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Macmillan's English Classics 
 
 A SERIES OF ENGLISH TEXTS EDITED FOR 
 
 USE IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS, WITH 
 
 CRITICAL INTRODUCTIONS, 
 
 NOTES, ETC. 
 
 16mo. 
 
 Flexible 
 
 25c. each 
 
 Macaulay's Essay on Addison 
 Macaulay's Essay on Milton 
 Tennyson's The Princess 
 Eliot's Silas Marner 
 Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner 
 Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans 
 Burke s Speech on Conciliation 
 Pope's Homer's Iliad 
 Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield 
 Shakespeare's Macbeth 
 Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley 
 Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice 
 
 OTHERS TO FOLLOW 
 
 \ 
 
COLERIDGE'S 
 
 ANCIENT MARINER, KUBLA KHAN 
 AND CHRISTABEL 
 
■&&>&. 
 
COLERIDGE'S 
 
 ANCIENT MAEINER, KUBLA KHAN 
 AND CHRISTABEL 
 
 EDITED WITH NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 by y 
 
 TULEY FKANCIS HUNTINGTON 
 
 A.M. (Harvard) 
 
 INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN THE SOUTH SIDE HIGH SCHOOL, 
 MILWAUKEE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
 
 1899 
 
 All rights reserrsd 
 
20880 
 
 Copyright, 189S, 
 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 53 
 
 &d8 
 
 NovtoootJ ^rrss 
 
 J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith 
 Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 
 
 
&9i 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 By putting into this little volume the Ancient 
 Mariner, Kubla Khan, and Christabel, I have thought 
 to make easily accessible to students of secondary 
 schools the perfect flower of Coleridge's poetical 
 genius. Nowhere else, I believe, could there be found 
 three poems whose study, if properly directed, would 
 be more likely to lead to an appreciation of the sweet- 
 ness and loveliness of poetry, and to overcome that 
 spirit of materialism for which we Americans have 
 been so much criticised. 
 
 In the Introduction I have tried to give an impres- 
 sion of Coleridge's place in English literature, and to 
 interest the student in his life and work in such a 
 way as to promote further reading, not only in what 
 Coleridge himself wrote, but also in what his contem- 
 poraries wrote. The Notes have been selected from a 
 great amount of material gathered from widely scat- 
 tered sources, nothing having been allowed to stand 
 which did not seem either actually to elucidate the text 
 or to help in the appreciation of some matter that stu- 
 
IV PREFACE 
 
 dents more or less new to the study of poetry might 
 otherwise pass over without notice. Everywhere the 
 aim has been to stimulate, rather than to supersede, 
 thought. The numerous references given throughout 
 the book are intended to aid the teacher in bringing 
 to his class additional material ; for, although the 
 Ancient Mariner is included in the " reading list " of 
 the English requirements for entrance to college, there 
 is every reason why the poem should be carefully 
 studied. The mere reading of the poem, in fact, will 
 reveal to the ordinary student very little of the wealth 
 of imagination with which it is pervaded. 
 
 The text here given is, with a very few slight 
 changes made to make the punctuation and typogra- 
 phy more consistent and attractive, that of 1829, the 
 last to be issued under the personal supervision of 
 the poet. The mark °, which appears in the text, 
 indicates a note. The portrait of Coleridge which 
 forms the frontispiece of this volume is from the 
 painting (1795) by Peter Vandyke, and was said by 
 Cottle to exhibit the poet " in one of his animated 
 conversations, the expression of which the painter has 
 in good degree preserved." 
 
 T. F. H. 
 
 Milwaukee, Wis., Oct. 22, 1898. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 I. COLERIDGE'S LIFE AND WORKS 
 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the youngest of thir- 
 teen children, was born at Ottery, Devonshire, Eng- 
 land, October 21, 1772. In the eccentricities of his 
 father, the simple-hearted preacher and pedagogue of 
 Ottery St. Mary, can be traced the origin of some 
 of the peculiarities of the poet. The former was the 
 author of several books, among which was A Critical 
 Latin Grammar. In this work he proposed several 
 innovations, one of which was to substitute for the 
 ordinary names of the cases such terms as " prior, 
 possessive, attributive, posterior, interjective, and 
 quale-quare-quidditive." " The truth is," Coleridge 
 once wrote, " my father was not a first-rate genius ; 
 he was, however, a first-rate Christian, which is much 
 better. ... In learning, good-heartedness, absentness 
 of mind, and excessive ignorance of the world, he was a 
 perfect Parson Adams." 1 Of the poet's mother we 
 
 1 Letter to Poole. Works (Shedd), Vol. III., p. 602. 
 V 
 
VI INTR OD UC TION 
 
 know much less. She seems to have been a very 
 ordinary woman, ardently devoted to her household 
 duties, out of all sympathy with " your harpsichord 
 ladies," as unemotional and unimaginative as she was 
 uneducated, and withal a very Martha in her ex- 
 quisite care in the trifles of life. 
 
 The little poet was much petted by both his father 
 and mother — a fact that brought him the dislike of 
 the other children and made him very miserable. He 
 therefore took no pleasure in boyish sports, but read 
 incessantly. " I read through all gilt-cover little books 
 that could be had at that time, and likewise all the 
 uncovered tales of Tom Hickathrift, Jack the Giant- 
 Killer, and the like. And I used to lie by the wall 
 and mope, and my spirits used to come upon me sud- 
 denly and in a flood ; and then I was accustomed to 
 run up and down the churchyard, and act over again 
 all I had been reading on the docks, the nettles, and 
 the rank grass. At six years of age I remember to 
 have read Belisarius, Robinson Crusoe, and Philip 
 Quarles (Quarll) ; and then I found the Arabian 
 Nights' Entertainments, one tale of which . . . made 
 so deep an impression on me . . . that I was haunted 
 by spectres whenever I was in the dark; and I dis- 
 tinctly recollect the anxious and fearful eagerness 
 with which I used to watch the window where the 
 book lay, and when the sun came upon it I would 
 
INTRODUCTION Vll 
 
 seize it, carry it by the Avail, and bask, and read. My 
 father found out the effect which these books had 
 produced, and burned them. So I became a dreamer, 
 and acquired an indisposition to all bodily activity ; 
 I was fretful, and inordinately passionate ; . . . de- 
 spised and hated by the boys; . . . nattered and won- 
 dered at by all the old women. . . . and before I was 
 eight years old I was a character." 1 
 
 Thus, even during his childhood, his thoughts, his 
 habits, as well as his language, were unlike those of 
 the ordinary boy. Late in 1781 his father died, and 
 the following year the boy was transferred from the 
 Grammar School, where he had gone from a Dame's 
 School, and had easily outstripped all of his own age, 
 to Christ's Hospital, the great Charity School of Lon- 
 don — an establishment where excellent instruction 
 was to be had, but where the diet and discipline were 
 of the sort found at the notorious Mr. Squeers's Dothe- 
 boys Hall. Here, among six or seven hundred blue- 
 coated lads, pent up in dim cloisters in the heart of 
 a great city, and seeing nothing lovely but the sky 
 and stars, 2 the boy lived a long exile of eight years. 
 " My talents and superiority," he said, " made me for- 
 ever at the head in my routine of study, though 
 utterly without the desire to be so; without a spark 
 
 i Letter to Poole. Works, Vol. III., pp. 605-606. 
 2 See Frost at Midnight. 
 
