February, must have been chiefly prospective; and we may safely assume +that Poole supplied other things besides milk, and that the poet spent +more time reading, dreaming, and talking than he did raising potatoes. A +good deal of time must have been spent in the actual composition of his +poetry, including his play "Osorio," which was written in 1797, and in +studying the landscape beauties of the Quantocks. After the coming of +the Wordsworths to Alfoxden he spent much of the time walking between +Alfoxden and Stowey, or further afield with Wordsworth and his sister. +"My walks," he wrote afterwards, "were almost daily on the top of +Quantock, and among its sloping coombs. With my pencil and +memorandum-book in my hand, I was making studies, as the artists call +them, and often moulding them into verse with the objects and imagery +immediately before my eyes." This does not sound much like "raising corn +with the spade." + +On Sundays he would sometimes preach before such Unitarian +congregations, within walking distance, as cared to hear him. But as he +would take no pay for his services his preaching contributed nothing +toward the support of his family. Lloyd, who was epileptic and subject +to moody variation in his attachments, was but an irregular housemate +after the first few months, and his contribution to the household +expenses was correspondingly uncertain. The future looked so dark in +October, 1797, that in spite of misgivings and former scruples he had +concluded that he "must become a Unitarian minister, as a less evil than +starvation." Accordingly he was in Shrewsbury in January, 1798, +preaching in the Unitarian church and on the point of accepting the +pastorate at a salary of L150 a year, when the sky brightened in another +quarter. Thomas and Josiah Wedgwood, sons of the famous potter and +friends of Thomas Poole, offered him an equal sum annually as a free +gift. They were wealthy men, well able to afford it; they attached no +condition to the gift except that he should devote himself entirely to +the study of poetry and philosophy, which was precisely what he wanted +to do; and he was not long in determining to accept the offer. "I +accepted it," he wrote to Wordsworth while still at Shrewsbury, "on the +presumption that I had talents, honesty, and propensities to perseverant +effort." The propensities, alas, remained propensities, never acquiring +the force of habit. The pension, however, continued to be paid in full +until 1812, when Josiah Wedgwood withdrew his half of it. The other +half, upon the death of Thomas Wedgwood in 1805, had been secured to +Coleridge for life; and this annuity must have constituted the chief +reliance of Mrs. Coleridge for many years. + +If Coleridge did not prosper financially, he was at least fortunate in +his friends; and a man's friends are after all the best testimony to the +character of his mind and heart. When he went to Stowey in December, +1796, he was again on good terms with Southey, though the enthusiasm of +their first fellowship was gone. The friendship with Lamb, begun in +their school-days and renewed at the "Salutation and Cat" in 1794, was +maintained by an eager correspondence and by Lamb's visit to Stowey in +July, 1797; and although Lloyd's vagaries led to a coolness between the +old friends in the following year, the breach was soon healed, and the +friendship continued till death. Another with whom Coleridge maintained +a voluminous correspondence in 1796-7 was John Thelwall, theoretical +democrat, atheist, and admirer of Godwin, whose visit to Coleridge and +Wordsworth in the summer of 1797 so shocked the good conservatives of +the neighborhood that Wordsworth had to leave Alfoxden in consequence of +it. But without doubt the dearest and most influential friend Coleridge +had before the Wordsworths came into his life was Thomas Poole. It was +in order to be in daily intercourse with Poole that he moved to Stowey; +and Poole's hesitation about securing the cottage for him, arising, +Coleridge seemed to fear, from imperfect confidence and friendship, was +a source of agonized apprehension to the sensitive poet. When we +consider that Poole was a self-educated man, a Somersetshire tanner with +no claim to literary genius or philosophical acquirements, Coleridge's +devotion to him and dependence on him bring out in a strong light the +substantial, elemental character of the man. "O Poole!" Coleridge wrote +to him from Germany afterwards, "you are a noble heart as ever God +made!" Poole had indeed in a marked degree the genius for friendship. +Strength of character, sympathy, and self-effacing devotion, combined +with prudence and sincerity, made this man a tower of refuge for the +unstable spirit of the poet. + +No other single relation, however, can compare in importance, for +Coleridge's poetic development, with that which sprang up in the summer +of 1797 between him and William Wordsworth. Just when they first met is +not recorded. We have seen that Coleridge was acquainted with +Wordsworth's younger brother in his college days, and discussed with him +Wordsworth's first published poems. In January, 1797, he told Cottle +that he wished to submit his "Visions of the Maid of Arc" to Wordsworth +for criticism. The earliest definite record of their personal +acquaintance is a letter Coleridge wrote to Cottle while on a visit to +Wordsworth at Racedown (just over the Somerset border in Dorsetshire) +early in June. About the beginning of July he is again at Racedown; and +when he returns he brings Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy with him for +a visit. On the 7th Lamb arrived for his long-planned reunion with +Coleridge. The second week of July, 1797, was thus a rich and +long-remembered time for all of them, despite the fact that Mrs. +Coleridge "accidentally emptied a skillet of boiling milk" on her +husband's foot, which confined him "during the whole time of Charles +Lamb's stay." The others took long walks in the neighborhood, amid such +scenery as is described in "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," a poem +that admirably voices the happiness, of those days of spiritual +fellowship. The Wordsworths did not return to Racedown. "By a +combination of curious circumstances a gentleman's seat, with a park and +woods, elegantly and completely furnished,... in the most beautiful and +romantic situation by the seaside, four miles from Stowey--this we have +got for Wordsworth at the _rent of twenty-three pounds a year, taxes +included_!" Coleridge triumphantly announced to Southey; and in this +house, the Manor of Alfoxden, the Wordsworths remained for a year, in +daily companionship with Coleridge and surrounded by scenes of natural +beauty that have left a lasting mark on the work of both poets. + +What the friendship with Coleridge meant to Wordsworth may best be seen +in "The Prelude: or, Growth of a Poet's Mind," Wordsworth's greatest +long poem, written some years afterwards and addressed throughout to +Coleridge. + + "There is no grief, no sorrow, no despair, + No languor, no dejection, no dismay, + No absence scarcely can there be, for those + Who love as we do." + +What Wordsworth was to Coleridge is more important for us here. The +admiration which the brilliant child of genius felt for the great +preacher-poet is chiefly, one feels, an admiration for his character. As +a matter of fact, Wordsworth had written nothing, up to his coming to +Alfoxden, that would have preserved his name as a poet, nothing so +noteworthy or promising as what Coleridge had already written. But +Coleridge felt in this lean and thoughtful young man a strength of mind, +a depth and sureness of heart that compelled his allegiance and even +imparted, for the time, some of that resolution in which he was by +nature so sadly deficient. The character of their friendship is to be +seen not only in the published work of the two poets from this time on +(notably in "Dejection"), but perhaps even more clearly in Dorothy +Wordsworth's Journal and in Coleridge's letters. "I speak with +heart-felt sincerity," he wrote to Cottle in June, 1797, "and (I think) +unblinded judgment, when I tell you that I feel myself _a little man by +his side_, and yet do not think myself the less man than I formerly +thought myself.... T. Poole's opinion of Wordsworth is that he is the +greatest man he ever knew; I coincide." Wordsworth's influence is +evident in a letter from Coleridge to his brother George in April, 1798: +"I love fields and woods and mountains with almost a visionary fondness. +And because I have found benevolence and quietness growing within me as +that fondness has increased, therefore I should wish to be the means of +implanting it in others, and to destroy the bad passions not by +combating them but by keeping them in inaction." Under the calming and +clarifying influence of the stronger Northern spirit the fever of his +revolutionary dreams abated, he found happiness in the conscious +exercise of his poetic powers, and for one year in his troubled +existence his genius showed itself in all its splendor. + +The immediate poetic result of their friendship was the "Lyrical +Ballads," published by Cottle in September, 1798. The origin of the work +has been described both by Wordsworth (in a prefatory note to "We Are +Seven") and by Coleridge (in the _Biographia Literaria_, chap. xiv.). At +first, they were to collaborate in writing a poem the proceeds of which +should pay the expenses of a little tour they were making when the plan +was thought of, in November, 1797; and thus "The Ancient Mariner" was +begun. As this poem grew under Coleridge's "shaping-spirit of +imagination" Wordsworth saw that he "could only be a clog" upon its +progress, and it was resigned to Coleridge. The plan was then enlarged +to include a volume illustrating "two cardinal points of poetry, the +power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to +the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by +the modifying colours of imagination." Wordsworth was to illustrate the +former principle, Coleridge the latter, and the proceeds of the book +were to go toward the expenses of a trip to Germany, decided on in the +spring of 1798. The bulk of the volume was Wordsworth's, and was +typically Wordsworthian, ranging from such simple ballads of humble +incident as "Goody Blake" and "The Idiot Boy" to the magnificent blank +verse of "Tintern Abbey"; Coleridge's share consisted of a brief poem +called "The Nightingale," two short extracts from "Osorio," and "The +Rime of the Ancyent Marinere." + +Apart from the "Lyrical Ballads" Coleridge conceived and finished +between June, 1797, and the departure for Germany in 1798, and published +in the latter year, "Fire, Famine, and Slaughter," "Frost at Midnight," +"Fears in Solitude," and "France." He conceived and partly executed, but +did not then publish, "Christabel," "Kubla Khan," "Love," "The Ballad of +the Dark Ladie," and "The Three Graves." Thus, all Coleridge's best +poetry, with the exception of those three saddest of voices out of a +broken life, "Dejection" (1802), the lines to Wordsworth on hearing him +read "The Prelude" (1807), and "Youth and Age" (1823-32), belongs either +wholly or in its inception to the year of his fellowship with the +Wordsworths in the Quantock Hills. + +Of his political, religious, and literary opinions at this time he has +left a fairly adequate account in his published writings and his +correspondence, especially in the _Biographia Literaria_ and in the +letter to the Rev. George Coleridge referred to above. The first year of +his married life saw him still, in spite of the failure of Pantisocracy, +an eager visionary reformer upborne by generous enthusiasm and ardent +religious feeling. "O! never can I remember those days," he wrote in the +_Biographia_, "with either shame or regret. For I was most sincere, most +disinterested! My opinions were indeed in many and most important points +erroneous; but my heart was single. Wealth, rank, life itself, then +seemed cheap to me, compared with the interest of (what I believed to +be) the truth, and the will of my Maker." However much he may have +consorted with unbelievers like Thelwall and distressed his good brother +George by his heterodoxy, he was by nature deeply religious. He tried in +his letters to recover Thelwall from his "atheism," though he heartily +approved a sentiment expressed by the latter: "He who thinks and _feels_ +will be virtuous; and he who is absorbed in self will be vicious, +whatever may be his speculative opinions." Godwin's system of "Justice," +with its soulless logic, he abhorred. He preached often in Unitarian +churches. To young Hazlitt, who heard him preach in January, 1798, from +the text "And He went up into the mountain to pray, _Himself, alone_," +it seemed "as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human +heart, and as if that prayer might have floated in solemn silence +through the universe." In politics he was, when he went to Stowey, +"almost equidistant from all the three prominent parties, the Pittites, +the Foxites, and the Democrats"; he was "a vehement anti-ministerialist, +but after the invasion of Switzerland, a more vehement anti-Gallican +[see the last two stanzas of "France"], and still more intensely an +anti-Jacobin." Under Wordsworth's influence his thoughts turned in great +measure from contemporary politics to more fundamental matters. Always +his poetry had been the utterance of his essential being. "I feel +strongly and I think strongly," he wrote to Thelwall in 1796, "but I +seldom feel without thinking or think without feeling. Hence, though my +poetry has in general a hue of tenderness or passion over it, yet it +seldom exhibits unmixed and simple tenderness and passion. My +philosophical opinions are blended with or deduced from my feelings." +Wordsworth gave his feelings a new object and his philosophy a higher +aim. In April of the second year at Stowey, in the letter to his brother +already quoted, Coleridge wrote: "I have for some time past withdrawn +myself totally from the consideration of _immediate causes_, which are +infinitely complex and uncertain, to muse on fundamental and general +causes, the 'causae causarum.' I devote myself to such works as encroach +not on the anti-social passions--in poetry, to elevate the imagination +and set the affections in right tune by the beauty of the inanimate +impregnated as with a living soul by the presence of life--in prose to +the seeking with patience and a slow, very slow mind, 'Quid sumus, et +quidnam victuri gignimus,'--what our faculties are and what they are +capable of becoming." This last sentence is a sort of half-prophetic +summary of his life's work; but the poetry soon gave way to the prose, +and he never again so nearly realized his poetical ideal as he had +already done in "The Ancient Mariner." + +Of his person and the impression he made upon people at this time there +are various contemporary accounts. To Thelwall, in November, 1796, he +sent the following description of himself: "... my face, unless when +animated by immediate eloquence, expresses great sloth, and great, +indeed almost idiotic good-nature. 'Tis a mere carcass of a face; fat, +flabby, and expressive chiefly of inexpression. Yet I am told that my +eyes, eyebrows, and forehead are physiognomically good; but of this the +deponent knoweth not. As to my shape, 'tis a good shape enough if +measured, but my gait is awkward, and the walk of the whole man +indicates _indolence capable of energies_.... I cannot breathe through +my nose, so my mouth, with sensual thick lips, is almost always open. In +conversation I am impassioned, and oppose what I deem error with an +eagerness which is often mistaken for personal asperity; but I am ever +so swallowed up in the _thing_ said that I forget my _opponent_. Such am +I." The Rev. Leapidge Smith, in his "Reminiscences of an Octogenarian," +remembered him as "a tall, dark, handsome young man, with long, black, +flowing hair; eyes not merely dark, but black, and keenly penetrating; a +fine forehead, a deep-toned, harmonious voice; a manner never to be +forgotten, full of life, vivacity, and kindness; dignified in person +and, added to all these, exhibiting the elements of his future +greatness."[1] Hazlitt, in "My First Acquaintance with Poets" (a paper +that every student of Coleridge's life and poetry should read), +describing him as he appeared on his visit to Hazlitt's father at Wem in +1798, says: "His complexion was at that time clear, and even bright. His +forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with large +projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them like a sea with +darkened lustre.... His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his +chin good-humored and round, but his nose, the rudder of the face, the +index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing--like what he has done." +And Dorothy Wordsworth (to close with a contemporary and sympathetic +impression) set him down in her journal after their first meeting at +Racedown thus: "He is a wonderful man. His conversation teems with soul, +mind, and spirit.... At first I thought him very plain, that is for +about three minutes: he is pale, thin, has a wide mouth, thick lips, and +not very good teeth, longish, loose-growing, half-curling, rough black +hair. But if you hear him speak for five minutes you think no more of +them. His eye is large and full, and not very dark, but grey[2]--such an +eye as would receive from a heavy soul the dullest expression; but it +speaks every emotion of his animated mind; it has more of 'the poet's +eye in a fine frenzy rolling' than I ever witnessed. He has fine dark +eyebrows, and an overhanging forehead." The friendly and keen-sighted +woman gives a more sympathetic picture than the others; but there must +have been truth, too, in the view of the equally keen-sighted and less +friendly Hazlitt, whose description accords well with Coleridge's +self-portraiture, and in the last sarcastic item, too well, with the +remainder of the poet's career. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: "Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge," ed. by E.H. +Coleridge, Vol. I., p. 180, note.] + +[Footnote 2: The uncertainty as to the color of his eyes is a tribute to +their expressiveness. Carlyle described him in 1824 as having "a pair of +strange brown, timid, yet earnest-looking eyes." Emerson visited him in +1833 and found him "with bright blue eyes and fine clear complexion."] + + + + +III. THE REST OF THE STORY + + +Coleridge lived for thirty-six years after he left Stowey for Germany in +1798. His fame as a poet grew as the world became acquainted with and +learned to feel the peculiar charm of his poetry, and he was even more +famous, for a while, as a literary critic and a moral philosopher. But +they were years of weak-willed wandering, of vast hazy plans and feeble +performance, lighted only here and there by glimpses of fragmentary +accomplishment, and that seldom in poetry. Keats died at twenty-six, +leaving behind him a body of poetry hardly less wonderful than Coleridge +had fashioned at the same age; and another poet sang of him: + + "The bloom, whose petals, nipt before they blew, + Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste." + +In Coleridge the poet died at nearly the same age, almost as completely +as if the man himself had passed "within the twilight chamber ... of +white Death"; and "Dejection" is that poet's dirge. The remaining years +need therefore but few words. + +Coleridge had taken opium, perhaps as early as his school-days, for +relief from neuralgia. He had recourse to it in March, 1796, for +sleeplessness; in the following November, for relief from violent +nervous pains; and near the close of the Stowey period, in May, 1798, +when the vagaries of Lloyd, the estrangement from Lamb, domestic +anxiety, and physical suffering had reduced him to a state of extreme +nervous wretchedness, he again took refuge in opiates, of which "Kubla +Khan" is partly the result. He returned from Germany in 1799, worked for +a while on a newspaper in London and on a translation of Schiller's +"Wallenstein," and in the summer of 1800 removed to Keswick in +Cumberland, in the Lake Country, where the Wordsworths had already +established themselves. Here, in the autumn of 1800, he strove to +finish "Christabel," and did finish the second part. In the winter and +spring he suffered from a complicated illness, in which he again had +recourse to laudanum; and from the spring of 1801 he was confirmed in +the opium habit, sinking often to pitiful depths of moral and physical +misery. He was in the Mediterranean, chiefly at Malta, from 1804 to +1806. His wife and children remained at Keswick, where Southey and his +family had become co-tenants with them of Greta Hall. Southey, it might +almost be said, took care of Coleridge's family henceforth; for +Coleridge had begun to find his own fireside an intolerable place as +early as 1802, lived little at home, and made a formal separation from +his wife in 1808,--though they saw each other occasionally after that +and the Wedgwood annuity continued to be paid to Mrs. Coleridge. In 1809 +he was living with the Wordsworths at Grasmere, where he wrote several +numbers of a politico-philosophical paper called "The Friend." About the +close of 1810 he was taken in hand by a Mr. and Mrs. Morgan of +Hammersmith, near London, under whose care he kept the opium in check +sufficiently to give his famous lectures on the "Principles of Poetry" +in the winter of 1811-12, and another series in the early summer on +Shakespeare. In the winter following, his play of "Remorse," a recast of +the "Osorio" of 1797, was acted in London with some success. In the +winter of 1813-14 he lectured, in a "conversational" fashion, at +Bristol. He also wrote irregularly for the London papers during these +years. But his studies, since his return from Germany, had been directed +to metaphysics, and especially to the philosophical bases of poetry and +theology; and the last twenty years of his life, at least, were occupied +with plans for a great philosophical work covering these two fields of +thought. One of the fragments of the great work that actually came to +light, the _Biographia Literaria_, seems to have been sent to the +printers in 1815. A collected edition of his poetry was also begun while +he was under the Morgans' care. + +From 1816 till his death in 1834 he lived in comparative peace, if not +in happiness, with a Mr. Gilman of Highgate near London, an apothecary. +Gilman and his wife were able so far to wean him from the drug, or to +regulate his use of it, that he brought to the birth something of his +vast plans in criticism and philosophy, notably the _Biographia +Literaria_ (1817) and the "Aids to Reflection" (1825). The beginning of +his stay with Gilman was also marked by the publication of "Christabel" +and "Kubla Khan" (1816), and of a collected edition of his other poems +(including "The Ancient Mariner," considerably revised) under the title +"Sibylline Leaves" (1817). But the poems that were not finished in the +first great period at Stowey remained unfinished. He talked divinely +("an archangel a little damaged," Lamb said), and both by his talk and +his metaphysical writings profoundly influenced the literature and +philosophy of the century, both in England and America; but the poet in +him was dead. + + "Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain, + And genius given, and knowledge won in vain; + And all which I had culled in woodwalks wild, + And all which patient toil had reared, and all + Commune with _thee_ had opened out--but flowers + Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier, + In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!"