Vlll INTRODUCTION 
 
 of ambition ; and as to emulation, it had no meaning 
 for me ; but the difference between me and my form- 
 fellows, in our lessons and exercises, bore no propor- 
 tion to the measureless difference between me and 
 them in the wide, wild wilderness of useless, unar- 
 ranged book knowledge and book thoughts." 1 In a 
 similar strain wrote Charles Lamb, his schoolfellow 
 and lifelong friend : " Come back into memory, like as 
 thou wert in the day spring of thy fancies, with hope 
 like a fiery column before thee — the dark pillar 
 not yet turned — Samuel Taylor Coleridge — Logician, 
 Metaphysician, Bard ! — How have I seen the casual 
 passer through the Cloisters stand still, intranced with 
 admiration (while he Vv r eighed the disproportion be- 
 tween the speech and the garb of the young Miran- 
 dula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet 
 intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus 
 (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at 
 such philosophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his 
 Greek, or Pindar, while the walls of the old Grey 
 Friars reechoed to the accents of the inspired 
 charity-boy ! " 2 
 
 The visionary propensities of the inspired charity- 
 boy, however, were in direct contrast to the sound 
 common sense of the head-master of the school — the 
 
 i Works, Vol. III., p. 613. 
 
 2 Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago. 
 
INTRODUCTION IX 
 
 Reverend Mr. James Boyer. The savage floggings 
 inflicted by the latter furnished the dreams of even 
 the mature manhood of the poet with spectres as 
 awful, we may suppose, as any that had haunted the 
 distempered sleep of his childhood. One of these 
 floggings, Coleridge said, was just. He had taken a 
 notion of being apprenticed to a shoemaker, but when 
 the matter was brought to the irate schoolmaster the 
 boy was knocked down, and the shoemaker jostled 
 out of the room. Upon being asked by Boyer why he 
 had made such a fool of himself, Coleridge replied 
 that he hated the thought of becoming a clergyman — 
 as it was then intended he should. " Why so ? " said 
 Boyer. " Because, to tell you the truth, sir," said the 
 boy, " I am an infidel ! " " So, sirrah, you are an infi- 
 del, are you? Then I'll flog your infidelity out of 
 you ! " And without more ado he proceeded to con- 
 vert the young sceptic by means of the birch. 1 Nev- 
 ertheless, "this horrid incarnation of whips and 
 scourges," as DeQuincey once characterized him, was 
 a teacher of marked individuality, and a man whose 
 influence proved to be a needful check upon the way- 
 ward fancy of the youthful poet. In his Biographia 
 Literaria (Chap. I.) Coleridge pays a deserved tribute 
 to his master: "He early moulded my taste to the 
 
 i Table-Talk, May 27, 1830; Gillman's Life of Coleridge, Vol. I., 
 pp. 21, 23. 
 
X INTRODUCTIOX 
 
 preference of Demosthenes to Cicero, of Homer and 
 Theocritus to Virgil, and again of Virgil to Ovid. . . . 
 At the same time that we were studying the Greek 
 tragic poets, he made us read Shakespeare and Milton 
 as lessons ; and they were the lessons, too, which 
 required most time and trouble to bring iq>, so as to 
 escape his censure. I learnt from him that poetry, 
 even that of the loftiest, and, seemingly, that of the 
 wildest odes, had a logic of its own as severe as that 
 of science, and more difficult, because more subtle, 
 more complex, and dependent on more and more 
 fugitive causes. In the truly great poets, he would 
 say, there is a reason assignable, not only for every 
 word, but for the position of every word." 
 
 To Coleridge's aversion to boyish pastimes there 
 was at this time at least one exception. On one occa- 
 sion we hear of the lad swimming across the New 
 River without undressing, and letting his clothes dry 
 on his back, with the inevitable consequence to his 
 health. At another time, oblivious to all about him, 
 the boy was going down the crowded Strand, with his 
 arms tossing about in an imaginary sea. A stranger, 
 with whose pocket his hand happened to come in 
 contact, promptly seized him and accused him of an 
 attempt to pick his pocket. " What ! so young and 
 so wicked ? " he exclaimed. Whereupon the fright- 
 ened boy sobbed out his denial, and explained that he 
 
INTRODUCTION XI 
 
 thought himself Leander swimming across the Helles- 
 pont. The astonished stranger was so impressed with 
 this apology that he at once paid Coleridge's subscrip- 
 tion to a circulating library, 1 which the lonely lad pro- 
 ceeded to read, straight through, folios and all, whether 
 he understood them or not, at the rate of two volumes 
 a day. At times his reading took odd turns. One 
 while we find him reading all the medical and surgical 
 books he could get hold of ; another, bewildering him- 
 self in metaphysics, when history, novels and romances, 
 and even poetry, became insipid to him. It was while 
 plunged head over ears in metaphysic depths that he 
 was presented with a booklet containing the Sonnets 
 of Mr. Bowles. These poems so delighted him that 
 in less than a year and a half he made forty tran- 
 scriptions as presents for his friends. To Coleridge 
 these sonnets were a revelation, because in both form 
 and matter they were characterized by a naturalness 
 which was wholly wanting in the artificial poetry of 
 the school of Pope, — a style which was then uni- 
 versally admired. The same qualities, it is true, had 
 made themselves felt to even a greater degree in the 
 poems of Blake, Cowper, and Burns, but of these 
 poets Coleridge at that time knew nothing. In his 
 championship of this new poetry Coleridge found him- 
 
 1 Gillmau's Life of Coleridge, p. 17. 
 
Xll INTRODUCTION 
 
 self obliged to lay a solid foundation upon which to 
 rear the principles of his taste and critical opinion, a 
 discipline which later developed him into the greatest 
 philosophic critic England has ever produced. 
 
 It need not surprise one, then, that when Coleridge 
 in 1791 entered at Jesus College, Cambridge, he pres- 
 ently became a centre of attraction. One of his col- 
 lege mates says that for the sake of listening to 
 Coleridge's brilliant conversation his room became 
 a constant rendezvous of his undergraduate friends. 
 Here they gave themselves up to enjoyment. Mschy- 
 lus and Plato and Thucydides were pushed aside, and 
 the time was devoted by the young enthusiasts to the 
 discussion of poetry and philosophy, religion and poli- 
 tics. If a political pamphlet had issued from the press 
 in the morning, at evening Coleridge would repeat 
 whole pages verbatim to his wondering audience. And 
 there were burning questions to be decided. France 
 was in the throes of revolution, and all Europe stood 
 in breathless expectation awaiting the outcome. The 
 most monstrous crimes had not yet been committed 
 in the name of Liberty, and Hope could look beyond 
 the smoke and bloodshed of the battlefield to a time 
 when the last vestige of despotism should be swept 
 away, could behold Law and Justice arrayed in the 
 purple of authority and seated upon the world's throne. 
 Wrought up over these and kindred speculations it was 
 
IN TR 01) UCTIOX xii 1 
 
 not strange that a young man of Coleridge's ability 
 should grow weary of the patient labor required to 
 win honors as a student. He had come to the Uni- 
 versity excellently prepared in all except mathematics 
 and the sciences, both of which he had from the out- 
 set detested, and in his first year, by gaining a gold 
 medal for a Greek Ode, had given promise of winning 
 a reputation for academic scholarship. But his inter- 
 est in his work waned, his reading grew more and 
 more desultory, until, just after beginning his third 
 year, whether from debts, or disappointed love, or 
 boih, he suddenly quitted Cambridge for London. 
 Here, having spent the little money he had taken 
 with him, and at a loss to know what to do next, he 
 enlisted in a regiment of dragoons as Silas Tomkyn 
 Comberbach, a name which he afterwards remarked 
 was aptly suggestive of his habits as an equestrian. 
 But a Latin lament which he had penciled on his stall 
 betrayed him, and the discharge which his friends soon 
 procured came as a welcome relief from a service for 
 which he Avas but poorly adapted. He lost no time 
 in returning to his Alma Mater, where his escapade 
 was closed by his being admonished by the Masters 
 in the presence of the Fellows. He continued at 
 Cambridge until about the middle of December, 1794, 
 when he left the University without taking a degree. 
 Some six months before leaving the University he 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 had formed the acquaintance of Southey, then an 
 undergraduate of Oxford and afterwards the poet- 
 laureate of England. As each at once recognized the 
 other's genius, and as both had much in common, the 
 acquaintance fast ripened into an intimate friendship. 
 Together with some other kindred spirits, they hatched 
 the scheme of Pantisocracy. They were to migrate to 
 some unsettled region in America — the Susquehanna 
 was selected, largely on account of its sweet-sounding 
 name, where the labor of two or three hours each day 
 would supply the needs of the body, and the ample 
 leisure devoted to study and discussion, those of the 
 mind. Poetry was to be written, property was to be 
 possessed in common, their wives were to divide their 
 time between the duties of the home and the cultiva- 
 tion of their minds, all were to believe as they wished 
 in religion and politics, and there was to be no selfish- 
 ness and no sin. But money was wanting to put the 
 project into execution, the enthusiasm of some of the 
 poet-emigrants cooled, and the whole dream vanished 
 into thin air. Other and more absorbing interests 
 soon occupied them, for Southey and Coleridge fell 
 in love with, and married, two sisters. The marriage 
 of Sarah Fricker to Coleridge occurred October 4, 1795, 
 and that of Edith to Southey took place a month later. 
 Thus it happened that Coleridge was saved from 
 Pantisocracy only to be plunged into the severest 
 
INTRODUCTION XV 
 
 sort of a struggle for the means of subsistence. To 
 begin with, he had no income except the promise of a 
 publisher to pay a guinea and a half per hundred lines 
 of whatever poetry he might produce. But he soon 
 discovered that Poetry does not wait on the beck and 
 nod of the task-masters, Bread and Butter, and he was 
 therefore obliged to resort to other devices to earn a 
 livelihood. While seeing through the press his Poems 
 on Various Subjects, — a volume whose publication 
 attracted some favorable attention from the reviews 
 and magazines, but which was delayed until early in 
 1796 by his failure to hasten the completion of his 
 Religious Musings, he wrote for TJie Morning Chronicle 
 and The Critical Review. He also began the publica- 
 tion of The Watchman, 1 a miscellany half-way between 
 the newspaper and the magazine. But after the peri- 
 odical had dragged on for over a year, it was given up 
 because it failed to pay expenses. Lecturing he had 
 already tried, and he now thought to ht himself for 
 the pulpit, but without avail. Added to this, his 
 wife and he were not able either to understand or to 
 appreciate one another. "Never, I suppose," he once 
 wrote, " did the stern match-maker bring together two 
 minds so utterly contrarient in their primary and or- 
 ganical constitution." 2 He himself was in poor health, 
 
 1 See Biographia Literaria, Chap. X., for an amusing account of 
 his canvass for subscribers. 2 Letter to Southey. 
 
XVI INTRODUCTION 
 
 and, in an hour to be cursed throughout his whole 
 life, resorted to opium to relieve his pain. But by 
 gifts of money from friends, and by advances from 
 his publishers on future literary work, he managed 
 to live from hand to mouth until an arrangement by 
 which a young man of some literary pretensions was 
 settled at his home for a time bettered his financial 
 affairs. 
 
 In the fall of 1796 Coleridge met Wordsworth, and 
 began the intercourse whose influence upon the careers 
 of the two poets and upon the history of English 
 poetry can scarcely be overestimated. It would be 
 difficult to imagine two men having so much in com- 
 mon and living outward and inward lives so dissimi- 
 lar. But if the lofty mind of Wordsworth be set over 
 against the profound intellect of Coleridge, if his long 
 years filled with hopeful activity present a striking 
 contrast to Coleridge's shorter struggle saddened by 
 many disheartening failures, if Wordsworth's single- 
 ness of purpose in the pursuit of poetry be more 
 admired than Coleridge's vacillating waywardness in 
 attempting scores of plans without pursuing them to 
 their perfect fulfilment, there were yet many points 
 at which the genius of these men met. They w T ere 
 the most powerful and original of all the spirits that 
 sprang from the ashes of eighteenth-century conven- 
 tionalism, and it may be truthfully said that the best 
 
INTRODUCTION xvil 
 
 of what was thought and said at the beginning of the 
 present century in England had its inspiration in them 
 and was spiritualized by them. It is hardly an exag- 
 geration to say that we measure the worth of their 
 contemporaries by the extent to which they were influ- 
 enced by the principles promulgated by Coleridge and 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 But however that may be, it is certain that each 
 poet possessed the very qualities needed to bring out 
 what was best in the other, and, as a result of this 
 stimulating intimacy, Coleridge wrote most of the 
 poetry for which he is now remembered, and Words- 
 worth much of his, during the period in which the 
 two were almost constant companions. It was now 
 that Coleridge wrote, in addition to the three poems 
 contained in the present volume, any one of which 
 would have been sufficient to have immortalized him, 
 the Ode on the Departing Year, The Three Graves (in 
 part), France : an Ode, Frost at Midnight, Fears in 
 Solitude, The Ballad of the Dark Ladie, and the tra- 
 gedy Osorio, besides many other poems of less worth. 
 This, indeed, was the blossoming time of his poetic 
 genius. 
 
 Here was conceived, too, the theory of poetry which 
 led to the publication of the Lyrical Bcdlads, a book 
 that marked the beginning of a new epoch in the 
 history of English poetry. " During the first year 
 
XV111 INTRODUCTION 
 
 that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours," says 
 Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria (Chap. XIV.), 
 " our conversations turned frequently on the two car- 
 dinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sym- 
 pathy 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 practica- 
 bility 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 inter- 
 esting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such 
 emotions, as would naturally accompany such situa- 
 tions, supposing them real. And real in this sense 
 they have been to every human being who, from what- 
 ever source of delusion, has at any time believed him- 
 self 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. 
 
INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 " In this idea originated the plan of the ' Lyrical 
 Ballads ' ; in which it was agreed that, my endeavours 
 should be directed to persons and characters super- 
 natural, or at least romantic ; yet so as to transfer 
 from our inward nature a human interest and a sem- 
 blance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows 
 of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for 
 the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. 1 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 analo- 
 gous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's 
 attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing 
 it to the loveliness and the wonders 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." 
 
 To this volume, which was published anonymously 
 in 1798, Coleridge contributed the Ancient Mariner and. 
 three other poems, and Wordsworth no less than nine- 
 teen poems. The poets had written ahead of their time, 
 and the reception accorded the book was anything but 
 cordial. Small indeed was the number of those who 
 did not either entirely ignore it or make it the butt of 
 their ridicule. But year by year, as the taste of the 
 1 See Lectures and Notes on Shakspere (Bohn ed.), p. 139. 
 
XX INTRODUCTION 
 
 public came more and more into harmony with the 
 spirit of the book, the latter steadily grew in favor, 
 until at last its influence upon the life and thought of 
 the time began to be appreciated. 
 