[1] + +It would be a mistake to ascribe the paralysis of Coleridge's powers of +constructive imagination exclusively to laudanum. Rather the resort to +narcotics and the inability to control his creative faculty are alike +symptoms of a temperamental malady which had its roots in his nature +close to the seat of that special faculty. Under a favorable conjunction +of outward circumstance and inward state, imagination came; it possessed +him, and he labored in it, happily. Afterwards he could revise what he +had shaped, analyze it philosophically, perfect some details of it, but +he could not proceed in the creative act after the inspiration had left +him. His own description of his nature--"_indolence capable of +energies_"--is accurate as far as it goes. The opium, resorted to often, +no doubt, to quicken the dreams in his brain as well as to relieve his +bodily suffering, helped to enfeeble his will; but the "indolence" was +in him before he became addicted to opium, and he was never "capable of +energies" at the call of duty, but only at the call of his "shaping +spirit," over whose coming and going he had no control. + +Poetically it is perhaps as well. Had he been like his friend Wordsworth +in strength and steadiness of purpose--which is to suppose him another +nature than he was--his life would have been happier and more edifying, +but he would hardly have given us anything better than "Christabel" and +"The Ancient Mariner." Romantic poetry of the higher type is essentially +the creature of mood. Even Wordsworth's long and conscientious labors +produced but a small bulk of poetry of this character, amid dreary +reaches of uninspired preaching. Coleridge waited--in despondency often, +in self-upbraidings, in the temporary deception of opium dreams with +their consequent misery--for the return of the spirit; and it did not +come. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: From the lines addressed to Wordsworth after hearing him +read "The Prelude," in 1807.] + + + + +II. COLERIDGE'S POEMS. + + +"THE ANCIENT MARINER" + +"The Ancient Mariner" was first printed in the first edition of "Lyrical +Ballads," 1798, again with considerable changes in the second edition, +1800, and without further significant change in the editions of 1802 and +1805. Its fifth appearance was in "Sibylline Leaves," 1817, again with +some important changes, and the addition of the Latin motto and the +marginal gloss. In the "Poetical Works," 1828, and again in the +"Poetical Works," 1829, the poem appeared in its final form as we now +have it,--differing very little from the form it had in "Sibylline +Leaves." One or two significant minor changes will be mentioned in the +notes. + +Coleridge's own account of the genesis of the poem, given in the +_Biographia Literaria_ nearly twenty years later, is interesting. +"During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our +conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, +the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence +to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty +by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm, which +accidents of light and shade, which moonlight or sunset, diffused over a +known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability +of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested +itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might +be composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to +be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to +consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of +such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing +them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being +who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself +under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be +chosen from ordinary life; the characters and incidents were to be such +as will be found in every village and its vicinity where there is a +meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them when +they present themselves. + +"In this idea originated the 'Lyrical Ballads'; in which it was agreed +that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters +supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our +inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to +procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of +disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. +Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, +to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a +feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention +from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the wonders and +loveliness of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for +which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, +we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither +feel nor understand. + +"With this view I wrote 'The Ancient Mariner,' and was preparing, among +other poems, 'The Dark Ladie,' and the 'Christabel,' in which I should +have more nearly realized my ideal than I had done in my first attempt. +But Mr. Wordsworth's industry had proved so much more successful, and +the number of his poems so much greater, that my compositions, instead +of forming a balance, appeared rather an interpolation of heterogeneous +matter. Mr. Wordsworth added two or three poems written in his own +character, in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction which is +characteristic of his genius [among them the "Lines composed a few miles +above Tintern Abbey"]. In this form the 'Lyrical Ballads' were +published." + +Lyrical they hardly were, in any current meaning of that word; they were +narrative. But they were ballads as the word was then understood. The +two cardinal points of poetry that Coleridge says they had in view in +this partnership production were both believed to be special marks of +the ballad; the charm of homeliness and simplicity, and the spell of the +supernatural and romantic. Bishop Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English +Poetry," 1765, had created a taste for the traditional poetry of humble +folk. Spreading to Germany and uniting there with the sentimental +sensationalism of the eighteenth century, this taste found expression in +Burger's "Lenore," which in turn had a powerful influence in England, +five distinct translations of it appearing in 1796. Of the distinction +so much insisted on by later analysts of the true popular ballad--its +communal origin, its impersonality, its freedom from adornment, its lack +of conscious art--the Englishman of Coleridge's time took no account. +"The Ancient Mariner" is not a ballad in the sense in which "Sir Patrick +Spens" or "Young Waters" is a ballad. It is in the highest degree a work +of conscious and individual art. It is rather to be classed, like +"Christabel," as a romance. But it was conceived and written under the +influence of the "ballad revival," and bears many marks of that +influence both in its general structure and in its details of +workmanship. + +Much of the archaic diction and antique spelling, as well as the ruder +grotesquerie, that in the first edition proclaimed its relation to the +pseudo-balladry of the time disappeared in the later editions. But the +archaisms, the "unpoetical" diction, and especially the disregard of +tense coherence in the poem as we now have it, contribute greatly to the +atmosphere of romance--as of a story removed alike from the commonplace +experience of every day and from familiar literary conventions--which it +was Coleridge's intention to produce. By a few devotional +ejaculations--"Heaven's Mother send us grace!" "To Mary Queen the praise +be given!"--we are made to feel that the Ancient Mariner lived before +the Reformation, in the ages of wonder and faith. Repetition, as in many +stanzas of Part IV., is a device caught from the folk-ballad and +modified to produce the effect of a spell, which is so strong a mark of +the poem. The abrupt opening, the unannounced transitions in dialogue, +the omission of all but the vital incidents of the story, all belong to +the ballad style. The verse form is what is known as the ballad stanza +(stanza of four lines--a line of four accents followed by one of three, +the second and fourth lines riming) variously extended and modified to +suit the mood of the passage. The prose summary in the form of a +marginal gloss, first added in the edition of 1817, is a practice taken +from early printed books, but not from balladry, which is normally oral. + +Of the literary qualities of the poem much might be said, but I call +attention here to but two: the organic structure of the story and the +character of the imagery, two important aspects of creative imagination. +The seven parts are seven stages of the narrative, each, except the +last, closing with a reference to the Mariner's sin. The story proceeds +like the successive acts of a play. In Part I. the deed is committed; in +Part II. the punishment begins; in Part III. the punishment reaches its +climax. Part IV. brings the "turn"; in the crisis of his sufferings +comes the consciousness of fellowship with other creatures and +repentance for his cruelty. Parts V. and VI. relate his penance begun, +and his return by supernatural agencies to the world of human +fellowship; and Part VII. brings us back to the opening scene, closing +the whole with a moral. The moral is so plainly set forth that one +wonders how Mrs. Barbauld could ever have complained, as Coleridge tells +us she did, that the poem "had no moral." His reply is worth recording: +"I told her that in my opinion the poem had too much; and that the only, +or chief fault, if I might say so, was the obtrusion of the moral +sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle or cause of action in a +work of such pure imagination. It ought to have had no more moral than +the Arabian Nights' tale of the merchant's sitting down to eat dates by +the side of a well, and throwing the shells aside, and lo! a genie +starts up, and says he _must_ kill the aforesaid merchant, because one +of the date shells had, it seems, put out the eye of the genie's son." +But the poet of 1798 knew better than the metaphysician of 1830. The +moral is as essential a part of the whole poem as moral consciousness is +of man; without it the poem would be without the coherence of human +interest which alone can secure for "these shadows of imagination" +"poetic faith." The moral, really, is suffused throughout the work, is +the blood of its being; that it should be formulated at the close is +quite in accord with the simplicity which marked the whole conception of +the "Lyrical Ballads," and is moreover perfectly harmonious with the +spirit of the poem itself. There have been poets who seemed to be +without the moral sense, and who have written poetry quite free from any +moral, like Poe and his landscape visions, but wonderful as they are, +they are abnormal, and are less great as they are less completely human. +It may be that Wordsworth, as one infers from recollections of the +composition of the poem, suggested the moral plot; but if so it entered +at once and completely into Coleridge's imagination and governed the +shaping of the poem from the start. In all the very considerable changes +and omissions that the poem underwent after it was first printed, there +was none that either retrenched from or added to the moral +interpretation of the tale. + +Of its imagery the most evident characteristic is what may be called the +anthropomorphic treatment of nature. This, although in accord with +modern conceptions of primitive culture, is not at all a mark of the +popular ballad. Sun, and moon, and storm-wind, and ocean are in +folk-song sun and moon and wind and water and nothing more; but in "The +Ancient Mariner" they are living beings. + + "And now the Storm-blast came, and he + Was tyrannous and strong: + He struck with his o'ertaking wings, + And chased us south along." + + "And straight the Sun was flecked with bars, + (Heaven's Mother send us grace!) + As if through a dungeon-grate he peered + With broad and burning face." + + "Still as a slave before his lord, + The ocean hath no blast; + His great bright eye most silently + Up to the Moon is cast-- + + "If he may know which way to go; + For she guides him smooth or grim. + See, brother, see! how graciously + She looketh down on him." + +This is the most noticeable of the "modifying colours of imagination" +in "The Ancient Mariner." The practice might be classed as a sort of +personification; but how utterly different in its effect from the +conventional "literary" personifications of the eighteenth century--of +Gray in the "Elegy," for instance! Grandeur, and Envy, and Honour, in +that admirable poem, are not real persons to the imagination; the +abstraction remains an abstraction. But in Coleridge's poem all nature +is alive with the life of men. Other elements of "that synthetic and +magical power to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of +imagination," and which blends "the idea with the image" and "the sense +of novelty and freshness with old and familiar objects" will be felt as +the poem is studied. + +Wordsworth related in after years that the suggestion for the poem came +from a dream of a phantom ship told to Coleridge by a friend, and that +he (Wordsworth) proposed the shooting of the albatross, the revenge of +the "tutelary spirits," and the "navigation of the ship by the dead +men," and contributed the fourth stanza of the poem and the last two +lines of the first stanza of Part IV. He had been reading Shelvocke's +"Voyages," a book in which he had found a description of albatrosses as +they are seen in far southern waters. Other reading that may have +suggested some of the scenery is described in the "Notes" to the Globe +edition of Coleridge's poems. There are also passages and situations in +the last two acts of Wordsworth's play, "The Borderers," which Coleridge +read with great admiration in the summer of 1797, that have evident +kinship with "The Ancient Mariner," and Wordsworth's "Peter Bell" +(composed at Alfoxden, but printed many years later) suggests what the +story might have become if Coleridge instead of Wordsworth had withdrawn +from collaboration. + + + + +"CHRISTABEL" AND "KUBLA KHAN" + + +"Christabel" and "Kubla Khan" were first printed in 1816, in a pamphlet +along with "The Pains of Sleep," a sort of contrast to "Kubla Khan" +composed in 1803. In the Preface to this pamphlet Coleridge informs us +that the first part of "Christabel" was written at Stowey in 1797 and +the second part at Keswick, Cumberland, in 1800. The poem was intended +originally for the "Lyrical Ballads," and it was with the hope of +finishing it for the second edition that Coleridge took it up again in +the fall of 1800. There is a good deal of uncertainty as to just how +much of the work was done at that time. In two letters of that period he +speaks of it as "running up to 1300 lines," and "swelled into a poem of +1400 lines," so that it is no longer suitable for the "Lyrical Ballads"; +but hardly half of this amount was printed in the 1816 pamphlet or has +ever been found since. One suspects that already in 1800 dreams and +projects had begun to be confounded with performance. In the latter of +the two letters mentioned above he relates how his "verse-making +faculties returned" to him, after long and unsuccessful struggles with +"barrenness" and deep "dejection," as the result of drinking, "at the +house of a neighbouring clergyman, ... so much wine, that I found some +effort and dexterity requisite to balance myself on the hither edge of +sobriety." On the whole, it seems probable that "Christabel" owes little +to the forced efforts of his first year in the Lake country. Like most +of the other poems in this volume, it is a product of the great year at +Stowey. He himself told a friend in later years: "I had the whole of the +two cantos in my mind before I began it," adding very truly, "certainly +the first canto is more perfect, has more of the true wild weird spirit +than the last." + +Down to the close of his life he dreamed of finishing this work. He +amused his listeners at Highgate with a continuation of the plot; and +in 1833 he declared that if he "were perfectly free from vexation and +were in the _ad libitum_ hearing of fine music" he could yet finish +"Christabel," "for I have, as I always had, the whole plan entire from +beginning to end in my mind; but I fear I could not carry on with equal +success the execution of the idea." Wordsworth had a different +recollection. He told Coleridge's nephew in 1836 that he did not think +Coleridge "had ever conceived, in his own mind, any definite plan for +it; that the poem had been composed while they were in habits of daily +intercourse, and almost in his presence, and when there was the most +unreserved intercourse between them as to all their literary projects +and productions, and he had never heard from him any plan for finishing +it"; and added, what is fully borne out by a study of Coleridge's life: +"schemes of this sort passed rapidly and vividly through his mind, and +so impressed him, that he often fancied he had arranged things, which +really, and upon trial, proved to be mere embryos." + + "The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower + Unfinished must remain," + +wrote Longfellow, alluding to "The Dolliver Romance" that Hawthorne left +incomplete at his death. There is strong kinship, moral and artistic, +between Coleridge and Hawthorne; both believed that the heart is more +than the head, and neither could force his imagination to work under +unfavorable conditions. But Hawthorne's failure of imagination came at +the end of a fruitful and consistent career, and his life failed with +it; in Coleridge the poet died half a lifetime before the man, and left +the man--the preacher and philosopher--to lament his loss. + +Whether or not Coleridge had the story complete in his mind, what we +have is a fragment, and does not enable us to divine, as some broken +statues do, the plan of the whole. What it gives us is the romantic +mood, the sense of "witchery by daylight," and this it does more +hauntingly than anything else in the English language. It is a series +of magical and unforgetable pictures. It owes a good deal to the old +verse romances and ballads that so impressed the imagination in those +days of the mediaeval revival, but it was itself a far stronger +influence. It operated as an original force, both by its form and by its +spirit, upon the poetic imagination of the first half of the nineteenth +century more widely and deeply than the work of any other man, Burns and +Keats not excepted. Scott heard it read from manuscript, and the "Lay of +the Last Minstrel," with the series of verse romances that followed, may +almost be called a result of that reading; the verse form of Scott's +romances certainly is. Poe's poetry is as far as the poles removed from +Scott's; yet a close study of Poe's work shows the influence of +"Christabel" to be even deeper here than in the "Lay of the Last +Minstrel." + +Coleridge was fully aware of a special power, both of imagination and of +verse-music, in the poem. His attempts to complete it in 1800 brought +persistently to his mind the project of a philosophy of poetry, and +especially of this poem, as we may infer from a letter to Poole in +March, 1801: "I shall ... immediately publish my 'Christabel,' with two +essays annexed to it, on the 'Preternatural' and on 'Metre.'" When the +two cantos were