 Before the publication of this book Coleridge had 
 been freed from any solicitude as to a livelihood by a 
 pension of £150 a year, 1 given him by two rich men 
 on the condition that he should devote himself entirely 
 to the study of poetry and philosophy. This' enabled 
 him, in company with Wordsworth and his sister, 
 Dorothy Wordsworth, to visit Germany in September, 
 1798, where he remained until the following June. It 
 was to this period of his life that Coleridge always 
 looked back with most satisfaction. During his stay 
 on the continent he became thoroughly proficient in 
 the language, literature, and genius of the German 
 people, having felt in particular the influence of Les- 
 sing, in criticism, and of Kant, in metaphysics. He 
 was thus enabled, later on, followed in turn by Carlyle, 
 to make German thought influence the intellectual life 
 of England. The direct outcome of his tour, however, 
 was, in addition to Satyrane's Letters, admirable in 
 their way, a translation of Schiller's Wallenstein, 2 
 which remains one of the most notable translations 
 of poetry into poetry in any literature, since in this 
 
 1 Half of this pension was withdrawn in 1S12. 
 
 2 The first part, Wallenstein's Lager, was omitted. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 work Coleridge not only preserved the spirit of his 
 original, but in many places improved upon it. 
 
 The years following Coleridge's return from Ger- 
 many down to 1816, when he placed himself under 
 the care of Mr. Gillman at Highgate, can be hastily 
 epitomized. For the most part, the life he now led 
 was a nomadic one, — he pitched his tent wherever 
 evening fell upon him. Like his old seafarer, the 
 Ancient Mariner, he passed like night from place to 
 place, with nothing save his strange power of speech 
 to win him welcome. When not at home, he might be 
 found with Wordsworth at Grasmere, with Poole at 
 Stowey, or, perhaps, with Lamb at London. On one 
 occasion he made a tour through South Wales ; en 
 another he went with Wordsworth and his sister into 
 Scotland. He made several short stays in London, 
 and, in 1804, even went to Malta, visiting Rome and 
 Naples on his way back to England, which he reached 
 after an absence of two years. He did not at once re- 
 turn home, and when he did it was not long before he 
 and Mrs. Coleridge agreed to separate. Other troubles 
 began to press him down. In spite of his annuity, 
 he was again in narrow straits for money, and was 
 forced once more to depend upon gifts and loans from 
 his friends and advances from his publishers. He 
 was also in wretched health, and, to make matters 
 worse, he had allowed opium to cloud and benumb his 
 
xxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 intellect and will. Under such circumstances it is not 
 surprising that the spirit of his great genius lay grovel- 
 ling in a mire of hopeless despondency. 
 
 During this whole period Coleridge produced only 
 some half-dozen poems that are worthy of mention, 
 and even these are not of the highest order, — that 
 is to say, they do not rank with those written during 
 what may be called his annus mirabilis (1797-1798). 
 Of these, Dejection : an Ode, Hymn before /Sun-Hise, 
 The Pains of Sleep, and a Tombless Epitaph 1 are the 
 finest. But he worked over his Osorio, now christened 
 Remorse, which had a run of twenty nights at Drury 
 Lane and brought him more money than he had got 
 from all his previous literary labors. It may be said 
 that Coleridge went to Germany a poet and returned 
 a philosopher. At any rate, from the time he returned 
 the decline of his poetical power went steadily on. 
 Whether it was due to the dismal reign of the Opium 
 King or to the preponderance of the critical, or of the 
 reflective, over the creative faculty, we can only con- 
 jecture. Of this decline Coleridge himself was fully 
 conscious, for in his lines To a Gentleman, written 
 shortly after his return from Malta, he writes sadly of a 
 
 " Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain, 
 And genius given, and knowledge won in vain. 1 ' 
 
 1 Pater has applied lines 14-37 to Coleridge himself. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxm 
 
 And his Dejection : an Ode is another cry from the 
 depths : 
 
 " 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, 
 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, 
 
 My shaping spirit of Imagination." 
 
 Perhaps the all-wise Future may show that he bene- 
 fited man as much by his metaphysics, as if he had 
 written other Christabels and other Ancient Mariners. 
 We cannot tell. But we know that after the light of his 
 imagination nickered into darkness, there w r as no Pro- 
 methean heat that could relume it. When he had once 
 plucked the rose, there was no power that could give 
 it vital growth again, — it must needs wither away on 
 its stalk. If he had been a Homer or a Shakspere, 
 the "years that bring the philosophic mind" would 
 have given his poetic powers renewed vigor; but, 
 then, there has been but one Shakspere and one 
 Homer. As it was, enough of his creative faculty 
 remained to make him a keener critic and a more 
 
xxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 penetrative philosopher than he would otherwise have 
 been ; and England needed both. 
 
 But while Coleridge did not at this time write much 
 poetry, it must not be supposed that he had no other 
 pursuits to occupy his time. He was a journalist and 
 a lecturer. In the former capacity he wrote off and 
 on for The Morning Post and The Courier, and edited 
 on his own account a paper called The Friend. The 
 latter was no more successful from a financial stand- 
 point than his ci-devant Watchman, and was soon aban- 
 doned. Regarding his lectures, of which the larger 
 portion was devoted to Shakspere, there are conflict- 
 ing reports. It would seem that he sometimes kept 
 his audience waiting long after the hour appointed for 
 the lecture to begin ; that at times he did not appear 
 at all ; that he not seldom made promises as to future 
 lectures which he did not fulfil, and, in spite of his own 
 statement to the contrary, that he rarely gave to his 
 lectures the careful preparation ordinarily deemed 
 requisite. But if this be so, it is no less certain that 
 he spoke on subjects to which he had devoted almost 
 a lifetime of deliberation, that he was often at his best 
 when unhampered by a written manuscript and when 
 borne on by the mighty current of his impassioned 
 thought. Then, too, we know from the meagre re- 
 mains of his lectures that no finer criticism had been 
 heard in England than that which fell from his lips. 
 
 
INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 At Highgate, Coleridge tried to free himself from 
 his slavery to opium, and to some extent succeeded. 
 Of the few poems he wrote in the last years of his life, 
 the exquisite Youth and Age and Work without Hope are 
 the best. In 1816 he published a volume containing 
 Christabel, Kubla Khan, and Pains of Sleep, but it met 
 with a disappointing reception from the reviews. In 
 the following year appeared Sibylline Leaves, — a col- 
 lection of most of his poetical compositions up to that 
 time, — and this was followed by other editions of his 
 poems in 1828, 1829, and 1831. In 1817, Zapolya, 
 another drama, a kind of composition for which Cole- 
 ridge never showed much talent, was published. The 
 list of his most important prose works issued before 
 his death comprises two Lay Sermons 1816, 1817, 
 Biographia Literaria 1817, and Aids to Reflection 1825; 
 and after his death, Table-Talk 1835, Literary Remains 
 1836-1838, Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit 1840, 
 Lectures on Shakspere (from notes by J. P. Collier) 
 1875, Letters of S. T. Coleridge 1895, and Aninia Poetce 
 1895. 1 
 
 But in spite of the fact that Coleridge was obliged 
 to toil on at a time when most men expect to rest from 
 their labors, there was more repose in his life at High- 
 gate than he had formerly enjoyed. In 1825 he was 
 
 1 My review of this work will be found in The Dial, Nov. 1, 
 
 is<:>. 
 
xxvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 granted an annuity of 100 guineas by the king, which 
 was made up to him elsewhere when it ceased soon 
 after the king's death in 1830. " It is not secret," 
 writes Leigh Hunt in his Autobiography (Chap. XVI.) 
 " that Coleridge lived in the Grove at Highgate with a 
 friendly family, who had sense and kindness enough 
 to know that they did themselves honor by looking 
 after the comforts of such a man. His room looked 
 upon a delicious prospect of wood and meadow, with 
 colored gardens under the window, like an embroidery 
 to the mantle. I thought, when I first saw it, that he 
 had taken up his dwelling-place like an abbot. Here 
 he cultivated his flowers, and had a set of birds for 
 his pensioners, who came to breakfast with him. He 
 might have been seen taking his daily stroll up and 
 down, with his black coat and white locks, and a book 
 in his hand ; and was a great acquaintance of the little 
 children. His main occupation, I believe, was reading. 
 He loved to read old folios, and to make old voyages 
 with Furchas and Marco Polo — the seas being in good 
 visionary condition and the vessel well stocked with 
 botargoes." 
 