at last printed in 1816, Coleridge wrote in the Preface: +"The metre of the 'Christabel' is not, properly speaking, irregular, +though it may seem so from its being founded on a new principle: namely, +that of counting in each line the accents, not the syllables. Though the +latter may vary from seven to twelve, yet in each line the accents will +be found to be only four. Nevertheless this occasional variation in +number of syllables is not introduced wantonly, or for the mere ends of +convenience, but in correspondence with some transition, in the nature +of the imagery or passion." This is not to be taken quite literally. The +accentual principle was assuredly nothing new in English verse, and +syllable-counting, though introduced by Chaucer, had to be reintroduced +by the Renaissance poets and did not become an unquestioned convention +till the latter part of the seventeenth century. But the return to free +accentual verse in the "Christabel" was an innovation at the beginning +of the nineteenth century. It is to be noted, too, that there are lines +of three and even of two accents in Part I. + +In chap. XV. of the _Biographia Literaria_, in a list of the "specific +symptoms of poetic power" in Shakespeare's early work, Coleridge places +first "the perfect sweetness of the versification; its adaptation to the +subject; and the power displayed in varying the march of the words.... +The sense of musical delight, with the power of producing it, is a gift +of imagination; and this, together with the power of reducing multitude +into unity of effect, and modifying a series of thoughts by some one +predominant thought or feeling, may be cultivated and improved, but can +never be learnt. It is in these that _Poeta nascitur non fit_." + +"Kubla Khan" is the remembered fragment of a dream. All that we know +about it is contained in the note Coleridge prefixed to it in the +pamphlet of 1816. In the summer of 1798 (Coleridge says 1797, but this +seems to have been a slip of his memory[1]) "the author, then in ill +health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, +on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a +slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects +of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading +the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in 'Purchas's +Pilgrimage': 'Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a +stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were +inclosed with a wall.' The author continued for about three hours in a +profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he +has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than +from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called +composition in which all the images rose up before him as _things_, +with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any +sensation or consciousness of effort. On awaking he appeared to himself +to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, +and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here +preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on +business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his +return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, +that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the +general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or +ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the +images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, +alas! without the after restoration of the latter!" + +Opinion will ever vary as to its poetic worth. Coleridge himself +professed to consider it "rather as a psychological curiosity" than as a +thing "of any supposed _poetic_ merits"; to Lamb he repeated it "so +enchantingly that it irradiates and brings heaven and elysian bowers +into any parlour when he sings or says it," and it has been a sort of +touchstone of romantic taste ever since. It supremely illustrates that +"sense of musical delight, with the power of producing it," which the +poet declared to be a gift of the imagination that can never be learnt. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: See notes to this poem in the Globe edition, and E.H. +Coleridge's "Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge," Vol. I, p. 245, note.] + + + + +"FRANCE: AN ODE" + + +This ode was written in February, 1798, and first printed in the +"Morning Post" for April 16 of that year, under the significant title of +"Recantation." In the autumn it was printed with its present title in a +pamphlet together with "Fears in Solitude," another political poem, and +"Frost at Midnight," a poem on his infant child. In October, 1802, it +was reprinted in the "Post" with a prose "Argument" (see notes), less +necessary for the readers of that time than it may be now. Coleridge, +like Wordsworth, had welcomed the French Revolution as ushering in an +era of light and love in human society; both, though Wordsworth more +profoundly, had been depressed by the excesses of 1793-4, and by the +lust of conquest which became more and more evident under the Directory; +and when at last in February, 1798, the French armies invaded +Switzerland, the ancient sacred home of liberty in Europe, Coleridge +"recanted" in this ode. + +Political poetry is likely to lose its power with the passing of the +events and passions that give it birth; it retains its power just in +proportion as it is built on lasting and universal interests of the +heart of man. That "France" has retained its position as one of the +great odes of the English language is due not only to the loftiness of +its thought and the splendor of its imagery, but even more to the fact +that it turns from the political excitement of the hour to the grandeur +and beauty of nature and to those aspirations and ideals whose home is +"in the heart of man." + + + + +"LOVE" + + +From the second edition of "Lyrical Ballads," 1800. It was planned by +Coleridge as an introduction to the ballad of "The Dark Ladie," which +was never completed, but of which some fifteen stanzas were printed in +the 1834 edition of his "Poetical Works." Its composition cannot be +accurately dated. It is conceived in the general spirit of the ballads +but is simpler, more purely a poem of sentiment, than either +"Christabel" or "The Ancient Mariner," and makes no use of the +supernatural. Its simplicity and absolute purity of tone are, however, +something more than a negative virtue. Coleridge himself declared of it +and "The Ancient Mariner" that they might be excelled, but could not be +imitated. + + + + +"DEJECTION: AN ODE" + + +This ode was written in April, 1802, at a time when, after sickness, +opium, domestic unhappiness and the consequent paralysis of his poetic +faculty had driven him to seek distraction in the study of metaphysics, +he made a visit to Wordsworth at Dove Cottage and in that vitalizing +presence experienced a brief return of his powers--enough to give +wonderful expression to perhaps the saddest thoughts that ever visited +ungoverned genius. The earliest known form of the poem, preserved in a +letter to W. Sotheby of July 19, 1802, shows (what is apparent enough to +one familiar with the relations existing between the two poets) that it +was conceived as a letter to Wordsworth, who is addressed in this +earliest version as "Dearest Poet," "Wordsworth," and "William." It was +first printed in the "Morning Post" for October 4, 1802, with "Edmund" +for Wordsworth's name and with some omissions, but with the strong +personal feeling undiminished; and in its present form (that is, with +the parts omitted in the 1802 print restored, but with the substitution +of "Lady" for "Edmund" and with numerous other omissions and changes, +notably in the last stanza, all tending to depersonalize the poem) in +"Sibylline Leaves," 1816. In 1810 a hint given by Wordsworth, with the +best intentions, to a third person concerning the real nature of +Coleridge's troubles, was reported, or rather misreported, to Coleridge, +and an estrangement fraught with deep grief to both ensued. The breach +was healed, as much as such wounds may be, by the mediation of a common +friend in 1812; but the old glad and fruitful fellowship could never be +restored. Coleridge wrote to Poole, February 13, 1813: "A reconciliation +has taken place, but the _feeling_, which I had previous to that moment, +... that, I fear, never can return. All outward actions, all inward +wishes, all thoughts and admirations will be the same--_are_ the same, +but--aye, there remains an immedicable _But_." + +"Dejection" is distinguished from the other poems in this volume by +containing, along with its wonderful interpretation of outward nature +into harmony with his own else unutterable sadness, Coleridge's--and +perhaps all poets'--essential philosophy of poetry. It was natural that +the metaphysics in which he had been immersed should color his thought; +but literature affords few if any instances of metaphysics so +transformed into poetry in the crucible of feeling as is afforded by +stanza V. of this ode. + + + + +"YOUTH AND AGE" AND "WORK WITHOUT HOPE" + + +In these two poems Coleridge has left a record of the sadness of a life +lived + +"In darkness, with the light of youth gone out," + +or returning only in glimpses that showed what he had lost. In these +latter years he was busy enough in an incoherent, visionary fashion, and +did even write and publish (though in characteristically fragmentary +form) a work that made a great impression on young men in the second +quarter of the century, his "Aids to Reflection"; but his activity was +philosophical and theological, not poetic, and even in that field the +product fell far short of his plans and promises. The inner and real +life of the man is revealed, now as always, in his poetry; and amidst +what profound dejection it glimmers on, these two brief poems show. + +"Youth and Age" was written in 1823--"an _air_ that whizzed ... right +across the diameter of my brain ... over the summit of Quantock at +earliest dawn just between the nightingale that I stopt to hear in the +copse at the foot of Quantock, and the first sky-lark that was a +song-fountain, dashing up and sparkling to the ear's eye, ... out of +sight, over the cornfields on the descent of the mountain on the other +side--out of sight, tho' twice I beheld its mute shoot downward in the +sunshine like a falling star of silver"--so he described the conception +of the poem in the original MS., printed by Mr. Campbell in the Notes to +the Globe edition. It was a flash of poignant memory of the old days at +Stowey. The first thirty-eight lines were printed in 1828, and the whole +poem (including the last six lines, which were not in the original +draft) in 1834. + +"Work Without Hope" was written, Coleridge says, "on the 21st February, +1827," and was first printed in 1828. + + + + +THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER + + + + +THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER + + +IN SEVEN PARTS + + +Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum +universitate. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit? et gradus +et cognationes et discrimina et singulorum munera? Quid agunt? quae loca +habitant? Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit ingenium humanum, nunquam +attigit. Juvat, interea, non diffiteor, quandoque in animo, tanquam in +tabula, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contemplari: ne mens +assuefacta hodiernae vitae minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat +in pusillas cogitationes. Sed veritati interea invigilandum est, +modusque servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a nocte, distinguamus--T. +BURNET, _Archaeol. Phil_, p. 68. + + + +PART I + +[Sidenote: An ancient Mariner meeteth three Gallants bidden to a +wedding-feast, and detaineth one.] + + It is an ancient Mariner, + And he stoppeth one of three. + "By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, + Now wherefore stopp'st thou me? + + The bridegroom's doors are opened wide, 5 + And I am next of kin; + The guests are met, the feast is set: + May'st hear the merry din." + + He holds him with his skinny hand, + "There was a ship," quoth he. 10 + "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!" + Eftsoons his hand dropt he. + +[Sidenote: The Wedding-Guest is spellbound by the eye of the old +seafaring man, and constrained to hear his tale.] + + He holds him with his glittering eye-- + The Wedding-Guest stood still, + And listens like a three years' child: 15 + The Mariner hath his will. + + The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone: + He cannot choose but hear; + And thus spake on that ancient man, + The bright-eyed Mariner. 20 + + "The ship was cheered, the harbor cleared, + Merrily did we drop + Below the kirk, below the hill, + Below the lighthouse top. + +[Sidenote: The Mariner tells how the ship sailed southward with a good +wind and fair weather, till it reached the Line.] + + The sun came up upon the left, 25 + Out of the sea came he! + And he shone bright, and on the right + Went down into the sea. + + Higher and higher every day, + Till over the mast at noon--" 30 + The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast, + For he heard the loud bassoon. + +[Sidenote: The Wedding-Guest heareth the bridal music; but the Mariner +continueth his tale.] + + The bride hath paced into the hall, + Red as a rose is she; + Nodding their heads before her goes 35 + The merry minstrelsy. + + The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast, + Yet he cannot choose but hear; + And thus spake on that ancient man, + The bright-eyed Mariner. 40 + +[Sidenote: The ship driven by a storm toward the south pole.] + + "And now the Storm-blast came, and he + Was tyrannous and strong: + He struck with his o'ertaking wings, + And chased us south along. + + With sloping masts and dipping prow, 45 + As who pursued with yell and blow + Still treads the shadow of his foe, + And forward bends his head, + The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, + And southward aye we fled. 50 + + And now there came both mist and snow, + And it grew wondrous cold: + And ice, mast-high, came floating by, + As green as emerald. + +[Sidenote: The land of ice, and of fearful sounds where no living thing +was to be seen.] + + And through the drifts the snowy clifts 55 + Did send a dismal sheen: + Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken-- + The ice was all between. + + The ice was here, the ice was there, + The ice was all around: 60 + It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, + Like noises in a swound! + +[Sidenote: Till a great sea-bird, called the Albatross, came through the +snow-fog, and was received with great joy and hospitality.] + + At length did cross an Albatross, + Thorough the fog it came; + As if it had been a Christian soul, 65 + We hailed it in God's name. + + It ate the food it ne'er had eat, + And round and round it flew. + The ice did split with a thunder-fit; + The helmsman steered us through! 70 + +[Sidenote: And lo! the Albatross proveth a bird of good omen, and +followeth the ship as it returned northward through fog and floating +ice.] + + And a good south wind sprung up behind; + The Albatross did follow, + And every day, for food or play, + Came to the mariners' hollo! + + In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, 75 + It perched for vespers nine; + Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, + Glimmered the white moon-shine." + +[Sidenote: The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of +good omen.] + + "God save thee, ancient Mariner! + From the fiends, that plague thee thus!-- 80 + Why look'st thou so?"--"With my cross-bow + I shot the Albatross. + + + +PART II + + The Sun now rose upon the right: + Out of the sea came he, + Still hid in mist, and on the left 85 + Went down into the sea. + + And the good south wind still blew behind, + But no sweet bird did follow, + Nor any day for food or play + Came to the mariners' hollo! 90 + +[Sidenote: His shipmates cry out against the ancient Mariner, for +killing the bird of good luck.] + + And I had done a hellish thing, + And it would work 'em woe: + For all averred, I had killed the bird + That made the breeze to blow. + Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, 95 + That made the breeze to blow! + +[Sidenote: But when the fog cleared off, they justify the same, and thus +make themselves accomplices in the crime.] + + Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, + The glorious Sun uprist: + Then all averred, I had killed the bird + That brought the fog and mist. 100 + 'T was right, said they, such birds to slay, + That bring the fog and mist. + +[Sidenote: The fair breeze continues; the ship enters the Pacific Ocean, +and sails northward, even till it reaches the Line.] + + The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, + The furrow followed free; + We were the first that ever burst 105 + Into that silent sea. + +[Sidenote: The ship hath been suddenly becalmed.] + + Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, + 'T was sad as sad could be; + And we did speak only to break + The silence of the sea! 110 + + All in a hot and copper sky, + The bloody Sun, at noon, + Right up above the mast did stand, + No bigger than the Moon. + + Day after day, day after day, 115 + We stuck, nor breath nor motion; + As idle as a painted ship + Upon a painted ocean. + +[Sidenote: And the Albatross begins to be avenged.] + + Water, water, every where, + And all the boards did shrink; 120 + Water, water, every where + Nor any drop to drink. + + The very deep did rot: O Christ! + That ever this should be! + Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs 125 + Upon the slimy sea. + + About, about, in reel and rout + The death-fires danced at night; + The water, like a witch's oils, + Burnt green, and blue and white. 130 + +[Sidenote: A Spirit had followed them: one of the invisible inhabitants +of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels, concerning whom the +learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael +Psellus, may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no +climate or element without one or more.] + + And some in dreams assured were + Of the Spirit that plagued us so; + Nine fathom deep he had followed us + From the land of mist and snow. + + And every tongue, through utter drought, 135 + Was withered at the root; + We could not speak, no more than if + We had been choked with soot. + +[Sidenote: The shipmates, in their sore distress, would fain throw the +whole guilt on the ancient Mariner: in sign whereof they hang the dead +sea-bird round his neck.] + + Ah! well-a-day! what evil looks + Had I from old and young! 140 + Instead of the cross, the Albatross + About my neck was hung. + + + +PART III + +[Sidenote: The ancient Mariner beholdeth a sign in the element afar +off.] + + There passed a weary time. Each throat + Was parched, and glazed each eye. + A weary time! a weary time! 145 + How glazed each weary eye, + When looking westward, I beheld + A something in the sky. + + At first it seemed a little speck, + And then it seemed a mist; 150 + It moved and moved, and took at last + A certain shape, I wist. + + A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist! + And still it neared and neared: + As if it dodged a water-sprite, 155 + It plunged and tacked and veered. + +[Sidenote: At its nearer approach, it seemeth him to be a ship; and at a +dear ransom he freeth his speech from the bonds of thirst.] + + With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, + We could nor laugh nor wail; + Through utter drought all dumb we stood! + I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, 160 + And cried, A sail! a sail! + +With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, +Agape they heard me call: + +[Sidenote: A flash of joy;] + +[Sidenote: And horror follows. For can it be a ship that comes onward +without wind or tide?] + + Gramercy! they for joy did grin, + And all at once their breath drew in, 165 + As they were drinking all. + + + See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more! + Hither to work us weal; + Without a breeze, without a tide, + She steadies with upright keel! 170 + + The western wave was all a-flame. + The day was well nigh done! + Almost upon the western wave + Rested the broad bright Sun; + When that strange shape drove suddenly 175 + Betwixt us and the Sun; + +[Sidenote: It seemeth him but the skeleton of a ship.] + + And straight the Sun was flecked with bars, + (Heaven's Mother send us grace!) + As if through a dungeon-grate he peered + With broad and burning face. 180 + + Alas (thought I, and my heart beat loud) + How fast she nears and nears! + Are those her sails that glance in the Sun, + Like restless gossameres? + +[Sidenote: And its ribs are seen as bars on the face of the setting Sun. +The Spectre-Woman and her Deathmate, and no other on board the +skeleton-ship.] + + Are those her ribs through which the Sun 185 + Did peer, as through a grate? + And is that Woman all her crew? + Is that a Death? and are there two? + Is Death that woman's mate? + +[Sidenote: Like vessel, like crew!] + + Her lips were red, her looks were free, 190 + Her locks were yellow as gold: + Her skin was as white as leprosy, + The Night-mare Life-in-Death was she, + Who thicks man's blood with cold. + +[Sidenote: Death and Life-in-Death have diced for the ship's crew, and +she (the latter) winneth the ancient Mariner.] + + The naked hulk alongside came, 195 + And the twain were casting dice; + 'The game is done! I've won! I've won!' + Quoth she, and whistles thrice. + +[Sidenote: No twilight within the courts of the Sun.] + + The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out; + At one stride comes the dark; 200 + With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea, + Off shot the spectre-bark. + +[Sidenote: At the rising of the moon.] + + We listened and looked sideways up! + Fear at my heart, as at a cup, + My life-blood seemed to sip! 205 + The stars were dim, and thick the night, + The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white; + From the sails the dew did drip-- + Till clomb above the eastern bar + The horned Moon, with one bright star 210 + Within the nether tip. + +[Sidenote: One after another,] + + One after one, by the star-dogged Moon, + Too quick for groan or sigh, + Each turned his face with a ghastly pang, + And cursed me with his eye. 215 + +[Sidenote: His shipmates drop down dead.] + + Four times fifty living men, + (And I heard nor sigh nor groan) + With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, + They dropped down one by one. + +[Sidenote: But Life-in-Death begins her work on the ancient Mariner.] + + The souls did from their bodies fly,-- 220 + They fled to bliss or woe! + And every soul, it passed me by, + Like the whizz of my cross-bow!" + + + +PART IV + +[Sidenote: The Wedding-Guest feareth that a Spirit is talking to him;] + + "I Fear thee, ancient Mariner! + I fear thy skinny hand! 225 + And thou art long, and lank, and brown, + As is the ribbed sea-sand. + + I fear thee and thy glittering eye, + And thy skinny hand, so brown."-- + "Fear me not, fear not, thou wedding-guest! 230 + This body dropt not down. + +[Sidenote: But the ancient Mariner assureth him of his bodily life, and +proceedeth to relate his horrible penance.] + + Alone, alone, all, all alone, + Alone on the wide, wide sea! + And never a saint took pity on + My soul in agony. 235 + +[Sidenote: He despiseth the creatures of the calm.] + + The many men, so beautiful! + And they all dead did lie: + And a thousand thousand slimy things + Lived on; and so did I. + +[Sidenote: And envieth that they should live, and so many lie dead.] + + I looked upon the rotting sea, 240 + And drew my eyes away; + I looked upon the rotting deck, + And there the dead men lay. + + I looked to heaven, and tried to pray; + But or ever a prayer had gusht, 245 + A wicked whisper came, and made + My heart as dry as dust. + + I closed my lids, and kept them close, + And the balls like pulses beat; + For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky 250 + Lay like a load on my weary eye, + And the dead were at my feet. + +[Sidenote: But the curse liveth for him in the eye of the dead men.] + + The cold sweat melted from their limbs, + Nor rot nor reek did they: + The look with which they looked on me + Had never passed away. + + An orphan's curse would drag to hell + A spirit from on high; + But oh! more horrible than that + Is a curse in a dead man's eye! + Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, + And yet I could not die. + +[Sidenote: In his loneliness and fixedness he yearneth towards the +journeying Moon, and the stars that still sojourn, yet still move +onward; and every where the blue sky belongs to them, and is their +appointed rest, and their native country and their own natural homes, +which they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected and +yet there is a silent joy at their arrival.] + + The moving Moon went up the sky, + And nowhere did abide: + Softly she was going up, + And a star or two beside-- + + Her beams bemocked the sultry main, + Like April hoar-frost spread; + But where the ship's huge shadow lay, + The charmed water burnt alway + A still and awful red. + +[Sidenote: By the light of the Moon he beholdeth God's creatures of the +great calm.] + + Beyond the shadow of the ship, + I watched the water-snakes: + They moved in tracks of shining white, + And when they reared, the elfish light + Fell off in hoary flakes. + + Within the shadow of the ship + I watched their rich attire: + Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, + They coiled and swam; and every track 280 + Was a flash of golden fire. + +[Sidenote: Their beauty and their happiness.] + +[Sidenote: He blesseth them in his heart.] + + O happy living things! no tongue + Their beauty might declare: + A spring of love gushed from my heart, + And I blessed them unaware: 285 + Sure my kind saint took pity on me, + And I blessed them unaware. + +[Sidenote: The spell begins to break.] + + The selfsame moment I could pray; + And from my neck so free + The Albatross fell off, and sank 290 + Like lead into the sea. + + + +PART V + + Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing, + Beloved from pole to pole! + To Mary Queen the praise be given! + She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, 295 + That slid into my soul. + +[Sidenote: By grace of the holy Mother, the ancient Mariner is refreshed +with rain.] + + The silly buckets on the deck, + That had so long remained, + I dreamt that they were filled with dew; + And when I awoke, it rained. 300 + + My lips were wet, my throat was cold, + My garments all were dank; + Sure I had drunken in my dreams, + And still my body drank. + + I moved, and could not feel my limbs: 305 + I was so light--almost + I thought that I had died in sleep, + And was a blessed ghost. + +[Sidenote: He heareth sounds and seeth strange sights and commotions in +the sky and the element.] + + And soon I heard a roaring wind: + It did not come anear; 310 + But with its sound it shook the sails, + That were so thin and sere. + + The upper air burst into life! + And a hundred fire-flags sheen, + To and fro they were hurried about! 315 + And to and fro, and in and out, + The wan stars danced between. + + And the coming wind did roar more loud, + And the sails did sigh like sedge; + And the rain poured down from one black cloud; 320 + The Moon was at its edge. + + The thick black cloud was cleft, and still + The Moon was at its side. + Like waters shot from some high crag, + The lightning fell with never a jag, 325 + A river steep and wide. + +[Sidenote: The bodies of the ship's crew are inspired, and the ship +moves on;] + + The loud wind never reached the ship, + Yet now the ship moved on! + Beneath the lightning and the Moon + The dead men gave a groan. 330 + + They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, + Nor spake, nor moved their eyes; + It had been strange, even in a dream, + To have seen those dead men rise. + + The helmsman steered, the ship moved on; 335 + Yet never a breeze up blew; + The mariners all 'gan work the ropes, + Where they were wont to do; + They raised their limbs like lifeless tools-- + We were a ghastly crew. 340 + + The body of my brother's son + Stood by me, knee to knee: + The body and I pulled at one rope, + But he said nought to me." + +[Sidenote: But not by the souls of the men, nor by daemons of earth or +middle air, but by a blessed troop of angelic spirits, sent down by the +invocation of the guardian saint.] + + "I fear thee, ancient Mariner!" 345 + "Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest! + 'T was not those souls that fled in pain, + Which to their corses came again, + But a troop of spirits blest: + + For when it dawned--they dropped their arms, + And clustered round the mast; 350 + Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, + And from their bodies passed. + + Around, around, flew each sweet sound, + Then darted to the Sun; 355 + Slowly the sounds came back again, + Now mixed, now one by one. + + Sometimes a-dropping from the sky + I heard the sky-lark sing; + Sometimes all little birds that are, 350 + How they seemed to fill the sea and air + With their sweet jargoning! + + And now 't was like all instruments, + Now like a lonely flute; + And now it is an angel's song, 365 + That makes the heavens be mute. + + It ceased; yet still the sails made on + A pleasant noise till noon, + A noise like of a hidden brook + In the leafy month of June, 370 + That to the sleeping woods all night + Singeth a quiet tune. + + Till noon we quietly sailed on, + Yet never a breeze did breathe: + Slowly and smoothly went the ship, 375 + Moved onward from beneath. + +[Sidenote: The lonesome Spirit from the south-pole carries on the ship +as far as the Line, in obedience to the angelic troop, but still +requireth vengeance.] + + Under' the keel nine fathom deep, + From the land of mist and snow, + The spirit slid: and it was he + That made the ship to go. 380 + The sails at noon left off their tune, + And the ship stood still also. + + The Sun, right up above the mast, + Had fixed her to the ocean: + But in a minute she 'gan stir, 385 + With a short uneasy motion-- + Backwards and forwards half her length + With a short uneasy motion. + + Then like a pawing horse let go, + She made a sudden bound: 390 + It flung the blood into my head, + And I fell down in a swound. + +[Sidenote: The Polar Spirit's fellow-daemons, the invisible inhabitants +of the element, take part in his wrong; and two of them relate, one to +the other, that penance long and heavy for the ancient Mariner hath been +accorded to the Polar Spirit, who returneth southward.] + + How long in that same fit I lay, + I have not to declare; + But ere my living life returned, 395 + I heard and in my soul discerned + Two voices in the air. + + 'Is it he?' quoth one, 'Is this the man? + By him who died on cross, + With his cruel bow he laid full low 400 + The harmless Albatross. + + The spirit who bideth by himself + In the land of mist and snow, + He loved the bird that loved the man + Who shot him with his bow?' 405 + + The other was a softer voice, + As soft as honey-dew: + Quoth he, 'The man hath penance done, + And penance more will do.' + + + +PART VI + +FIRST VOICE + + 'But tell me, tell me! speak again, 410 + Thy soft response renewing-- + What makes that ship drive on so fast? + What is the ocean doing?' + +SECOND VOICE + + 'Still as a slave before his lord, + The ocean hath no blast; 415 + His great bright eye most silently + Up to the Moon is cast-- + + If he may know which way to go; + For she guides him smooth or grim. + See, brother, see! how graciously 420 + She looketh down on him.' + +FIRST VOICE + +[Sidenote: The Mariner hath been cast into a trance; for the angelic +power causeth the vessel to drive northward faster than human life could +endure.] + + 'But why drives on that ship so fast? + Without or wave or wind?' + +SECOND VOICE + + 'The air is cut away before, + And closes from behind. 425 + + Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high! + Or we shall be belated: + For slow and slow that ship will go, + When the Mariner's trance is abated. + +[Sidenote: The supernatural motion is retarded; the Mariner awakes, and +his penance begins anew.] + + I woke, and we were sailing on 430 + As in a gentle weather: + 'T was night, calm night, the moon was high, + The dead men stood together. + + All stood together on the deck, + For a charnel-dungeon fitter: 435 + All fixed on me their stony eyes, + That in the Moon did glitter. + + The pang, the curse, with which they died, + Had never passed away: + I could not draw my eyes from theirs, 440 + Nor turn them up to pray. + +[Sidenote: The curse is finally expiated.] + + And now this spell was snapt: once more + I viewed the ocean green, + And looked far forth, yet little saw + Of what had else been seen-- 445 + + Like one, that on a lonesome road + Doth walk in fear and dread, + And having once turned round walks on, + And turns no more his head; + Because he knows, a frightful fiend 450 + Doth close behind him tread. + + But soon there breathed a wind on me, + Nor sound nor motion made: + Its path was not upon the sea, + In ripple or in shade. 455 + + It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek + Like a meadow-gale of spring-- + It mingled strangely with my fears, + Yet it felt like a welcoming. + + Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship, 460 + Yet she sailed softly too: + Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze-- + On me alone it blew. + +[Sidenote: And the ancient Mariner beholdeth his native country.] + + Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed + The light-house top I see? 465 + Is this the hill? is this the kirk? + Is this mine own countree? + + We drifted o'er the harbor-bar, + And I with sobs did pray-- + O let me be awake, my God! 470 + Or let me sleep alway. + + The harbor-bay was clear as glass, + So smoothly it was strewn! + And on the bay the moonlight lay, + And the shadow of the Moon. 475 + + The rock shone bright, the kirk no less, + That stands above the rock: + The moonlight steeped in silentness + The steady weathercock. + + And the bay was white with silent light 480 + Till rising from the same, + +[Sidenote: The angelic spirits leave the dead bodies,] + + Full many shapes, that shadows were, + In crimson colors came. + +[Sidenote: And appear in their own forms of light.] + + A little distance from the prow + Those crimson shadows were: 485 + I turned my eyes upon the deck-- + Oh, Christ! what saw I there! + + Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat, + And, by the holy rood! + A man all light, a seraph-man, 490 + On every corse there stood. + + This seraph-band, each waved his hand: + It was a heavenly sight! + They stood as signals to the land, + Each one a lovely light; 495 + + This seraph-band, each waved his hand, + No voice did they impart-- + No voice; but oh! the silence sank + Like music on my heart. + + But soon I heard the dash of oars, 500 + I heard the Pilot's cheer; + My head was turned perforce away, + And I saw a boat appear. + + The Pilot and the Pilot's boy, + I heard them coming fast: 505 + Dear Lord in Heaven! it was a joy + The dead men could not blast. + + I saw a third--I heard his voice: + It is the Hermit good! + He singeth loud his godly hymns 510 + That he makes in the wood. + He'll shrieve my soul, he'll wash away + The Albatross's blood. + + + +PART VII + +[Sidenote: The Hermit of the Wood,] + + This Hermit good lives in that wood + Which slopes down to the sea. 515 + How loudly his sweet voice he rears! + He loves to talk with marineres + That come from a far countree. + + He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve-- + He hath a cushion plump: 520 + It is the moss that wholly hides + The rotted old oak-stump. + + The skiff-boat neared: I heard them talk, + 'Why, this is strange, I trow! + Where are those lights, so many and fair, 525 + That signal made but now?' + +[Sidenote: Approacheth the ship with wonder.] + + 'Strange, by my faith!' the Hermit said-- + 'And they answered not our cheer! + The planks looked warped! and see those sails, + How thin they are and sere! 530 + I never saw aught like to them, + Unless perchance it were + + Brown skeletons of leaves that lag + My forest-brook along; + When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow, 535 + And the owlet whoops to the wolf below, + That eats the she-wolf's young.' + + 'Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look-- + (The Pilot made reply) + I am a-feared'--'Push on, push on!' 540 + Said the Hermit cheerily. + + The boat came closer to the ship, + But I nor spake nor stirred; + The boat came close beneath the ship, + And straight a sound was heard. 545 + +[Sidenote: The ship suddenly sinketh.] + + Under the water it rumbled on, + Still louder and more dread: + It reached the ship, it split the bay; + The ship went down like lead. + +[Sidenote: The ancient Mariner is saved in the Pilot's boat.] + + Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound, 550 + Which sky and ocean smote, + Like one that hath been seven days drowned + My body lay afloat; + But swift as dreams, myself I found + Within the Pilot's boat. 555 + + Upon the whirl, where sank the ship, + The boat spun round and round; + And all was still, save that the hill + Was telling of the sound. + + I moved my lips--the Pilot shrieked 560 + And fell down in a fit; + The holy Hermit raised his eyes, + And prayed where he did sit. + + I took the oars: the Pilot's boy, + Who now doth crazy go, 565 + Laughed loud and long, and all the while + His eyes went to and fro. + 'Ha! ha!' quoth he, 'full plain I see, + The Devil knows how to row.' + + And now, all in my own countree, 570 + I stood on the firm land! + The Hermit stepped forth from the boat, + And scarcely he could stand. + +[Sidenote: The ancient Mariner earnestly entreateth the Hermit to +shrieve him; and the penance of life falls on him.] + + 'O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!' + The Hermit crossed his brow. 575 + 'Say quick,' quoth he, 'I bid thee say-- + What manner of man art thou?' + + Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched + With a woful agony, + Which forced me to begin my tale; 580 + And then it left me free. + +[Sidenote: And ever and anon throughout his future life an agony +constraineth him to travel from land to land,] + + Since then, at an uncertain hour, + That agony returns: + And till my ghastly tale is told, + This heart within me burns. 585 + + I pass, like night, from land to land; + I have strange power of speech; + That moment that his face I see, + I know the man that must hear me: + To him my tale I teach. 590 + + What loud uproar bursts from that door! + The wedding-guests are there: + But in the garden-bower the bride + And bride-maids singing are: + And hark the little vesper bell, 595 + Which biddeth me to prayer! + + O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been + Alone on a wide, wide sea: + So lonely 't was, that God himself + Scarce seemed there to be. 600 + + O sweeter than the marriage-feast, + 'T is sweeter far to me, + To walk together to the kirk + With a goodly company!-- + + To walk together to the kirk, 605 + And all together pray, + While each to his great Father bends, + Old men, and babes, and loving friends + And youths and maidens gay! + +[Sidenote: And to teach, by his own example, love and reverence to all +things that God made and loveth.] + + Farewell, farewell! but this I tell 610 + To thee, thou Wedding-Guest! + He prayeth well, who loveth well + Both man and bird and beast. + + He prayeth best, who loveth best + All things both great and small; 615 + For the dear God who loveth us, + He made and loveth all." + + The Mariner, whose eye is bright, + Whose beard with age is hoar, + Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest 620 + Turned from the bridegroom's door. + + He went like one that hath been stunned, + And is of sense forlorn: + A sadder and a wiser man, + He rose the morrow morn. 625 + + + + +CHRISTABEL + + +PART THE FIRST + + 'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, + And the owls have awakened the crowing cock. + Tu--whit!----Tu--whoo! + And hark, again! the crowing cock, + How drowsily it crew. 5 + + Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, + Hath a toothless mastiff, which + From her kennel beneath the rock + Maketh answer to the clock, + Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; 10 + Ever and aye, by shine and shower, + Sixteen short howls, not over loud; + Some say, she sees my lady's shroud. + + Is the night chilly and dark? + The night is chilly, but not dark. 15 + The thin gray cloud is spread on high, + It covers but not hides the sky. + The moon is behind, and at the full; + And yet she looks both small and dull. + The night is chill, the cloud is gray: 20 + 'T is a month before the month of May, + And the Spring comes slowly up this way. + + The lovely lady, Christabel, + Whom her father loves so well, + What makes her in the wood so late, 25 + A furlong from the castle gate? + She had dreams all yesternight + Of her own betrothed knight; + And she in the midnight wood will pray + For the weal of her lover that's far away. 30 + + She stole along, she nothing spoke, + The sighs she heaved were soft and low, + And naught was green upon the oak + But moss and rarest mistletoe: + She kneels beneath the huge oak tree, 35 + And in silence prayeth she. + + The lady sprang up suddenly, + The lovely lady, Christabel! + It moaned as near, as near can be, + But what it is she cannot tell.-- 40 + On the other side it seems to be, + Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree. + + The night is chill; the forest bare; + Is it the wind that moaneth bleak? + There is not wind enough in the air 45 + To move away the ringlet curl + From the lovely lady's cheek-- + There is not wind enough to twirl + The one red leaf, the last of its clan, + That dances as often as dance it can, 50 + Hanging so light, and hanging so high, + On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky. + + Hush, beating heart of Christabel! + Jesu, Maria, shield her well! + She folded her arms beneath her cloak, 55 + And stole to the other side of the oak. + What sees she there? + + There she sees a damsel bright, + Drest in a silken robe of white, + That shadowy in the moonlight shone: 60 + The neck that made that white robe wan, + Her stately neck, and arms were bare; + Her blue-veined feet unsandal'd were, + And wildly glittered here and there + The gems entangled in her hair. 65 + I guess, 'twas frightful there to see + A lady so richly clad as she-- + Beautiful exceedingly! + + "Mary mother, save me now!" + Said Christabel, "And who art thou?" 70 + + The lady strange made answer meet, + And her voice was faint and sweet:-- + "Have pity on my sore distress, + I scarce can speak for weariness: + Stretch forth thy hand, and have no fear!" 75 + Said Christabel, "How camest thou here?" + And the lady, whose voice was faint and sweet, + Did thus pursue her answer meet:-- + + "My sire is of a noble line, + And my name is Geraldine: 80 + Five warriors seized me yestermorn, + Me, even me, a maid forlorn: + They choked my cries with force and fright, + And tied me on a palfrey white. + The palfrey was as fleet as wind, 85 + And they rode furiously behind. + They spurred amain, their steeds were white: + And once we crossed the shade of night. + As sure as Heaven shall rescue me, + I have no thought what men they be; 90 + Nor do I know how long it is + (For I have lain entranced I wis) + + Since one, the tallest of the five, + Took me from the palfrey's back, + A weary woman, scarce alive. 