 And now there had fallen on Coleridge the mantle 
 of Dr. Johnson, the great talker of the preceding cen- 
 tury. Each of these men was the most extraordinary 
 talker of his time, but with this difference : Johnson's 
 talk depended upon his apt rejoinders ; Coleridge's, 
 
INTRODUCTION xxvii 
 
 upon the majestic flow of his marvellous monologue. 
 Johnson, in short, was colloquial, while Coleridge was 
 alloquial. It may be said that Coleridge's reputation 
 as a talker rests upon two things, — the printed record 
 of what he said, and the witness of those who heard 
 him to the impression produced upon them. Unfor- 
 tunately there was no Boswell living in Coleridge's 
 time, and the most of what he said was not perma- 
 nently recorded, but some conception of the depth and 
 variety of thought in these discourses may be had from 
 the Table-Talk, a book made up by his nephew from 
 notes of his conversation during the last twelve years 
 of his life. On the other hand, the accounts that have 
 come down to us from his contemporaries seem little 
 short of the incredible, — indeed, the only thing that 
 makes them credible is the fact that they have come 
 from men widely different in mind and character. A 
 part of one of these accounts must serve for the many 
 that might be quoted : " It was a Sabbath past expres- 
 sion deep, and tranquil, and serene," whites his nephew, 
 to "pass an entire day with Coleridge." "You came 
 to a man who had travelled in many countries, and in 
 critical times; avIio had seen and felt the world in 
 most of its ranks and in many of its vicissitudes and 
 weaknesses ; one to whom all literature and genial art 
 were absolutely subject, and to whom, with a reason- 
 able allowance as to technical details, all science was 
 
xxvm INTRODUCTION 
 
 in a most extraordinary degree familiar. Throughout 
 a long-drawn summer's day would this man talk to yon 
 in low, equable, but clear and musical, tones, concern- 
 ing things human and divine ; marshalling all history, 
 harmonizing all experiment, probing the depths of 
 your consciousness, and revealing visions of glory and 
 of terror to the imagination ; but pouring withal such 
 floods of light upon the mind that you might, for a 
 season, like Paul, become blind in the very act of con- 
 version. And this he would do without so much as 
 one allusion to himself, without a word of reflection on 
 others, save when any given act fell naturally in the 
 way of his discourse — without one anecdote that was 
 not proof and illustration of a previous position ; — 
 gratifying no passion, indulging no caprice, but, with 
 a calm mastery over your soul, leading you onward and 
 onward forever through a thousand windings, yet with 
 no pause, to some magnificent point in which, as in a 
 focus, all the parti-coloured rays of his discourse should 
 converge in light. In all this he was, in truth, your 
 teacher and guide; but in a little while you might for- 
 get that he was other than a fellow-student and the 
 companion of your way, — so playful was his manner, 
 so simple his language, so affectionate the glance of 
 his pleasant eye ! " l 
 
 Coleridge's last years were burdened by an illness 
 i Table-Talk (Bohn Ed.), pp. 4, 5. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxix 
 
 which, with few and brief intervals, confined him to 
 the sick-room. His own action had separated him 
 from his wife and children, and these final days Avere 
 gladdened only by the occasional visitor. His mind 
 continued vigorous up to the last, and the evening be- 
 fore the end he dictated to one at his bedside a part 
 of his religious philosophy which he wished recorded. 
 The next morning, July 25, 1834, he died. He was 
 buried in the Highgate churchyard, and later the 
 grammar school of the village was reared above his 
 tomb — as if in mockery of the free spirit sleeping 
 beneath. 
 
 To no man in England since Shakspere could the 
 epithet which Coleridge applied to the poet of Avon 
 — " myriad-minded " — be so well applied as to Cole- 
 ridge himself, and it is because Coleridge can be looked 
 at from so many and such various points of view that the 
 final word as to the true value of his work still remains 
 to be spoken. Perhaps the most notable characteristic 
 of his mind in those years after his poetic power 
 had declined was that profoundness in his habits of 
 thought which made him seek in all matters for the 
 basal truth. He was, in brief, always going back to 
 first principles, always viewing things in their causes. 
 As to his character as a man, those who are unwilling 
 to accept Carlyle's version of it, when he spoke of 
 Coleridge's life as " the tragic story of a high endow- 
 
XXX INTRODUCTION 
 
 raent with an insufficient will," may apply to it a 
 large part of what Coleridge said about Hamlet: 
 '•'Hamlet's character is the prevalence of the ab- 
 stracting and generalizing habit over the practical. 
 He does not want courage, skill, will, or opportunity ; 
 but every incident sets him thinking ; . . . I have 
 a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so." l But 
 these words were his own condemnation, because 
 many years before this he had said: "Action is the 
 great end of all ; no intellect, however grand, is valu- 
 able if it draw us from action, and lead us to think 
 and think till the time of action is passed by and we 
 can do nothing." 2 We should be careful, however, not 
 to make too much of his defects. Some who have 
 lived since his time have spoken of his "unlovely 
 character," and have said that "he had no morals," 
 but those who knew him in his habit as he lived loved 
 and reverenced him. And whatever the judgment 
 passed upon him, he was a man, take him for all in 
 all, whose like we shall not look upon again. 
 
 It only remains to say a word about his place in lit- 
 •erature. As a journalist he moved on a high plane of 
 thought and morality, and, by scorning the tactics of 
 the mere politician and bringing his intellect to bear 
 upon the momentous events of his time, became, at 
 
 i Tablz-Talk, June 24, 1827. 
 
 2 H. C. Robinson, Diary, Vol. I., Chap. XV. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxi 
 
 least in the broad view he took of all political prob- 
 lems, the legitimate successor of the great Burke. 
 As a theologian his influence was even more far- 
 reaching. He was the votes at whose feet sat such 
 men as Thomas Arnold, Julius Hare, and Frederick 
 Maurice. He sought to moralize and spiritualize the 
 religion of England, and to find on the shadowy border 
 between psychology and theology some relation be- 
 tween the human and the divine. As a philosopher 
 his special praise is again to be found in his influence. 
 He left no system of philosophy, and his exposition 
 of the transcendentalism of Kant and his followers 
 was not thorough or systematic enough to be final. 
 He was the means, however, of introducing England 
 to German thought, and thus of inaugurating against 
 the materialism of Locke and Paley the revolution 
 out of which arose the transcendental movement, 
 headed by Carlyle in England and by Emerson in 
 America — the result, in a way, of Coleridge's influ- 
 ence upon the intellect of his time. But great as was 
 his influence in theology and metaphysics, his posi- 
 tion as a critic is even more commanding. He is 
 easily at the head of English philosophical criticism. 
 Modern English criticism is indebted to Coleridge for 
 some of its soundest principles, as well as much of 
 its terminology and many of its famous dicta. He 
 also revolutionized the accepted vieAv of Shakspere, 
 
xxxii IXTRODUCTION 
 
 showing that his work was not the product of the 
 wild, irregular genius of a pure child of nature, but 
 of a poetic wisdom, which was as remarkable for its 
 disclosure of judgment as for its manifestation of 
 genius. 
 