95 + Some muttered words his comrades spoke: + He placed me underneath this oak; + He swore they would return with haste; + Whither they went I cannot tell-- + I thought I heard, some minutes past, 100 + Sounds as of a castle bell. + Stretch forth thy hand," thus ended she, + "And help a wretched maid to flee." + + Then Christabel stretched forth her hand, + And comforted fair Geraldine: 105 + "O well, bright dame! may you command + The service of Sir Leoline; + And gladly our stout chivalry + Will he send forth and friends withal + To guide and guard you safe and free 110 + Home to your noble father's hall." + + She rose: and forth with steps they passed + That strove to be, and were not, fast. + Her gracious stars the lady blest, + And thus spake on sweet Christabel: 115 + "All our household are at rest, + The hall as silent as the cell; + Sir Leoline is weak in health, + And may not well awakened be, + But we will move as if in stealth, 120 + And I beseech your courtesy, + This night, to share your couch with me." + + They crossed the moat, and Christabel + Took the key that fitted well; + A little door she opened straight, 125 + All in the middle of the gate; + The gate that was ironed within and without, + Where an army in battle array had marched out. + The lady sank, belike through pain, + And Christabel with might and main 130 + Lifted her up, a weary weight, + Over the threshold of the gate: + Then the lady rose again, + And moved, as she were not in pain. + + So free from danger, free from fear, 135 + They crossed the court: right glad they were. + And Christabel devoutly cried + To the lady by her side, + "Praise we the Virgin all divine + Who hath rescued thee from thy distress!" 140 + "Alas, alas!" said Geraldine, + "I cannot speak for weariness." + So free from danger, free from fear, + They crossed the court: right glad they were. + + Outside her kennel, the mastiff old 145 + Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold. + The mastiff old did not awake, + Yet she an angry moan did make! + And what can ail the mastiff bitch? + Never till now she uttered yell 150 + Beneath the eye of Christabel. + Perhaps it is the owlet's scritch: + For what can ail the mastiff bitch? + + They passed the hall, that echoes still, + Pass as lightly as you will! 155 + The brands were flat, the brands were dying, + Amid their own white ashes lying; + But when the lady passed, there came + A tongue of light, a fit of flame; + And Christabel saw the lady's eye, 160 + And nothing else saw she thereby, + Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall, + Which hung in a murky old niche in the wall. + "O softly tread," said Christabel, + "My father seldom sleepeth well." 165 + + Sweet Christabel her feet doth bare, + And jealous of the listening air + They steal their way from stair to stair, + Now in glimmer, and now in gloom, + And now they pass the Baron's room, 170 + As still as death, with stifled breath + And now have reached her chamber door; + And now doth Geraldine press down + The rushes of the chamber floor. + + The moon shines dim in the open air, 175 + And not a moonbeam enters here. + But they without its light can see + The chamber carved so curiously, + Carved with figures strange and sweet, + All made out of the carver's brain, 180 + For a lady's chamber meet: + The lamp with twofold silver chain + Is fastened to an angel's feet. + + The silver lamp burns dead and dim; + But Christabel the lamp will trim. 185 + She trimmed the lamp, and made it bright, + And left it swinging to and fro, + While Geraldine, in wretched plight, + Sank down upon the floor below. + + "O weary lady, Geraldine, 190 + I pray you, drink this cordial wine! + It is a wine of virtuous powers; + My mother made it of wild flowers." + + "And will your mother pity me, + Who am a maiden most forlorn? 195 + Christabel answered--"Woe is me! + She died the hour that I was born. + I have heard the gray-haired friar tell + How on her death-bed she did say, + That she should hear the castle-bell 200 + Strike twelve upon my wedding-day. + O mother dear! that thou wert here!" + "I would," said Geraldine, "she were!" + + But soon with altered voice, said she-- + "Off, wandering mother! Peak and pine! 205 + I have power to bid thee flee." + Alas! what ails poor Geraldine? + Why stares she with unsettled eye? + Can she the bodiless dead espy? + And why with hollow voice cries she, 210 + "Off, woman, off! this hour is mine-- + Though thou her guardian spirit be, + Off, woman, off! 'tis given to me." + + Then Christabel knelt by the lady's side, + And raised to heaven her eyes so blue-- 215 + "Alas!" said she, "this ghastly ride-- + Dear lady! it hath wildered you!" + The lady wiped her moist cold brow, + And faintly said, "'Tis over now!" + + Again the wild-flower wine she drank: 220 + Her fair large eyes 'gan glitter bright, + And from the floor whereon she sank, + The lofty lady stood upright: + She was most beautiful to see, + Like a lady of a far countree. 225 + And thus the lofty lady spake-- + "All they who live in the upper sky, + Do love you, holy Christabel! + And you love them, and for their sake + And for the good which me befell, 230 + Even I in my degree will try, + Fair maiden, to requite you well. + But now unrobe yourself; for I + Must pray, ere yet in bed I lie." + + Quoth Christabel, "So let it be!" 235 + And as the lady bade, did she. + Her gentle limbs did she undress, + And lay down in her loveliness. + + But through her brain of weal and woe + So many thoughts moved to and fro, 240 + That vain it were her lids to close; + So half-way from the bed she rose, + And on her elbow did recline + To look at the Lady Geraldine. + + Beneath the lamp the lady bowed, 245 + And slowly rolled her eyes around; + Then drawing in her breath aloud, + Like one that shuddered, she unbound + The cincture from beneath her breast: + Her silken robe, and inner vest, 250 + Dropt to her feet, and full in view, + Behold! her bosom and half her side-- + A sight to dream of, not to tell! + O shield her! shield sweet Christabel! + + Yet Geraldine nor speaks nor stirs; 255 + Ah! what a stricken look was hers! + Deep from within she seems half-way + To lift some weight with sick assay, + And eyes the maid and seeks delay; + Then suddenly, as one defied, 260 + Collects herself in scorn and pride, + And lay down by the Maiden's side!-- + And in her arms the maid she took, + Ah wel-a-day! + And with low voice and doleful look 265 + These words did say: + "In the touch of this bosom there worketh a spell, + Which is lord of thy utterance, Christabel! + Thou knowest to-night, and wilt know to-morrow, + This mark of my shame, this seal of my sorrow; 270 + But vainly thou warrest, + For this is alone in + Thy power to declare, + That in the dim forest + Thou heard'st a low moaning, 275 + And found'st a bright lady, surpassingly fair; + And didst bring her home with thee in love and in charity, + To shield her and shelter her from the damp air." + + + +THE CONCLUSION TO PART THE FIRST + + It was a lovely sight to see + The lady Christabel, when she 280 + Was praying at the old oak tree. + Amid the jagged shadows + Of mossy leafless boughs, + Kneeling in the moonlight, + To make her gentle vows; 285 + Her slender palms together prest, + Heaving sometimes on her breast; + Her face resigned to bliss or bale-- + Her face, oh call it fair not pale, + And both blue eyes more bright than clear, 290 + Each about to have a tear. + + With open eyes (ah woe is me!) + Asleep, and dreaming fearfully, + Fearfully dreaming, yet, I wis, + Dreaming that alone, which is-- 295 + O sorrow and shame! Can this be she, + The lady, who knelt at the old oak tree? + And lo! the worker of these harms, + That holds the maiden in her arms, + Seems to slumber still and mild, 300 + As a mother with her child. + + A star hath set, a star hath risen, + O Geraldine! since arms of thine + Have been the lovely lady's prison. + O Geraldine! one hour was thine-- 305 + Thou 'st had thy will! By tairn and rill, + The night-birds all that hour were still. + But now they are jubilant anew, + From cliff and tower, tu--whoo! tu--whoo! + Tu--whoo! tu--whoo! from wood and fell! 310 + + And see! the lady Christabel + Gathers herself from out her trance; + Her limbs relax, her countenance + Grows sad and soft; the smooth thin lids + Close o'er her eyes; and tears she sheds-- 315 + Large tears that leave the lashes bright! + And oft the while she seems to smile + As infants at a sudden light! + + Yea, she doth smile, and she doth weep, + Like a youthful hermitess, 320 + Beauteous in a wilderness, + Who, praying always, prays in sleep. + And, if she move unquietly, + Perchance, 'tis but the blood so free + Comes back and tingles in her feet. 325 + No doubt, she hath a vision sweet. + What if her guardian spirit 'twere, + What if she knew her mother near? + But this she knows, in joys and woes, + That saints will aid if men will call: 330 + For the blue sky bends over all! + + + +PART THE SECOND + + "Each matin bell," the Baron saith, + "Knells us back to a world of death." + These words Sir Leoline first said, + When he rose and found his lady dead: 335 + These words Sir Leoline will say + Many a morn to his dying day! + + And hence the custom and law began + That still at dawn the sacristan, + Who duly pulls the heavy bell, 340 + Five and forty beads must tell + Between each stroke--a warning knell, + Which not a soul can choose but hear + From Bratha Head to Wyndermere. + + Saith Bracy the bard, "So let it knell! 345 + And let the drowsy sacristan + Still count as slowly as he can! + There is no lack of such, I ween, + As well fill up the space between. + In Langdale Pike and Witch's Lair, 350 + And Dungeon-ghyll so foully rent, + With ropes of rock and bells of air + Three sinful sextons' ghosts are pent, + Who all give back, one after t' other, + The death-note to their living brother; 355 + And oft too, by the knell offended, + Just as their one! two! three! is ended, + The devil mocks the doleful tale + With a merry peal from Borrowdale." + + The air is still! through mist and cloud 360 + That merry peal comes ringing loud; + And Geraldine shakes off her dread, + And rises lightly from the bed; + Puts on her silken vestments white, + And tricks her hair in lovely plight, 365 + And nothing doubting of her spell + Awakens the lady Christabel. + "Sleep you, sweet lady Christabel? + I trust that you have rested well." + + And Christabel awoke and spied 370 + The same who lay down by her side-- + O rather say, the same whom she + Raised up beneath the old oak tree! + Nay, fairer yet! and yet more fair! + For she belike hath drunken deep 375 + Of all the blessedness of sleep! + And while she spake, her looks, her air, + Such gentle thankfulness declare, + That (so it seemed) her girded vests + Grew tight beneath her heaving breasts. 380 + "Sure I have sinn'd!" said Christabel, + "Now heaven be praised if all be well!" + And in low faltering tones, yet sweet, + Did she the lofty lady greet + With such perplexity of mind 385 + As dreams too lively leave behind. + + So quickly she rose, and quickly arrayed + Her maiden limbs, and having prayed + That He, who on the cross did groan, + Might wash away her sins unknown, 390 + She forthwith led fair Geraldine + To meet her sire, Sir Leoline. + + The lovely maid and the lady tall + Are pacing both into the hall, + And pacing on through page and groom, 395 + Enter the Baron's presence-room. + + The Baron rose, and while he prest + His gentle daughter to his breast, + With cheerful wonder in his eyes + The lady Geraldine espies, 400 + And gave such welcome to the same, + As might beseem so bright a dame! + + But when he heard the lady's tale, + And when she told her father's name, + Why waxed Sir Leoline so pale, 405 + Murmuring o'er the name again, + Lord Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine? + + Alas! they had been friends in youth; + But whispering tongues can poison truth; + And constancy lives in realms above; 410 + And life is thorny; and youth is vain; + And to be wroth with one we love + Doth work like madness in the brain. + And thus it chanced, as I divine, + With Roland and Sir Leoline. 415 + Each spake words of high disdain + And insult to his heart's best brother: + They parted--ne'er to meet again! + But never either found another + To free the hollow heart from paining-- 420 + They stood aloof, the scars remaining, + Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; + A dreary sea now flows between. + But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, + Shall wholly do away, I ween, 425 + The marks of that which once hath been. + + Sir Leoline, a moment's space, + Stood gazing on the damsel's face: + And the youthful Lord of Tryermaine + Came back upon his heart again. 430 + + O then the Baron forgot his age, + His noble heart swelled high with rage; + He swore by the wounds in Jesu's side + He would proclaim it far and wide, + With trump and solemn heraldry, 435 + That they, who thus had wronged the dame + Were base as spotted infamy! + "And if they dare deny the same, + My herald shall appoint a week, + And let the recreant traitors seek 440 + My tourney court--that there and then + I may dislodge their reptile souls + From the bodies and forms of men!" + He spake: his eye in lightning rolls! + For the lady was ruthlessly seized; and he kenned 445 + In the beautiful lady the child of his friend! + + And now the tears were on his face, + And fondly in his arms he took + Fair Geraldine, who met the embrace, + Prolonging it with joyous look. 450 + Which when she viewed, a vision fell + Upon the soul of Christabel, + The vision of fear, the touch and pain! + She shrunk and shuddered, and saw again-- + (Ah, woe is me! Was it for thee, 455 + Thou gentle maid! such sights to see?) + + Again she saw that bosom old, + Again she felt that bosom cold, + And drew in her breath with a hissing sound: + Whereat the Knight turned wildly round, 460 + And nothing saw, but his own sweet maid + With eyes upraised, as one that prayed. + + The touch, the sight, had passed away, + And in its stead that vision blest, + Which comforted her after-rest, 465 + While in the lady's arms she lay, + Had put a rapture in her breast, + And on her lips and o'er her eyes + Spread smiles like light! + With new surprise, + "What ails then my beloved child?" 470 + The Baron said--His daughter mild + Made answer, "All will yet be well!" + I ween, she had no power to tell + Aught else: so mighty was the spell. + + Yet he, who saw this Geraldine, 475 + Had deemed her sure a thing divine. + Such sorrow with such grace she blended, + As if she feared she had offended + Sweet Christabel, that gentle maid! + And with such lowly tones she prayed 480 + She might be sent without delay + Home to her father's mansion. + "Nay! + Nay, by my soul!" said Leoline. + "Ho! Bracy the bard, the charge be thine! + Go thou, with music sweet and loud, 485 + And take two steeds with trappings proud, + And take the youth whom thou lov'st best + To bear thy harp, and learn thy song, + And clothe you both in solemn vest, + And over the mountains haste along, 490 + Lest wandering folk, that are abroad, + Detain you on the valley road. + + "And when he has crossed the Irthing flood, + My merry bard! he hastes, he hastes + Up Knorren Moor, through Halegarth Wood, 495 + And reaches soon that castle good + Which stands and threatens Scotland's wastes. + + "Bard Bracy! bard Bracy! your horses are fleet, + Ye must ride up the hall, your music so sweet, + More loud than your horses' echoing feet! 500 + And loud and loud to Lord Roland call, + 'Thy daughter is safe in Langdale hall! + Thy beautiful daughter is safe and free-- + Sir Leoline greets thee thus through me. + He bids thee come without delay 505 + With all thy numerous array + And take thy lovely daughter home: + And he will meet thee on the way + With all his numerous array + White with their panting palfreys' foam': 510 + And, by mine honour! I will say, + That I repent me of the day + When I spake words of fierce disdain + To Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine!-- + --For since that evil hour hath flown, 515 + Many a summer's sun hath shone; + Yet ne'er found I a friend again + Like Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine." + + The lady fell, and clasped his knees, + Her face upraised, her eyes o'erflowing; 520 + And Bracy replied, with faltering voice, + His gracious hail on all bestowing; + "Thy words, thou sire of Christabel, + Are sweeter than my harp can tell; + Yet might I gain a boon of thee, 525 + This day my journey should not be, + So strange a dream hath come to me; + That I had vowed with music loud + To clear yon wood from thing unblest, + Warned by a vision in my rest! 530 + For in my sleep I saw that dove, + That gentle bird, whom thou dost love, + And call'st by thy own daughter's name-- + Sir Leoline! I saw the same, + Fluttering, and uttering fearful moan, 535 + Among the green herbs in the forest alone. + Which when I saw and when I heard, + I wondered what might ail the bird; + For nothing near it could I see, + Save the grass and green herbs underneath the old tree. 540 + + "And in my dream, methought, I went + To search out what might there be found; + And what the sweet bird's trouble meant, + That thus lay fluttering on the ground. + I went and peered, and could descry 545 + No cause for her distressful cry; + But yet for her dear lady's sake + I stooped, methought, the dove to take, + When lo! I saw a bright green snake + Coiled around its wings and neck. 550 + Green as the herbs on which it couched, + Close by the dove's its head it crouched; + And with the dove it heaves and stirs, + Swelling its neck as she swelled hers! + I woke; it was the midnight hour, 555 + The clock was echoing in the tower; + But though my slumber was gone by, + This dream it would not pass away-- + It seems to live upon my eye! + And thence I vowed this self-same day 560 + With music strong and saintly song + To wander through the forest bare, + Lest aught unholy loiter there." + + Thus Bracy said: the Baron, the while, + Half-listening heard him with a smile; 565 + Then turned to Lady Geraldine, + His eyes made up of wonder and love; + And said in courtly accents fine, + "Sweet maid, Lord Roland's beauteous dove, + With arms more strong than harp or song, 570 + Thy sire and I will crush the snake!" + He kissed her forehead as he spake, + And Geraldine in maiden wise + Casting down her large bright eyes, + With blushing cheek and courtesy fine 575 + She turned her from Sir Leoline; + Softly gathering up her train, + That o'er her right arm fell again; + And folded her arms across her chest, + And couched her head upon her breast, 580 + And looked askance at Christabel-- + Jesu, Maria, shield her well! + + A snake's small eye blinks dull and shy, + And the lady's eyes they shrunk in her head, + Each shrunk up to a serpent's eye, 585 + And with somewhat of malice, and more of dread, + At Christabel she looked askance!-- + One moment--and the sight was fled! + But Christabel in dizzy trance + Stumbling on the unsteady ground 590 + Shuddered aloud, with a hissing sound; + And Geraldine again turned round, + And like a thing, that sought relief, + Full of wonder and full of grief, + She rolled her large bright eyes divine 595 + Wildly on Sir Leoline. + + The maid, alas! her thoughts are gone, + She nothing sees--no sight but one! + The maid, devoid of guile and sin, + I know not how, in fearful wise, 600 + So deeply had she drunken in + That look, those shrunken serpent eyes, + That all her features were resigned + To this sole image in her mind: + And passively did imitate 605 + That look of dull and treacherous hate! + And thus she stood, in dizzy trance, + Still picturing that look askance + With forced unconscious sympathy + Full before her father's view-- 610 + As far as such a look could be + In eyes so innocent and blue! + + And when the trance was o'er, the maid + Paused awhile, and inly prayed: + Then falling at the Baron's feet, 615 + "By my mother's soul, do I entreat + That thou this woman send away!" + She said: and more she could not say: + For what she knew she could not tell, + O'er-mastered by the mighty spell. 620 + + Why is thy cheek so wan and wild, + Sir Leoline? Thy only child + Lies at thy feet, thy joy, thy pride, + So fair, so innocent, so mild; + The same, for whom thy lady died! 625 + O, by the pangs of her dear mother + Think thou no evil of thy child! + For her, and thee, and for no other, + She prayed the moment ere she died: + Prayed that the babe for whom she died, 630 + Might prove her dear lord's joy and pride! + That prayer her deadly pangs beguiled, + Sir Leoline! + And wouldst thou wrong thy only child, + Her child and thine? 635 + + Within the Baron's heart and brain + If thoughts, like these, had any share, + They only swelled his rage and pain, + And did but work confusion there. + + His heart was cleft with pain and rage, 640 + His cheeks they quivered, his eyes were wild, + Dishonoured thus in his old age; + Dishonour'd by his only child, + And all his hospitality + To the insulted daughter of his friend 645 + By more than woman's jealousy + Brought thus to a disgraceful end-- + He rolled his eye with stern regard + Upon the gentle minstrel bard, + And said in tones abrupt, austere-- 650 + "Why, Bracy! dost thou loiter here? + I bade thee hence!" The bard obeyed; + And turning from his own sweet maid, + The aged knight, Sir Leoline, + Led forth the lady Geraldine! 