 As a poet Coleridge's rank is very much a matter 
 of definitions. If we say, with Matthew Arnold, 
 " that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life ; that the 
 greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful 
 application of ideas to life, — to the question : How 
 to live," Coleridge must give precedence to many 
 others, and to none of his contemporaries more than 
 to Wordsworth ; but if we say, with Matthew Arnold 
 again, that "poetry is simply the most delightful 
 and perfect form of utterance that human words can 
 reach," and add, with Coleridge himself, that the im- 
 mediate object of poetry is "pleasure, not truth," then 
 the rank assigned to the creator of the Ancient Mari- 
 ner, of Kubla Khan, and of Christabel, must be high 
 among the highest. In the fine harmony of his dic- 
 tion and the pure power of his imagination, in the 
 ability to do by means of words what the musician 
 does by means of notes, what the painter does by 
 means of colors, he had, among lyric poets, few 
 equals, — he had no superior. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxm 
 
 II. SUBJECTS SUGGESTED FOR COMPOSI- 
 TION 
 
 1. The supernatural element in the Ancient Mari- 
 ner. 2. The story of the poem. 3. The human char- 
 acters in the poem. 4. The supernatural element in 
 Kiibla Khan and Christabel. 5. The moral significance 
 of the Ancient Mariner. 6. An answer to Words- 
 worth's criticism : " The Poem of my Friend has indeed 
 great defects ; first, that the principal person has no 
 distinct character, either in his profession of Mariner 
 or as a human being who having been long under the 
 control of supernatural impressions might be supposed 
 himself to partake of something supernatural: sec- 
 ondly, that he does not act, but is continually acted 
 upon : thirdly, that the events having no necessary 
 connection do not produce each other ; and lastly, that 
 the imagery is somewhat too laboriously accumulated." 
 7. An amplified description of some scene. 8. The 
 story of the wedcling-feast — details not related to be 
 supplied by the imagination. 9. An account of the 
 course pursued by the ship. 10. A study in detail of 
 the form of the poem. 11. A sketch illustrating some 
 scene suggested by some one passage. 12. A com- 
 parison of the present text with that of 1798. The 
 older version is perhaps most easily accessible in Dow- 
 den's reprint of the first edition of the Lyrical Ballads, 
 
XXXIV INTRODUCTION 
 
 or in Campbell's Poetical Works of Coleridge. 13. What 
 Coleridge's contemporaries thought of him. See E. T. 
 Mason's Personal Traits of British Authors, which can 
 be used as a stepping-stone to the works of the con- 
 temporaries themselves. 14. A study of the prose 
 gloss, "a gratuitous afterthought." 15. The Ancient 
 Mariner as a poem of the sea. Was Swinburne right in 
 saying that "it may seem as though this great sea- 
 piece might have had more in it of the air and savor 
 of the sea"? Compare it with some other of the 
 sea-poems with which English literature abounds. 
 16. Coleridge's diction. 17. His use of suggestion. 
 18. His adaptation of scenery and other accessories to 
 the spirit of the poem. 19. His use of the principle 
 of contrast. 20. The poem as an illustration of the 
 motto, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in 
 rerum universitate. 21. The Albatross. See article in 
 Encyclopaedia Britannica. 22. An attempt to inter- 
 pret the poem as an allegory. After working out an 
 original interpretation, consult The Journal of Specu- 
 lative Philosophy, Vol. XIV., pp. 327-338. 23. Cole- 
 ridge's use of some rhetorical figure, — the simile, for 
 example. 24. The effect produced by the introduction, 
 at different places in the poem, of the wedding-guest. 
 25. Coleridge as a master of the monologue. In A. P. 
 Russell's Characteristics will be found a selection of 
 the best passages that have been written on Coleridge's 
 
 
 
INTRODUCTION XXXV 
 
 wonderful ability as a talker. It would be better, 
 however, if the student were himself to hunt out these 
 passages in the works of Coleridge's contemporaries. 
 26. A study of Coleridge's Christabel, Keats' Lamia, 
 and Holmes' Elsie Vernier. 
 
 III. BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The Complete Works of S. T. Coleridge, edited by 
 Professor Shedd, are published in seven volumes 
 (Harper's). A cheaper edition of the prose works 
 is that in the Bohn Library, while the best edition 
 of his poems is edited in one volume by James Dykes 
 Campbell (The Macmillan Co.). To these should be 
 added the Letters of S. T. Coleridge and Anima Poetce 
 (Houghton), edited by the poet's grandson, Ernest 
 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 The latest and best narrative of Coleridge's life is 
 by James Dykes Campbell (Macmillan), which may 
 be supplemented with the Lives by Alois Brandl, 
 Hall Caine, and H. D. Traill. Shorter accounts will 
 be found in Rossetti's Lives of Famous Poets and in 
 the Dictionary of National Biography. If the student 
 desire to consult original sources he will find abun- 
 dant references in the article on Coleridge in the 
 Dictionary of National Biography, in Campbell's S. T. 
 Coleridge, and in the very full bibliography appended 
 
XXX VI INTRODUCTION 
 
 to Hall Caine's Life of Coleridge. Various contempo- 
 rary portraits of Coleridge will be found in the works 
 of Southey, Wordsworth, Lamb, Leigh Hunt, He 
 Quincey, Hazlitt, Carlyle, and other noted men of 
 his time. What will doubtless be the standard biog- 
 raphy of the poet is being prepared by Mr. E. H. 
 Coleridge. 
 
 Helpful essays upon Coleridge and his work will be 
 found in Arnold's Essays in Criticism: First Series 
 (Joubert), Beers' Selections from Prose Writings of 
 Coleridge, Brooke's The Golden Book of Coleridge, 
 and Theology in English Poets, Cambridge Essays 
 (1856), Courthope's Liberal Movement in English Lit- 
 erature, Craik's English Prose, Dixon's English Poetry, 
 Dowden's Studies in Literature and New Studies in 
 Literature, G-arnett's Poetry of Coleridge, Johnson's 
 Three Americayis and Three Englishmen, Lowell's 
 Democracy and Other Addresses, Mill's Dissertations 
 and Discussions, Pater's Appreciations, Shairp's Studies 
 in Philosophy and Poetry, Shedd's Literary Essays, 
 Swinburne's Essays and Studies, Warner's Library of 
 World's Best Literature, Whipple's Essays and Reviews, 
 and Wilson's (Christopher North's) Essays, Critical and 
 Imaginative. Magazine articles worthy of note are: 
 Edinburgh Review, vol. xxvii, 1816 (good only as an 
 example of the unappreciative review of the time), 
 Blackwood's Magazine, vol. vi, 1819, vol. ex, 1871, 
 
 
INTRODUCTION XXXV11 
 
 Westminster Review, vol. xii, 1830, Christian Examiner, 
 vol. xiv, 1833, North American Review, vol. xxxix, 
 1834, Quarterly Review, vol. lii, 1834, vol. cxxv, 1868, 
 Presbyterian Quarterly Review, vol. iv, 1856, North 
 British Review, vol. xliii, 1865, Atlantic Monthly, vol. 
 xlv, 1880, vol. lxxvi, 1895, Contemporary Review, 
 vol. lxvii, 1895, Poet-Lore, vol. x, 1898. 
 
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 IN SEVEN PAKTS 
 
 Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles iu 
 rerum universitate. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enar- 
 rabit? et gradus et cognationes et discrimina et singulorum mu- 
 nera? Quidagunt? 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 imagiuem contemplari : ne mens assue- 
 facta hodiernse vitas minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat 
 in pusillas cogitationes. Sed veritati interea invigilandum est, 
 modusque servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a nocte, distingua- 
 mus. — T. Burnet, Archseol. Phil., p. 08. 
 