655 + + + +THE CONCLUSION TO PART THE SECOND + + A little child, a limber elf, + Singing, dancing to itself, + A fairy thing with red round cheeks, + That always finds, and never seeks, + Makes such a vision to the sight 660 + As fills a father's eyes with light; + And pleasures flow in so thick and fast + Upon his heart, that he at last + Must needs express his love's excess + With words of unmeant bitterness. 665 + Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together + Thoughts so all unlike each other; + To mutter and mock a broken charm, + To dally with wrong that does no harm. + Perhaps 'tis tender too and pretty 670 + At each wild word to feel within + A sweet recoil of love and pity. + And what, if in a world of sin + (O sorrow and shame should this be true!) + Such giddiness of heart and brain 675 + Comes seldom save from rage and pain, + So talks as it's most used to do. + + + + +KUBLA KHAN + + In Xanadu did Kubla Khan + A stately pleasure-dome decree: + Where Alph, the sacred river, ran + Through caverns measureless to man + Down to a sunless sea. 5 + So twice five miles of fertile ground + With walls and towers were girdled round: + And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills, + Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; + And here were forests ancient as the hills, 10 + Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. + + But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted + Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! + A savage place! as holy and enchanted + As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted 15 + By woman wailing for her demon-lover! + And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, + As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, + A mighty fountain momently was forced: + Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst 20 + Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, + Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail: + And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever + It flung up momently the sacred river. + Five miles meandering with a mazy motion 25 + Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, + Then reached the caverns measureless to man, + And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: + And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far + Ancestral voices prophesying war! 30 + + The shadow of the dome of pleasure + Floated midway on the waves; + Where was heard the mingled measure + From the fountain and the caves. + It was a miracle of rare device, 35 + A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! + + A damsel with a dulcimer + In a vision once I saw: + It was an Abyssinian maid, + And on her dulcimer she played, 40 + Singing of Mount Abora. + Could I revive within me. + Her symphony and song, + To such a deep delight 'twould win me, + That with music loud and long, 45 + I would build that dome in air, + That sunny dome! those caves of ice! + And all who heard should see them there, + And all should cry, Beware! Beware! + His flashing eyes, his floating hair! 50 + Weave a circle round him thrice, + And close your eyes with holy dread, + For he on honey-dew hath fed, + And drunk the milk of Paradise. + + + + +LOVE + + All thoughts, all passions, all delights, + Whatever stirs this mortal frame, + All are but ministers of Love, + And feed his sacred flame. + + Oft in my waking dreams do I 5 + Live o'er again that happy hour, + When midway on the mount I lay, + Beside the ruined tower. + + The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene, + Had blended with the lights of eve; 10 + And she was there, my hope, my joy, + My own dear Genevieve! + + She leant against the armed man, + The statue of the armed knight; + She stood and listened to my lay, 15 + Amid the lingering light. + + Few sorrows hath she of her own. + My hope! my joy! my Genevieve! + She loves me best, whene'er I sing + The songs that make her grieve. 20 + + I played a soft and doleful air, + I sang an old and moving story-- + An old rude song, that suited well + That ruin wild and hoary. + + She listened with a flitting blush, 25 + With downcast eyes and modest grace; + For well she knew, I could not choose + But gaze upon her face. + + I told her of the Knight that wore + Upon his shield a burning brand; 30 + And that for ten long years he wooed + The Lady of the Land. + + I told her how he pined: and ah! + The deep, the low, the pleading tone + With which I sang another's love, 35 + Interpreted my own. + + She listened with a flitting blush, + With downcast eyes, and modest grace + And she forgave me, that I gazed + Too fondly on her face! 40 + + But when I told the cruel scorn + That crazed that bold and lovely Knight, + And that he crossed the mountain-woods, + Nor rested day nor night; + + That sometimes from the savage den, 45 + And sometimes from the darksome shade, + And sometimes starting up at once + In green and sunny glade,-- + + There came and looked him in the face + An angel beautiful and bright; 50 + And that he knew it was a Fiend, + This miserable Knight! + + And that unknowing what he did, + He leaped amid a murderous band, + And saved from outrage worse than death 55 + The Lady of the Land! + + And how she wept, and clasped his knees; + And how she tended him in vain-- + And ever strove to expiate + The scorn that crazed his brain;-- 60 + + And that she nursed him in a cave; + And how his madness went away, + When on the yellow forest-leaves + A dying man he lay;-- + + His dying words--but when I reached 65 + That tenderest strain of all the ditty, + My faltering voice and pausing harp + Disturbed her soul with pity! + + All impulses of soul and sense + Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve; 70 + The music and the doleful tale, + The rich and balmy eve; + + And hopes, and fears that kindle hope, + An undistinguishable throng, + And gentle wishes long subdued, 75 + Subdued and cherished long! + + She wept with pity and delight, + She blushed with love, and virgin-shame; + And like the murmur of a dream, + I heard her breathe my name. 80 + + Her bosom heaved--she stepped aside, + As conscious of my look she stepped-- + Then suddenly, with timorous eye + She fled to me and wept. + + She half enclosed me with her arms, 85 + She pressed me with a meek embrace; + And bending back her head, looked up, + And gazed upon my face. + + 'Twas partly love, and partly fear, + And partly 'twas a bashful art, 90 + That I might rather feel, than see, + The swelling of her heart. + + I calmed her fears, and she was calm, + And told her love with virgin pride; + And so I won my Genevieve, 95 + My bright and beauteous Bride. + + + + +FRANCE: AN ODE + + + +I + + Ye Clouds! that far above me float and pause, + Whose pathless march no mortal may control! + Ye Ocean-Waves! that, wheresoe'er ye roll, + Yield homage only to eternal laws! + Ye Woods! that listen to the night-birds' singing, 5 + Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined, + Save when your own imperious branches swinging, + Have made a solemn music of the wind! + Where, like a man beloved of God, + Through glooms, which never woodman trod, 10 + How oft, pursuing fancies holy, + My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound, + Inspired, beyond the guess of folly, + By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound! + O ye loud Waves! and O ye Forests high! 15 + And O ye Clouds that far above me soared! + Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky! + Yea, every thing that is and will be free! + Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be, + With what deep worship I have still adored 20 + The spirit of divinest Liberty. + + + +II + + When France in wrath her giant-limbs upreared, + And with that oath, which smote air, earth, and sea, + Stamped her strong foot and said she would be free, + Bear witness for me, how I hoped and feared! 25 + + With what a joy my lofty gratulation + Unawed I sang, amid a slavish band: + And when to whelm the disenchanted nation, + Like fiends embattled by a wizard's wand, + The Monarchs marched in evil day, 30 + And Britain joined the dire array; + Though dear her shores and circling ocean, + Though many friendships, many youthful loves + Had swoln the patriot emotion + And flung a magic light o'er all her hills and groves; 35 + Yet still my voice, unaltered, sang defeat + To all that braved the tyrant-quelling lance, + And shame too long delayed and vain retreat! + For ne'er, O Liberty! with partial aim + I dimmed thy light or damped thy holy flame; 40 + But blessed the paeans of delivered France, + And hung my head and wept at Britain's name. + + + +III + + "And what," I said, "though Blasphemy's loud scream + With that sweet music of deliverance strove! + Though all the fierce and drunken passions wove 45 + A dance more wild than e'er was maniac's dream! + Ye storms, that round the dawning east assembled, + The Sun was rising, though ye hid his light!" + And when, to soothe my soul, that hoped and trembled, + The dissonance ceased, and all seemed calm and bright; 50 + When France her front deep-scarred and gory + Concealed with clustering wreaths of glory; + When, insupportably advancing, + Her arm made mockery of the warrior's ramp; + While timid looks of fury glancing, 55 + Domestic treason, crushed beneath her fatal stamp, + Writhed like a wounded dragon in his gore; + Then I reproached my fears that would not flee; + "And soon," I said, "shall Wisdom teach her lore + In the low huts of them that toil and groan! 60 + And, conquering by her happiness alone, + Shall France compel the nations to be free, + Till Love and Joy look round, and call the Earth their own." + + + +IV + + Forgive me, Freedom! O forgive those dreams! + I hear thy voice, I hear thy loud lament, 65 + From bleak Helvetia's icy caverns sent-- + I hear thy groans upon her blood-stained streams! + Heroes, that for your peaceful country perished, + And ye that, fleeing, spot your mountain-snows + With bleeding wounds; forgive me, that I cherished 70 + One thought that ever blessed your cruel foes! + To scatter rage and traitorous guilt + Where Peace her jealous home had built; + A patriot-race to disinherit + Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear; 75 + And with inexpiable spirit + To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer-- + O France, that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind, + And patriot only in pernicious toils! + Are these thy boasts, Champion of human kind? 80 + To mix with Kings in the low lust of sway, + Tell in the hunt, and share the murderous prey; + To insult the shrine of Liberty with spoils + From freemen torn; to tempt and to betray? + + + +V + + The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain, 85 + Slaves by their own compulsion! In mad game + They burst their manacles and wear the name + Of Freedom, graven on a heavier chain! + O Liberty! with profitless endeavour + Have I pursued thee, many a weary hour; 90 + But thou nor swell'st the victor's strain, nor ever + Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power. + + Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee, + (Nor prayer, nor boastful name delays thee) + Alike from Priestcraft's harpy minions, 95 + And factious Blasphemy's obscener slaves, + Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions, + The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves! + And there I felt thee!--on that sea-cliff's verge, + Whose pines, scarce travelled by the breeze above, 100 + Had made one murmur with the distant surge! + Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare, + And shot my being through earth, sea and air, + Possessing all things with intensest love, + O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there. 105 + + + + +DEJECTION: AN ODE + +WRITTEN APRIL 4, 1802 + + Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon, + With the old Moon in her arms; + And I fear, I fear, my Master dear! + We shall have a deadly storm. + +_Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence._ + + + +I + + Well! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made + The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence, + This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence + Unroused by winds, that ply a busier trade + Than those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes, 5 + Or the dull sobbing draft, that moans and rakes + Upon the strings of this Aeolian lute, + Which better far were mute. + For lo! the New-moon winter-bright! + And overspread with phantom light, 10 + (With swimming phantom light o'erspread + But rimmed and circled by a silver thread) + I see the old Moon in her lap, foretelling + The coming-on of rain and squally blast. + And oh! that even now the gust were swelling, 15 + And the slant night-shower driving loud and fast! + Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awed, + And sent my soul abroad, + Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give, + Might startle this dull pain, and make it move so and live! 20 + + + +II + + A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, + A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, + Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, + In word, or sigh, or tear-- + O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood, 25 + To other thoughts by yonder throstle wooed, + All this long eve, so balmy and serene, + Have I been gazing on the western sky, + And its peculiar tint of yellow green: + And still I gaze--and with how blank an eye! 30 + And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, + That give away their motion to the stars; + Those stars, that glide behind them or between, + Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen: + Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew 35 + In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue; + I see them all so excellently fair, + I see, not feel, how beautiful they are! + + + +III + + My genial spirits fail; + And what can these avail 40 + To lift the smothering weight from off my breast? + It were a vain endeavour, + Though I should gaze for ever + On that green light that lingers in the west: + I may not hope from outward forms to win 45 + The passion and the life, whose fountains are within. + + + +IV + + O Lady! we receive but what we give, + And in our life alone does Nature live: + Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud! + And would we aught behold, of higher worth. 50 + + Than that inanimate cold world allowed + To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd, + Ah, from the soul itself must issue forth + A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud + Enveloping the Earth-- 55 + And from the soul itself must there be sent + A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, + Of all sweet sounds the life and element! + + + +V + + O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me + What this strong music in the soul may be! 60 + What, and wherein it doth exist, + This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist, + This beautiful and beauty-making power. + Joy, virtuous Lady! Joy that ne'er was given, + Save to the pure, and in their purest hour, 65 + Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and shower, + Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power, + Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower, + A new Earth and new Heaven, + Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud-- 70 + Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud-- + We in ourselves rejoice! + And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, + All melodies the echoes of that voice, + All colours a suffusion from that light. 75 + + + +VI + + There was a time when, though my path was rough, + This joy within me dallied with distress, + And all misfortunes were but as the stuff + Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness: + For hope grew round me, like the twining vine, 80 + And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine. + + But now afflictions bow me down to earth: + Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth; + But oh! each visitation + Suspends what nature gave me at my birth, 85 + My shaping spirit of Imagination. + For not to think of what I needs must feel, + But to be still and patient, all I can; + And haply by abstruse research to steal + From my own nature all the natural man-- 90 + This was my sole resource, my only plan: + Till that which suits a part infects the whole, + And now is almost grown the habit of my soul. + + + +VII + + Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind, + Reality's dark dream! 95 + I turn from you, and listen to the wind, + Which long has raved unnoticed. What a scream + Of agony by torture lengthened out + That lute sent forth! Thou Wind, that rav'st without, + Bare crag, or mountain-tairn, or blasted tree, 100 + Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb, + Or lonely house, long held the witches' home, + Methinks were fitter instruments for thee, + Mad Lutanist! who in this month of showers, + Of dark-brown gardens, and of peeping flowers, 105 + Mak'st Devils' yule, with worse than wintry song, + The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves among. + Thou Actor, perfect in all tragic sounds! + Thou mighty Poet, even to frenzy bold! + What tell'st thou now about? 110 + 'Tis of the rushing of an host in rout, + With groans of trampled men, with smarting wounds-- + At once they groan with pain, and shudder with the cold! + + But hush! there is a pause of deepest silence! + And all that noise, as of a rushing crowd, 115 + With groans, and tremulous shudderings--all is over-- + It tells another tale, with sounds less deep and loud! + A tale of less affright, + And tempered with delight, + As Otway's self had framed the tender lay, 120 + 'Tis of a little child + Upon a lonesome wild, + Not far from home, but she hath lost her way: + And now moans low in bitter grief and fear, + And now screams loud, and hopes to make her mother hear. 125 + + + +VIII + + 'Tis midnight, but small thoughts have I of sleep: + Full seldom may my friend such vigils keep! + Visit her, gentle Sleep! with wings of healing, + And may this storm be but a mountain-birth, + May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling, 130 + Silent as though they watched the sleeping Earth! + With light heart may she rise, + Gay fancy, cheerful eyes, + Joy lift her spirit, joy attune her voice; + To her may all things live, from pole to pole, 135 + Their life the eddying of her living soul! + O simple spirit, guided from above, + Dear Lady! friend devoutest of my choice, + Thus mayest thou ever, evermore rejoice. + + + + +YOUTH AND AGE + + Verse, a breeze mid blossoms straying, + Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee-- + Both were mine! Life went a-maying + With Nature, Hope, and Poesy, + When I was young! 5 + + _When_ I was young?--Ah, woful When! + Ah! for the change 'twixt Now and Then! + This breathing house not built with hands, + This body that does me grievous wrong, + O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands, 10 + How lightly _then_ it flashed along:-- + Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore, + On winding lakes and rivers wide, + That ask no aid of sail or oar, + That fear no spite of wind or tide! 15 + Nought cared this body for wind or weather + When Youth and I lived in 't together. + + Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like; + Friendship is a sheltering tree; + O! the joys, that came down shower-like, 20 + Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty, + Ere I was old! + + _Ere_ I was old? Ah woful Ere, + Which tells me Youth 's no longer here! + O Youth! for years so many and sweet, 25 + 'Tis known, that thou and I were one, + I'll think it but a fond conceit-- + It cannot be that thou art gone! + Thy vesper-bell hath not yet tolled:-- + And thou wert aye a masker bold! 30 + What strange disguise hast now put on, + To _make believe_, that thou art gone? + I see these locks in silvery slips, + This drooping gait, this altered size: + But Spring-tide blossoms on thy lips, 35 + And tears take sunshine from thine eyes! + Life is but thought: so think I will + That Youth and I are house-mates still. + + Dew-drops are the gems of morning, + But the tears of mournful eve! 40 + Where no hope is, life 's a warning + That only serves to make us grieve, + When we are old: + That only serves to make us grieve + With oft and tedious taking-leave, 45 + Like some poor nigh-related guest, + That may not rudely be dismist; + Yet hath outstayed his welcome while, + And tells the jest without the smile. + + + + +WORK WITHOUT HOPE + +LINES COMPOSED 21ST FEBRUARY 1827 + + + All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair-- + The bees are stirring--birds are on the wing-- + And Winter slumbering in the open air, + Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! + And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, 5 + Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing. + + Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow, + Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow. + Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may, + For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away! 10 + With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll: + And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul? + Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, + And Hope without an object cannot live. + + + + +EPITAPH + + Stop, Christian passer-by!