 ARGUMENT 
 
 ° 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. (1798.) 
 
 Part I 
 
 It is an ancient Mariner, An ancient Mari- 
 
 ner meeteth 
 And lie Stoppetll One Of three. three Gallants 
 
 . hidden to a wed- 
 
 "By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, ding-feast, and 
 
 . detaineth one. 
 
 .Now wherefore stopp st thou me c 
 
 B 1 
 
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide, 
 And I am next of kin ; 6 
 
 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. 
 
 The Wedding- He holds him with his glittering eye c 
 
 Guest is spell- „ TTT _, „ , ?„ J 
 
 bound by the eye The \\ eddlllg-GrUest Stood still, 
 
 of the old sea- -, a ■>• i--, * t • i i 
 
 faring man, and And listens like a three years child 
 hear his tale. 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. 
 
 "The ship was cheered, the harbour 
 cleared, 
 
 Merrily did we drop 
 Below the kirk, below the hill, 
 
 Below the lighthouse top. 
 
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 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. 
 
 The Mariner 
 tells how the 
 ship sailed 
 southward with 
 a good wind and 
 fair weather, till 
 it reached the 
 Line. 
 
 The bride hath paced into the hall, 
 
 Red as a rose is she ; 
 Nodding their heads before her goes 
 
 The merry minstrelsy. 
 
 35 
 
 The Wedding- 
 Guest heareth 
 the bridal music; 
 but the Mariner 
 continueth his 
 tale. 
 
 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 
 
 "And now the Storm-blast came, and 
 he 
 
 Was tyrannous and strong : 
 He struck with his o'ertaking wings, 
 
 And chased us south along. 
 
 The ship drawn ° 
 by a storm 
 toward the 
 south pole. 
 
4 THE RIME OF THE AX CI EXT MARINER 
 
 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. 
 
 The land of ice, And through, the drifts the snowy clifts 
 
 and of fearful _ . _ ? -, . , , 
 
 sounds where no Did send a dismal sheen : 56 
 
 living thing was _ , . . 
 
 to be seen. JNor shapes or 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 ! 
 
 Tin a great sea- At length did cross an Albatross, 
 
 bird, called the 
 
 Albatross, came Thorough the fog it came ; 
 
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 As if it had been a Christian soul, 65 through the 
 
 J snow-tog, and 
 
 We hailed it in God's name. was received 
 
 with great joy 
 
 and hospitality. 
 
 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 
 
 And a good south wind sprung up behind ; And lo! the ai- 
 
 J x e> i. j batross proveth 
 
 The Albatross did follow, a bird of good 
 
 omen, and fol- 
 
 And every day, for food or play, loweth the ship 
 
 1 • , o i \ 1 as il returned 
 
 Came to the mariner s hollo! northward 
 
 through fog and 
 floating ice. 
 
 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." 
 
 '•' God save thee, ancient Mariner, 79 The ancient 
 
 7 ' v Manner mhos- 
 
 From the fiends, that plague thee thus ! — pitabiy kiiieth 
 
 r . the pious bird of 
 
 Why look'st thou so ? " — " With my cross- good omen, 
 bow 
 1° shot the Albatross. 
 
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 Part II 
 
 The° Sun now rose upon the right: 
 
 Out of the sea came he, 
 Still hid in mist, and on the left 
 
 Went down into the sea. 
 
 s 5 
 
 And the good south wind still blew be- 
 hind, 
 
 But no sweet bird did follow, 
 Nor any day for food or play 
 
 Came to the mariners' ° hollo ! 90 
 
 His shipmates 
 cry out against 
 the ancient 
 Mariner, for 
 killing the bird 
 of good luck. 
 
 But when the 
 fog cleared off, 
 they justify the 
 same, and thus 
 make them- 
 selves accompli- 
 ces in the crime. 
 
 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 ! 
 
 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 
 
 'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay, 
 
 That bring the fog and mist. 
 
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, 
 
 The furrow followed free ; 
 We were the first that ever burst 105 
 
 Into that silent sea.° 
 
 The fair breeze 
 continues ; the 
 ship enters the 
 Pacilic Ocean, 
 and sails north- 
 ward, even till it 
 reaches the Line. 
 
 Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt 
 down, 
 
 'Twas sad as sad could be ; 
 And we did speak only to break 
 
 The silence of the sea ! u 
 
 The ship hath 
 been suddenly 
 becalmed. 
 
 All° in a hot and copper sky, 
 The bloody Sun, at noon, 
 
 Eight up above the mast did stand, 
 No bigger than the Moon. 
 
 Day after day, clay after day, 
 
 We stuck, nor breath nor motion ; 
 
 As° idle as a painted ship 
 Upon a painted ocean. 
 
 Water, water, every where, 
 And all the boards did shrink ; 
 
 Water, water, every where, 
 Nor any drop to drink. 
 
 And the Alba- 
 tross begins to 
 [20 be avenged. 
 
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 The very deep did rot : Christ ! 
 
 That ever this should be ! 
 Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs 
 
 Upon the slimy sea. 
 
 125 
 
 A Spirit bad fol- 
 lowed them; one 
 of the invisible 
 inhabitants of 
 this planet, 
 neither departed 
 souls nor angels; 
 concerning' 
 whom the 
 learned Jew, 
 Josephus, and 
 the Platonic 
 Constantinopoli- 
 tan, Michael 
 Psellus, may be 
 consulted. They 
 are very numer- 
 ous, and there is 
 no climate or ele- 
 ment without 
 one or more. 
 
 The shipmates, 
 in their sore dis- 
 tress, would fain 
 throw the whole 
 guilt on the an- 
 cient Mariner; 
 in sign whereof 
 they hang the 
 dead sea-bird 
 round his neck. 
 
 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 
 
 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, 
 Was withered at the root ; 136 
 
 We could not speak, no more than if 
 We had been choked with soot. 
 
 Ah ! well-a-day ! ° what evil looks 
 Had I from old and young ! 
 
 Instead of the cross, the Albatross 
 About my neck was hung. 
 
 140 
 
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 Part III 
 
 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 ; 
 
 It moved and moved, and took at last 
 A certain shape, I wist.° 
 
 [50 
 
 The ancient 
 Mariner behold- 
 eth a sign in the 
 element afar off. 
 
 A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist ! 
 
 And still it neared and neared : 
 As if it dodged a water-sprite, 
 
 It plunged and tacked and veered. 
 
 : 55 
 
 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 bloody 160 
 
 And cried, A sail ! a sail ! 
 
 At its nearer 
 approach, it 
 seeineth him to 
 be a ship; and at 
 a dear ransom 
 he freeth his 
 speech from the 
 bonds of thirst. 
 
10 
 
 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 A flash of joy 
 
 With throats unslaked, with black lips 
 baked, 
 
 Agape they heard me call : 
 Gramercy ! they for joy did grin, 
 And all at once their breath drew in, 165 
 
 As they were drinking all. 
 
 And horror fol- 
 lows. For can 
 it be a ship that 
 comes onward 
 without wind or 
 tide? 
 
 See ! see ! (I cried) she tacks no more ! 
 
 Hither to work us weal 5 
 Without a. breeze, without a tide, 
 
 She steadies with upright keel ! 
 
 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 
 denly 
 
 Betwixt us and the Sun. 
 
 sud- 
 
 75 
 
 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 
 
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 11 
 
 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 ? ° 
 
 Are° those her ribs through which the 
 Sun 185 
 
 Did peer, as through a grate ? 
 And is that AVoman all her crew ? 
 Is that a Death ? ° and are there two ? 
 