--Stop, child of God, + And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod + A poet lies, or that which once seemed he.-- + O, lift one thought in prayer for S.T.C.; + That he who many a year with toil of breath 5 + Found death in life, may here find life in death! + Mercy for praise--to be forgiven for fame + He ask'd, and hoped, through Christ. + Do thou the same! + + + + +NOTES + + +THE ANCIENT MARINER + + +The Latin motto is condensed, by omission, from about a page of Thomas +Burnet's _Archaeologiae Philosophicae: sive Doctrina Antiqua de Rerum +Originibus_, published in London in 1692. Burnet was Master of +Charterhouse from 1685 till his death in 1715, and enjoyed considerable +reputation as a man of curious learning. In the _Archaeologiae_ he +professed to reconcile a former work of his on the origins of the world +with the account given in Genesis. The quotation is from chapter VII. of +book I., "De Hebraeis, eorumque Cabala," and may be translated thus: "I +easily believe that the invisible natures in the universe are more in +number than the visible. But who shall tell us all the kinds of them? +the ranks and relationships, the peculiar qualities and gifts of each? +what they do? where they dwell? Man's wit has ever been circling about +the knowledge of these things, but has never attained to it. Yet in the +meanwhile I will not deny that it is profitable to contemplate from time +to time in the mind, as in a picture, the idea of a larger and better +world; lest the mind, becoming wonted to the little things of everyday +life, grow narrow and settle down altogether to mean businesses. At the +same time, however, we must watch for the truth, and observe method, so +as to distinguish the certain from the uncertain, day from night." + +Instead of this motto the first edition had an Argument prefixed, as +follows: + +"How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold +Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course +to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange +things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back +to his own Country." + +This was somewhat enlarged in the second edition (1800), and dropped +thereafter. + +*Page 3*, LINE 12--*eftsoons*. Anglo-Saxon _eftsona (eft_ +afterwards, again, + _sona_ soon), reenforced by the adverbial genitive +ending _-s._ Coleridge found the word in Spenser and the old ballads. + +4, 23--*kirk*. The Scotch and Northern English form of "church." The +old ballads had been preserved chiefly in the North; hence this Northern +form came to be looked on as the proper word for church in the ballad +style. + +41, marginal gloss--*driven*. All editions down to Campbell's had +"drawn;" but this he believes to have been a misprint, since the +narrative seems to require "driven." + +5, 55--*clifts*. This word arose from a confusion of "cliff," a +precipice, and "cleft," a fissure. It was "exceedingly common in the +16th-18th cent.," according to the New English Dict., which gives +examples from Captain John Smith, Marlowe, and Defoe. + +62--*swound*. An archaic form of "swoon," found in Elizabethan +English. + +64--*thorough*. "Through" and "thorough" are originally the same +word, and in Shakespeare's time both forms were used for the +preposition. Cf. Puck's song in "Midsummer Night's Dream," "Thorough +bush, thorough briar." + +67--*eat*. This form (pronounced _et_) is still in use in England and +New England for the past tense of the verb, though in America the form +"ate" is now preferred. "Eat" as past participle, however, was archaic +or rude even in Coleridge's time. + +76--*vespers*. Properly a liturgical term, meaning the daily evening +service in church; then in a more general way "evening." The Century +Dict. gives no examples of its use as a nautical term. Probably +Coleridge used it to give a suggestion of ante-Reformation times. The +more familiar word for the evening service in the English Church is +"even-song," but Coleridge in line 595 prefers "the little vesper bell" +for its suggestion of medievalism. + +6, 97--*like God's own head*. The comparison is the converse of that +in the Bible, Matthew xvii., 2, Revelations I., 16, where the +countenance of Christ glorified is said to shine "as the sun" (Sykes). + +98--*uprist*. This word was used in Middle English as a noun, and +regularly as the 3d pers. sing. pres. ind. of the verb "uprise." In "The +Reves Tale" line 329, however, Chaucer uses, it in a context of past +tenses, as Coleridge does here, as if it were a weak preterit; and +Chaucer uses "rist up" in the same way several times (Sykes). + +104--*The furrow followed free*. This was changed in "Sibylline +Leaves" to "The furrow streamed off free," because, Coleridge tells us, +"from the ship itself the _Wake_ appears like a brook flowing off from +the stern." In the case of modern steamboats at least it would be more +correct to say that the wake, as seen from the stern of the boat, looks +like a brook _following_ the boat. The original reading was restored in +the editions of 1828 and 1829. + +7, 123--*The very deep did rot*, etc. The ship becalmed in tropic +seas, and the slimy things engendered there, were a vision in +Coleridge's mind before "The Ancient Mariner" was thought of. In the +lines contributed to Southey's "Joan of Arc" in 1796 (published, with +additions, as "The Destiny of Nations" in "Sibylline Leaves"), in an +allegoric passage on Chaos and Love, he wrote: + + "As what time, after long and pestful calms, + With slimy shapes and miscreated life + Poisoning the vast Pacific, the fresh breeze + Wakens the merchant sail uprising." + +The same subject had occupied Wordsworth's imagination before he and +Coleridge came together at Stowey; see Wordsworth's "The Borderers," Act +iv. + +125--*slimy things*. Strange creatures, the spawn of the rotting sea, +for which the Mariner has no name. + +131, marginal gloss--*Josephus, Michael Psellus*. The only "learned +Jew, Josephus," that we know of is the historian of that name who lived +in the first century of our era; but little has been found in his works +to justify this reference. The "Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael +Psellus," was a Byzantine teacher of the eleventh century who wrote a +dialogue in which demons are classified according to the element in +which they live (Cooper; Sykes). + +8, 152--*I wist*. "Wist" is properly the past tense of an old verb +"wit," to know. But Coleridge seems to use "I wist" here as equivalent +to "I wis" (see "Christabel," l. 92), which is a form of "iwis," an +adverb meaning "certainly." + +157--*with throats unslaked*, etc. A remarkable instance of +onomatopoeia. + +9, 164--*gramercy*. An exclamation, meaning originally "much thanks" +(Old French _grand merci_), and so used by Shakespeare ("Merchant of +Venice" II., 2, 128, "Richard III" III., 2, 108). But in the ballads it +is often a mere exclamation of wonder and surprise, and so Coleridge +uses it here,--*grin*. Coleridge says ("Table Talk" May 31, 1830): "I +took the thought of 'grinning for joy' from my companion's remark to me, +when we had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon [in Wales, in the summer of +1794], and were nearly dead with thirst. We could not speak from the +constriction, till we found a little puddle under a stone. He said to +me: 'You grinned like an idiot.' He had done the same." To "grin" was +originally to snarl and show the teeth as animals do when angry. "They +go to and fro in the evening: they grin like a dog, and run about +through the city," Ps. LIX., 6, Prayer-Book Version, where the King +James Version has "make a noise like a dog." Hence idiots, stupid +people, foolish people, all who are or who demean themselves below the +dignity of man, _grin_ rather than smile; and so the Mariner's +companions, their muscles stiffened by drought, could show their +gladness only by the contortions of a grin, not by a natural smile of +joy. + +169--*Without a breeze, without a tide*. The Phantom Ship is a +wide-spread sailor's superstition that has been often used in the +romantic literature of the nineteenth century. See Scott's "Rokeby," +Canto II. xi; Marryat's "Phantom Ship;" Poe's "MS. Found in a Bottle;" +and Longfellow's "Ballad of Carmilhan" (in "Tales of a Wayside Inn," +Second Day). It is seen in storms, driving by with all sails set, and is +generally held to be an omen of disaster. Coleridge has shaped the +legend to his own purposes. The ship appears in a calm, not in a storm, +and sailing without, rather than against, wind and tide; and instead of +a crew of dead men it carries only Death and Life-in-Death. Possibly he +was acquainted with a form of the legend found in Bechstein's _Deutsches +Sagenbuch_ (pointed out by Dr. Sykes), in which "Falkenberg, for murder +of his brother, is condemned to sail a spectral bark, attended only by +his good and his evil spirit, who play dice for his soul." + +185--*Are those her ribs*, etc. Instead of this stanza the first +edition had these two: + + "Are those _her_ naked ribs, which fleck'd + The sun that did behind them peer? + And are those two all, all the crew, + That woman and her fleshless Pheere? + + "His bones are black with many a crack, + All black and bare, I ween; + Jet-black and bare, save where with rust + Of mouldy damps and charnel crust + They're patch'd with purple and green" + +And again after line 198 the first edition had this stanza: + + "A gust of wind sterte up behind + And whistled thro' his bones; + Thro' the holes of his eyes and the hole of his mouth + Half-whistles and half-groans." + +But this crude grotesquerie of horror--quite in the taste of that day, +the day of "Monk" Lewis and Mrs. Radcliffe--Coleridge's finer poetical +judgment soon rejected. + +190--*Her lips were red*, etc. Life-in-Death--who wins the Mariner, +while Death wins his shipmates--is conceived as a witch, something after +the fashion of Geraldine in "Christabel" or Duessa in "The Faerie +Queene," but wilder, stranger than either; a thing of startling and evil +beauty. Spenser's pages of description, however, give no such vivid +image of loathsome loveliness as do the first three lines of this +stanza. "Her skin was as white as leprosy" is a feat in suggestion. + +10, 199, marginal gloss--*within the courts of the Sun*. Between the +tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. + +210--*with one bright star Within the nether tip*. An interesting +case of poetical illusion. No one, of course, ever saw a star _within_ +the tip of the horned moon. Yet a good many readers, until reminded of +their astronomy, think they have seen this phenomenon. Coleridge +apparently knew that the human mind would receive it as experience. The +phrase is no slip on his part; the earlier editions had instead "almost +atween the tips," which is astronomically justifiable, but in "Sibylline +Leaves" and later he wrote it as in the text. + +222--*And every soul, it passed me by, Like the whizz of my +cross-bow!* It was an ancient belief, imaginatively revived by +romantic poets, that when a person died his soul could be seen, or +heard, or both, as it left the body, Cf. Keats's "Eve of St. Agnes," +first stanza; Rossetti's "Sister Helen;" and Kipling's "Danny Deever." + +11, 226--*And thou art long*, etc. "For the last two lines of this +stanza," runs. Coleridge's note to the passage in "Sibylline Leaves," "I +am indebted to Mr. Wordsworth. It was on a delightful walk from Nether +Stowey to Dulverton, with him and his sister, in the autumn of 1797, +that this poem was planned, and in part composed." Wordsworth in later +years declared that he contributed also lines 13-16, "and four or five +lines more in different parts of the poem, which I could not now point +out." + +245--*or ever*. "Or" here is not the adversative conjunction but an +entirely different word, an archaic variant of "ere," meaning "before." + +250--*For the sky and the sea*, etc. Another instance of the sound +fitting the sense. The rocking rhythm of the line is the rhythm of his +fevered pulse. The poem is full of this quality. + +13, 297--*silly*. This word meant in Old English timely (from _soel_, +time, occasion) hence fortunate, blessed. From this was developed, under +the influence of medieval religious teaching, the meaning innocent, +harmless, simple; and from this again our modern meaning, foolish, +simple in a derogatory sense. Chaucer has the word in all these +meanings, and also in another, a modification of the second--wretched, +pitiable. Another shade of the same meaning appears in Spenser's "silly +bark," i.e. _frail_ ship, and in Burns's "To a Mouse": + + "Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin! + Its silly wa's the win's are strewin'!" + +"The epithet may be due either to the gush of love that has filled the +Mariner's heart, or to his noticing the buckets, long useless, frail, +now filled with water" (Sykes); very likely to both together. + +14, 314--*fire-flags*. The notion of the "fire-flags" "hurried about" +was probably suggested to Coleridge by the description of the Northern +Lights (_aurora borealis_) in Hearne's "Journey ... to the Northern +Ocean," a book printed in 1795 and known to both Wordsworth and +Coleridge before 1798. Hearne says: "I can positively affirm that in +still nights I have frequently heard them make a rustling and crackling +noise, like the waving of a large flag in a fresh gale of wind." See +also Wordsworth's "Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman" (Cooper). + +15, 358--*Sometimes a-dropping*, etc. The Mariner's sin was that in +wanton cruelty he took the life of a friendly fellow-creature; his +punishment is to live with dead men round him and the dead bird on his +breast, in such solitude that "God himself scarce seemed there to be," +until he learns to feel the _sacredness of life_ even in the +water-snakes, the "slimy things" that coil in the rotting sea; and the +stages of his penance are marked by suggestions of his return to the +privilege of human fellowship. The angels' music is like the song of the +skylark, the sails ripple like a leaf-hidden brook--recollections of his +happy boyhood in. England; and finally comes the actual land breeze, and +he is in his "own countree." Observe the marginal gloss to line 442. + +17, 407--*honey-dew*. See note on "Kubla Khan," line 53. + +416--*His great bright eye*, etc. Dorothy Wordsworth in her Journal, +February 27, 1798, describes the look of the sea by moonlight, "big and +white, swelled to the very shores, but round and high in the middle." + +20, 512--*shrieve*. To hear confession and pronounce absolution, one +of the duties of the priesthood in the Catholic church. The word is more +often spelled _shrive. Shrift_ is the abstract noun derived from it. + +21, 523--*skiff-boat*. A pleonastic compound; a skiff is a boat. +Coleridge is fond of such formations. See for example II. 41, 77, 472 of +this poem and II. 46, 649 of "Christabel" (Cooper). + +535--*ivy-tod*. A clump or bush of ivy. Cf. Spenser's "Shepheards +Calender," March, II. 67 ff.: + + "At length within an Yvie todde + (There shrouded was the little God) + I heard a busie bustling." + +23, 607--*While each to his great Father bends*, etc. Cf. the 148th +Psalm (Prayer-Book Version) v. 12: "Young men and maidens, old men and +children, praise the name of the Lord: for his name only is excellent, +and his praise above heaven and earth." + + +CHRISTABEL + +25,6-7--This couplet ran as follows in the first edition: + + "Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, + Hath a toothless mastiff bitch." + +In the editions of 1828 and 1829 Coleridge changed it to the form +printed in the text; "but _bitch_ has been restored in all subsequent +editions except Mr. Campbell's" (Garnett). + +16--*thin gray cloud*, etc. The "thin gray cloud," as also the +dancing leaf of ll. 49-52, was observed at Stowey. They are noted in +Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal, January 31 and March 7, 1798. + +26, 54--*Jesu*. This form of the word is nearer to the Hebrew +original than the more familiar _Jesus_. It is often (though not +exclusively) used in ejaculation and prayer, as here, and was perhaps +supposed to be the vocative form. + +27, 92--*I wis.* This is a misinterpretation of Middle English +_iwis_, from Old English _gewis_, "certainly." + +29, 129--*The lady sank,* etc. The threshold of a house is, in +folk-lore, a sacred place, and evil things cannot cross but have to be +carried over it. + +142--*I cannot speak,* etc. Geraldine blesses "her gracious stars" +(l. 114), but cannot join in praise to the Holy Virgin. + +30, 167--*And jealous of the listening air*. This line was not in the +first edition, but was added in the edition of 1828. + +32, 252--*Behold! her bosom and half her side*, etc. There exist at +least three versions of this passage. The text is that of the 1828 +edition. The edition of 1816 lacked ll. 255-61, having only these lines +between 253 and 262: + + "And she is to sleep by Christabel. + She took two paces, and a stride," etc. + +The third form is that of a MS. copy of the poem once the property of +Wordsworth's sister-in-law, Sarah Hutchinson, and recently published in +facsimile by Mr. E.H. Coleridge, which gives this reading for ll. 253-4: + + "Are lean and old and foul of hue, + And she is to sleep by Christabel." + +Coleridge seems to have tried both ways, that of revealing Geraldine's +loathsome secret and that of leaving it an unknown and nameless horror, +and finally to have chosen the latter, just as he rejected in later +editions the charnel-house particulars in the description of Death in +"The Ancient Mariner." Unquestionably he was right. The horror that is +merely suggested and left shrouded in mystery for the imagination to +work on is more powerful than that which is known. The suppressed line, +however, helps us in an age less familiar with notions of the +supernatural to understand what Geraldine is. The character is conceived +upon the general lines of Duessa in the first book of "The Faerie +Queene;" a being of great external loveliness, but within "full of all +uncleanness." Observe also that the thought, shrouded here, is half +revealed later (l. 457). + +35, 344--*Bratha Head, Wyndermere, Langdale Pike*, etc. For the +relation of the Second Part of the poem to the Lake country see +Introduction. All of the places named in these lines are near the +border-line between Cumberland and Westmoreland and within a dozen miles +of the Wordsworths' home at Grasmere. Keswick, which was the home of +Coleridge from 1800 to 1804, and of his wife and children for many years +thereafter, is on Derwent Water, in Cumberland, some ten miles north of +Grasmere. The little river Bratha runs into the upper or northern end of +Windermere, a larger lake lying about three miles below Grasmere and +connected with it by another stream. Langdale Pike (or Pikes, for there +are more than one) is the name of the steep hills at the head of +Langdale, on the Cumberland border. Dungeon-Ghyll is a ravine in +Langdale (see Wordsworth's "The Idle Shepherd Boys; or, Dungeon-Ghyll +Force"). Borrowdale lies over the border in Cumberland and slopes the +other way, toward Derwent Water. + +37, 407--*Lord Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine*. Sir Leoline lives at +"Langdale Hall," a supposed castle in the immediate vicinity of the +poets' homes; the friend of his youth, whose daughter Geraldine claims +to be, is given the name of a real family and an historical estate in +eastern Cumberland, Tryermaine in Gilsland, on the River Irthing, which +forms part of the boundary between Cumberland and Northumberland. Scott +in his notes to "The Bridal of Triermain" quotes as follows from Burns's +"Antiquities of Westmoreland and Cumberland": "After the death of +Gilmore, Lord of Tryermaine and Torcrossock, Hubert Vaux gave Tryermaine +and Torcrossock to his second son, Ranulph Vaux.... Ranulph, being Lord +of all Gilsland, gave Gilmore's land to his younger son, named +Roland.... And they were named Rolands successively, that were lords +thereof, until the reign of Edward the Fourth." + +44--*The Conclusion to Part the Second*. Campbell thought it "highly +improbable" that these lines were originally composed as a part of +"Christabel." In a letter to Southey, May 6, 1801, Coleridge speaks of +his eldest boy, Hartley, then in his fifth year: "Dear Hartley! we are +at times alarmed by the state of his health, but at present he is well. +If I were to lose him, I am afraid it would exceedingly deaden my +affection for any other children I may have." Then he writes the lines +that we now have as the Conclusion to Part the Second; and adds: "A very +metaphysical account of fathers calling their children rogues, rascals, +and little varlets, etc." + + +KUBLA KHAN + +Kubla Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, was a Mongolian conqueror who +stretched his empire from European Russia to the eastern shores of China +in the thirteenth century. His exploits, like those of his grandfather +and those of the Mohammedan Timur in the next century, made a deep +impression on the imagination of Western Europe. Compilers of +travellers's tales, like Hakluyt and Purchas, caught up eagerly whatever +they could find, history or legend, concerning the extent of his domain, +the methods of his government, or the splendors of his court. The +passage in "Purchas his Pilgrimage" to which Coleridge refers is as +follows: + +"In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace, encompassing sixteene +miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, +pleasant Springs, delightfull Streames, and all sorts of beasts of +chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous house of +pleasure" (quoted in the Notes of the Globe edition). + +Coleridge's poem, however, contains suggestions and reminiscences from +another part of Purchas's book, and probably from other books as well. +"It reads like an arras of reminiscences from several accounts of +natural or enchanted parks, and from various descriptions of that +elusive and danger-fraught garden which mystic geographers have studied +to locate from Florida to Cathay" (Cooper). + +The earthly paradise, which was closed to man indeed, but not destroyed, +when Adam and Eve were driven from its gates, has exercised the +imagination of the Christian world from the early Middle Ages. +Lactantius described it in the fourth century; the author of the +"Phoenix," probably in the eighth century, translated Lactantius' Latin +into Anglo-Saxon verse; Sir John Mandeville, in the fourteenth century, +though he did not reach it himself because he "was not worthy," gives an +account of it from what he has "heard say of wise Men beyond;" Milton +described it enchantingly in "Paradise Lost;" Dr. Johnson used a +modification of it in "Rasselas;" and William Morris in our own time +made it the framework for a delightful series of world-old tales. The +idea, indeed, is not peculiar to Christianity, but is probably to be +found in every civilization. Christian Europe has naturally located it +in the East; and since the Crusades, which brought Western Europe more +in contact with the East, various eastern legends have been attached to +or confounded with the original notion. One of these is the Abyssinian +legend of the hill Amara (cf. l. 41, where Coleridge's "Mount Abora" +seems to stand for Purchas's Amara). Amara in Purchas's account is a +hill in a great plain in Ethiopia, used as a prison for the sons of +Abyssinian kings. Its level top, twenty leagues in circuit and +surrounded by a high wall, is a garden of delight. "Heauen and Earth, +Nature and Industrie, have all been corriuals to it, all presenting +their best presents, to make it of this so louely presence, some taking +this for the place of our Forefathers Paradise." The sides of the hill +are of overhanging rock, "bearing out like mushromes, so that it is +impossible to ascend it" except by a passageway "cut out within the +Rocke, not with staires, but ascending little by little," and closed +above and below with gates guarded by soldiers. "Toward the South" of +the level top "is a rising hill ... yeelding ... a pleasant spring which +passeth through all that Plaine ... and making a Lake, whence issueth a +River, which having from these tops espied Nilus, never leaves seeking +to find him, whom he cannot leave both to seeke and to finde.... There +are no Cities on the top, but palaces, standing by themselves ... +spacious, sumptuous, and beautifull, where the Princes of the Royall +blood have their abode with their families." + +This legend looks backward to Mandeville, with whose account of the +Terrestrial Paradise it has much in common, and forward to Milton, who +used some of its elements in his description of Paradise in the fourth +book of "Paradise Lost." (See Professor Cooper's article in "Modern +Philology," III., 327 ff., from which this is condensed.) + +Mr. E.H. Coleridge (the poet's grandson) has recently shown that in the +winter of 1797-8 Coleridge read and made notes from a book, "Travels +through ... the Cherokee Country," by the American botanist William +Bartram. Chapter VII. of Bartram's book contains an account of some +natural wonders in the Cherokee country that almost certainly afforded +part of the imagery of "Kubla Khan." Bartram, says Mr. Coleridge, +"speaks of waters which 'descend by slow degrees through rocky caverns +into the bowels of the earth, whence they are carried by subterraneous +channels into other receptacles and basons.' He travels for several +miles over 'fertile eminences and delightful shady forests.' He is +enchanted by a 'view of a dark sublime grove;' of the grand fountain he +says that the 'ebullition is astonishing and continual, though its +greatest force of fury intermits' (note the word 'intermits') 'regularly +for the space of thirty seconds of time: the ebullition is perpendicular +upward, from a vast rugged orifice through a bed of rock throwing up +small particles of white shells.' He is informed by 'a trader' that when +the Great Sink was forming there was heard 'an inexpressible rushing +noise like a mighty hurricane or thunderstorm,' that 'the earth was +overflowed by torrents of water which came wave after wave rushing down, +attended with a terrific noise and tremor of the earth,' that the +fountain ceased to flow and 'sank into a huge bason of water;' but, as +he saw with his own eyes, 'vast heaps of fragments of rock' (Coleridge +writes 'huge fragments'), 'white chalk, stones, and pebbles had been +thrown up by the original outbursts and forced aside into the lateral +valleys.'" + +From these and from other like sources Coleridge's mind was no doubt +stored with suggestions of tropical wonder and loveliness, which fell +together--if his own account of the making of the poem is to be relied +on--into the kaleidoscopic beauty of "Kubla Khan." It is not unlikely, +too (cf. ll. 12-13), that the ash-tree dell at Stowey, which he had +already used for a scene of supernatural terror in "Osorio," bears some +part in his avowed dream of Xanadu. + +45, 3--*Alph, the sacred river.* This name seems to be of Coleridge's +own invention; at least it has not been pointed out where he found it. + +16--*demon-lover.* The demon-lover (or more often, with sexes +reversed, the fairy mistress) is a favorite theme of romance, taken from +folk-lore, where it appears in many forms. Cf. the ballads of "Thomas +Rymer," "Tam Lin," and "The Demon Lover," in Child's "English and +Scottish Popular Ballads," and Scott's "William and Helen" (a +translation of Burger's "Lenore"). + +46, 39, 41--*Abyssinian maid, Mount Abora.* See introductory note +above. + +53--*honey-dew.* A sweet sticky substance found on plants, deposited +there by the aphis or plant-louse. It was supposed to be the food of +fairies. Not improbably Coleridge was thinking of manna, a saccharine +exudation found upon certain plants in the East. Mandeville describes it +as found in "the Land of Job:" "This Manna is clept Bread of Angels. And +it is a white Thing that is full sweet and right delicious, and more +sweet than Honey or Sugar. And it Cometh of the Dew of Heaven that +falleth upon the Herbs in that Country. And it congealeth and becometh +all white and sweet. And Men put it in Medicines." + +53-4--*For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.* +Professor Cooper, in the article cited in the introductory note above, +points out that this part of the poem contains perhaps reminiscences of +the stories told of the Old Man of the Mountain. This was the title +popularly given to the head of a fanatical sect of Mohammedans in Syria +in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, whose method of getting rid of +their enemies has given us the word _assassin_. To quote from +Mandeville's "Travels," which has the essentials of the story, though +the chief is here called Gatholonabes, and his domain is not in Syria +but in the island Mistorak, "in the Lordship of Prester John:" + +"He had a full fair Castle and a strong in a Mountain, so strong and so +noble, that no Man could devise a fairer or a stronger. And he had made +wall all the Mountain about with a strong Wall and a fair. And within +those Walls he had the fairest Garden that any Man might behold.... + +"And he had also in that Place, the fairest Damsels that might be found, +under the Age of fifteen Years, and the fairest young Striplings that +Men might get, of that same Age. And they were all clothed in Cloths of +Gold, full richly. And he said that those were Angels. + +"And he had also made 3 Wells, fair and noble, and all environed with +Stone of Jasper, and of Crystal, diapered with Gold, and set with +precious Stones and great orient Pearls. And he had made a Conduit under +the Earth, so that the 3 Wells, at his List, should run, one Milk, +another Wine, and another Honey. And that Place he clept Paradise. + +"And when that any good Knight, that was hardy and noble, came to see +this Royalty, he would lead him into his Paradise, and show him these +wonderful Things for his Sport, and the marvellous and delicious Song of +divers Birds, and the fair Damsels, and the fair Wells of Milk, Wine and +Honey, plenteously running. And he would make divers Instruments of +Music to sound in an high Tower, so merrily, that it was Joy to hear; +and no Man should see the Craft thereof. And those, he said, were Angels +of God, and that Place was Paradise, that God had promised to his +Friends, saying, '_Dabo vobis Terram fluentem Lacte et Melle_' ('I shall +give thee a Land flowing with Milk and Honey'). And then would he make +them to drink of certain Drink [hashish, a narcotic drug, whence their +name of Assassins], whereof anon they should be drunk. And then would +they think it greater Delight than they had before. And then would he +say to them, that if they would die for him and for his Love, that after +their Death they should come to his Paradise; and they should be of the +Age of the Damsels, and they should play with them, and yet be Maidens. +And after that should he put them in a yet fairer Paradise, where that +they should see the God of Nature visibly, in His Majesty and in His +Bliss. And then would he show them his Intent, and say to them, that if +they would go slay such a Lord, or such a Man that was his Enemy or +contrarious to his List, that they should not therefore dread to do it +and to be slain themselves. For after their Death, he would put them in +another Paradise, that was an 100-fold fairer than any of the tother; +and there should they dwell with the most fairest Damsels that might be, +and play with them ever-more. + +"And thus went many divers lusty Pachelors to slay great Lords in divers +Countries, that were his Enemies, and made themselves to be slain, in +Hope to have that Paradise." + + +FRANCE: AN ODE + +When Coleridge republished this poem in the _Post_ in 1802 he prefixed +to it the following + + +ARGUMENT + +_First Stanza_. An invocation to those objects in Nature the +contemplation of which had inspired the Poet with a devotional love of +Liberty. _Second Stanza_. The exultation of the Poet at the commencement +of the French Revolution, and his unqualified abhorrence of the Alliance +against the Republic. _Third Stanza_. The blasphemies and horrors during +the domination of the Terrorists regarded by the Poet as a transient +storm, and as the natural consequence of the former despotism and of the +foul superstition of Popery. Reason, indeed, began to suggest many +apprehensions; yet still the Poet struggled to retain the hope that +France would make conquests by no other means than by presenting to the +observation of Europe a people more happy and better instructed than +under other forms of Government. _Fourth Stanza_. Switzerland, and the +Poet's recantation. _Fifth Stanza_. An address to Liberty, in which the +Poet expresses his conviction that those feelings and that grand _ideal_ +of Freedom which the mind attains by its contemplation of its individual +nature, and of the sublime surrounding objects (see stanza the first) do +not belong to men as a society, nor can possibly be either gratified or +realized under any form, of human government; but belong to the +individual man, so far as he is pure, and inflamed with the love and +adoration of God in Nature. + +51, 22--*When France in wrath*, etc. The storming of the Bastile took +place July 14, 1789. On the 4th of August feudal and manorial privileges +were swept away by the National Assembly; and on the 18th of August the +Assembly formally adopted a declaration of "the rights of man." In +September 1792 the National Convention abolished royalty and declared +France a republic. + +52, 26-7--*With what a joy my lofty gratulation Unawed I* sang. +Coleridge wrote a poem on the "Destruction of the Bastile," probably in +1789 or soon after (first printed in 1834); and in September, 1792, some +lines "To a Young Lady, with a Poem on the French Revolution" (first +printed in _The Watchman_ in 1796), in which he tells his emotions-- + + "When slumbering Freedom roused with high disdain + With giant fury burst her triple chain!" + +28--*the disenchanted nation*. "Disenchanted" because they found that +freedom, peace, and virtue were not to be secured by mere proclamation; +and that all Europe was not ready at the call of the revolutionists to +abolish prescriptive rights and establish republican forms of society. +In January 1793 Louis XVI was beheaded. The act was followed pretty +promptly by a coalition of England, Holland, Spain, Naples, and the +German states against the Republic. + +36--*Yet still my voice*. In "Religious Musings," 1794-6, and more +ardently in the parts that he contributed to Southey's "Joan of Arc," +1796. + +42--*Britain's name*. England was from the beginning the centre of +resistance to the violence and ambition of revolutionary France; and +Pitt, who controlled English policy in these years, was looked upon as a +cold-blooded agent of tyranny by the French republicans and their +English sympathizers. + +44--*sweet music of deliverance*. The French were so convinced that +their Revolution marked the beginning of a new era in human affairs that +they determined to have a new chronology. Accordingly a commission of +scientists was appointed to formulate a system, which was adopted in +October 1793. The "Era of the Republic" was to be counted from the +autumnal equinox, 1792. The year was divided into twelve months, as +before, but they were renamed (_Thermidor_ hot month, _Fructidor_ fruit +month, _Nivose_ snow month, &c.), and ran in periods of thirty days each +from the 22d of September. This left five days undistributed, which were +set apart as feast-days in celebration of five virtues or ideals. Each +month consisted of three decades, and each tenth day, or _decadis_, was +a holiday. The purpose of this was to eradicate the observance of the +Christian Sunday. This chronology was in actual use in France until +Napoleon put an end to it in 1806. + +The municipality of Paris in 1793 decreed that on the 10th of November +the worship of Reason should be inaugurated at Notre Dame. "On that day +the venerable cathedral was profaned by a series of sacrilegious +outrages unparalleled in the history of Christendom. A temple dedicated +to 'Philosophy' was erected on a platform in the middle of the choir ... +the Goddess of Reason, impersonated by Mademoiselle Maillard, a well +known figurante of the opera, took her seat upon a grassy throne in +front of the temple; ... and the multitude bowed the knee before her in +profound admiration.... At the close of this grotesque ceremony the +whole cortege proceeded to the hall of the Convention, carrying with +them their 'goddess,' who was borne aloft in a chair of state on the +shoulders of four men. Having deposited her in front of the president," +Chaumette, the spokesman of the procession, "harangued the Assembly.... +He proceeded to demand that the ci-devant metropolitan church should +henceforth be the temple of Reason and Liberty; which proposition was +immediately adopted. The 'goddess' was then conducted to the president, +and he and other officers of the House saluted her with the 'fraternal +kiss,' amid thunders of applause. After this, upon the motion of +Thuriot, the Convention in a body joined the mass of the people, and +marched in their company to the temple of Reason, to witness a +repetition of the impieties above described.... At St. Gervais a ball +was given in the chapel of the Virgin. In other churches theatrical +spectacles took place.... On Sunday, the 17th of November, all the +parish churches of Paris were closed by authority, with three +exceptions.... Religion was proscribed, churches closed, Christian +ordinances interdicted; the dreary gloom of atheistical despotism +overspread the land."--Jervis, "The Gallican Church and the Revolution," +quoted in Larned's "History for Ready Reference," p. 1300. The next +year, however, Robespierre had a decree passed of which the first +article was: "The French people acknowledge the existence of the Supreme +Being and the immortality of the soul;" and thereupon the inscriptions +_To Reason_ that had been placed upon the French churches were replaced +by others reading _To the Supreme Being_. + +50--*calm and bright*. After the downfall of Robespierre in 1794 +France gradually worked back to a less hysterical mood. In October 1795 +a new form of government known as the Directory was established, under +which the people enjoyed comparative safety at home and developed a +remarkable military efficiency against their foreign enemies. +Bonaparte's military genius brought him rapidly to the front in the wars +of the Directory. It was he that created the Cisalpine and Ligurine +"republics," and his policy directed the invasions of Rome and of +Switzerland. + +53, 66--*Helvetia*. In March, 1798, after having fostered or +compelled the formation of republics under French protection in Holland, +northern Italy, and Rome, the Directory, under pretence of defending the +republican rights of the Vaudois, made a concerted attack upon +Switzerland. Berne, the centre of resistance, was taken, despite the +heroic defence of the mountaineers who for five centuries had maintained +in "bleak Helvetia's icy caverns" a "shrine of liberty" for all Europe. + + +DEJECTION: AN ODE + +55, 1 of motto--*yestreen*. Abbreviation of "yester-even," yesterday +evening. + +58, 82--*But now afflictions*, etc. In March 1801 Coleridge wrote to +Godwin: "In my long illness I had compelled into hours of delight many a +sleepless, painful hour of darkness by chasing down metaphysical game, +and since then I have continued the hunt, until I found myself unaware +at the root of pure mathematics.... The poet is dead in me." And years +afterward in a letter to an artist friend, W. Collins (December, 1818): +"Poetry is out of the question. The attempt would only hurry me into +that sphere of acute feelings from which abstruse research, the mother +of self-oblivion, presents an asylum." + +95--*Reality's dark dream*! In the earlier forms of the poem the +lines corresponding to 94-5 stood thus: + + "Nay, wherefore did I let it haunt my mind, + This dark, distressful dream?" + +He seems to mean, "This loss of joy, of poetic power, is, must be, only +an evil dream, and I will shake it from my mind;" but he knows that it +is a reality, and so turns to forget it in the sensuous intoxication of +the wind's music. Or perhaps--for Coleridge is already a +metaphysician--reality is used here in opposition to ideality or +imagination; the truth of philosophy (cf. ll. 89-90) and the metaphysic +habit of mind that the study of it induces--what we call reality--is a +dream that has come between him and the world of the ideal in which he +had and used his "shaping spirit of imagination." The passage is +obscure. + +100--*Bare crag*, etc. The scenery here is that of the Lake country +where Coleridge and Wordsworth were then living--the former at Keswick +in Cumberland, the latter at Grasmere, Westmoreland. + +59, 120--*Otway*. Coleridge wrote originally, "As thou thyself [i.e. +Wordsworth--see next note] had'st fram'd the tender lay." This he +changed to "Edmund's self" when he first printed the poem in 1802; and +finally to "Otway's self." Thomas Otway was a dramatist of the time of +Charles II (born 1651, died 1685). He wrote, among other plays, two +tragedies of wonderful pathetic power, "The Orphan" and "Venice +Preserved." The theme and style of the former of these, especially, no +doubt suggested his name to Coleridge here. Otway's own career was +pathetic; he died young, neglected, and according to one story, starved. +To this story Coleridge alludes in one of his early poems, the "Monody +on the Death of Chatterton:" + + "While, 'mid the pelting of that merciless storm, + Sunk to the cold earth Otway's famished form!" + +121--*'T is of a little child*, etc. Alluding to Wordsworth's "Lucy +Gray," which had been published in the second edition of "Lyrical +Ballads," 1800. + + +YOUTH AND AGE + +60, 12--*trim skiffs*, etc. Fulton had invented the steamboat in +1807. The first regular steamboat in British waters was built in 1812. + +61, 34--*altered size*. Coleridge became very stout in his later +years. + + +WORK WITHOUT HOPE + +62, 5--*the sole unbusy thing*. Cf. George Herbert's "Employment:" + + "All things are busie; onely I + Neither bring hony with the bees, + Nor flowers to make that, nor the husbandrie + To water these." + +"I find more substantial comfort now," wrote Coleridge to his friend +Collins in 1818, "in pious George Herbert's 'Temple,' which I used to +read to amuse myself with his quaintness, in short, only to laugh at, +than in all the poetry since Milton." + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select +Poems, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLERIDGE *** + +***** This file should be named 11101.txt or 11101.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/1/0/11101/ + +Produced by Rick Niles, Kat Jeter, John Hagerson, Rosanna Yuen and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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