 Is Death that Woman's mate ? 
 
 And its ribs are 
 seen as bars on 
 the face of the 
 setting Sun. 
 The Spectre- 
 Woman and her 
 Death-mate, and 
 no other on 
 board the skele- 
 ton ship. 
 
 Her lips were red, her looks were free, 190 Like vessel, like 
 
 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. 
 
 105 
 
 The naked hulk alongside came, 
 And the twain were casting dice ; 
 
 'The game is done ! I've won ! I've won ! ' 
 Quoth she, and whistles thrice. 
 
 The Sun's rim dips ; the stars rush out : 
 At one stride comes the dark ; 
 
 Death and Life- 
 in-Death have 
 diced for the 
 ship's crew, and 
 she (the latter) 
 winneth the an- 
 cient Mariner. 
 
 No twilight 
 within the 
 courts of the 
 
 200 Sun. 
 
12 
 
 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 With far-heard whisper , o'er the sea, 
 Off shot the spectre-bark. 
 
 4lMoon* ng ° f 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 oue bright 
 
 star 210 
 
 Within the nether tip. 
 
 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 
 
 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. 
 
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 13 
 
 The souls did from their bodies fly, — 
 
 They fled to bliss or woe ! 
 And every soul, it passed me by, 
 
 Like the whizz of my cross-bow° ! " 
 
 But Life-in- 
 Peath begins her 
 work on the an- 
 cient Mariner. 
 
 Part IV 
 
 " I fear thee, ancient Mariner ! 
 
 I fear thy skinny hand ! 2 
 
 And thou art long, and lank, and brown, 
 
 As is the ribbed sea-sand. 
 
 The Wedding- 
 Guest feareth 
 '■$ that a Spirit is 
 talking to hini ; 
 
 I fear thee and thy glittering eye, 
 And thy skinny hand, so brown." — 
 
 " Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest ! 
 This body dropt not down. 231 
 
 But the ancient 
 Mariner assur- 
 eth him of his 
 bodily life, and 
 proceedeth to 
 relate his horri- 
 ble penance. 
 
 Alone, alone, all, all alone, 
 Alone on a wide wide sea ! 
 
 And never a° saint took pity on 
 My soul in agony. 
 
 2 35 
 
 The many men, so beautiful ! 
 And they all dead did lie : 
 
 He despiseth the 
 creatures of the 
 calm. 
 
14 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 And a thousand thousand sliniy things 
 Lived on ; and so did I. 
 
 And envieth that I looked upon the rotting Sea, 240 
 
 they should live, l & > * 
 
 and so many lie 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. 
 
 But the curse The cold sweat melted from their limbs, 
 
 liveth for him in „. , , . -. , , 
 
 the eye of the .N or rot nor reek did they : 
 
 The look with which they looked on 
 
 me 25: 
 
 Had never passed away. 
 
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 15 
 
 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 ! 260 
 
 Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, 
 
 And yet I could not die. 
 
 The moving Moon went up the sky, 
 
 And no where did abide : 
 Softly she was going up, 265 
 
 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 270 
 
 A still and awful red. 
 
 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 275 
 
 Fell off in hoary flakes. 
 
 Within the shadow of the ship 
 I watched their rich attire : 
 
 In his loneliness 
 and fixedness he 
 yearneth 
 towards the 
 journeying 
 Moon, "and the 
 stars that still 
 sojourn, yet 
 still move on- 
 ward; 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 ex- 
 pected and yet 
 there is a silent 
 joy at their 
 arrival. 
 
 By the light of 
 the Moon he be- 
 holdeth God's 
 creatures of the 
 great calm. 
 
16 
 
 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, 
 They coiled and swam ; and every track 280 
 Was° a flash of golden fire. 
 
 t T h h eii r hapffis d ° ha PPy livin g things ! no tongue 
 
 He blesseth 
 them in his 
 heart. 
 
 Their beauty might declare : 
 A spring of love gushed from my heart, 
 
 And I blessed them unaware : 
 Sure my kind saint took pity on me, 
 
 And I blessed them unaware. 
 
 The spell begins 
 to break. 
 
 The selfsame moment I could pray ; 
 
 And from my neck so free 
 The° Albatross fell off, and sank 
 
 Like lead into the sea. 
 
 290 
 
 Part V 
 
 0h° 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. 
 
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 17 
 
 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 
 
 By grace of the 
 holy Mother, the 
 ancient Mariner 
 is refreshed with 
 rain. 
 
 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. 
 
 And soon I heard a roaring wind : 
 
 It did not come anear ; 
 But with its sound it shook the sails, 
 
 That were so thin and sere. 
 
 310 
 
 He heareth 
 sounds and seeth 
 strange sights 
 and commotions 
 in the sky and 
 the element. 
 
 The upper air burst into life ! 
 
 And a hundred fire-flags sheen, 
 To and fro they were hurried about ! 
 And to and fro, and in and out, 
 
 The wan stars danced between. 
 
 315 
 
18 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 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. 
 
 The bodies of the The loud wind never reached the ship, 
 
 ship s crew are A ' 
 
 inspired, and Yet now the ship moved on ! 
 
 the ship moves 
 
 Beneath the lightning and the Moon 
 The dead men gave a groan. 
 
 33° 
 
 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 RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 19 
 
 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." 
 
 " I fear thee, ancient Mariner ! " 345 
 
 " Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest ! 
 'Twas 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, 35 o 
 
 And clustered round the mast ; 
 Sweet sounds rose slowly through their 
 mouths, . 
 And from their bodies passed. 
 
 Around, around, flew each sweet sound, 
 Then darted to the Sun; 355 
 
 But not by the 
 souls of the men, 
 nor by daemons 
 of earth or mid- 
 dle air, but by a 
 blessed troop of 
 angelic spirits, 
 sent down by the 
 invocation of the 
 guardian saint. 
 
20 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 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, 360 
 
 How they seemed to fill the sea and air 
 With their sweet jargoning ! 
 
 And now 'twas 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. 
 
 
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 21 
 
 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. 
 
 The sails at noon left off their tune, 
 And the ship stood still also. 
 
 380 
 
 The lonesome 
 Spirit from the 
 south-pole car- 
 ries on the ship 
 as far as the 
 Line, in obedi- 
 ence to the an- 
 gelic troop, but 
 still requireth 
 vengeance. 
 
 The Sun,° right up above the mast, 
 
 Had fixed her to the ocean : 
 But in a minute she 'ga^n stir, 
 
 With a short uneasy motion — 
 Backwards and forwards half her length 
 
 With a short uneasy motion. 
 
 385 
 
 Then like a pawing horse let go, 
 She made a sudden bound : 
 
 It flung the blood into my head, 
 And I fell down in a swound. 
 
 390 
 
 How long in that same fit I lay, 
 
 I have not to declare ; 
 But ere my living life returned, 
 I heard and in my soul discerned 
 
 Two voices in the air. 
 
 395 
 
 The Polar 
 
 Spirit's fellow- 
 daemons, the 
 invisible inhabi- 
 tants of the ele- 
 ment, take part 
 in his wrong ; 
 and two of them 
 relate, one to the 
 
22 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 other that pen- t J s ft } ie ? t quo tll Olie, ' Is this the 
 ance long and - 1 
 
 heavy for the m an? 
 
 ancient Manner 
 
 man 
 
 hath been By Him who died on cross, 
 
 accorded to the ^ 
 
 Polar spirit, who "With his cruel bow he laid full low 
 
 returneth 
 
 southward. The harmless Albatross. 
 
 400 
 
 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 ? 
 Wliat is the Ocean doing ? ' 
 
 
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 23 
 
 SECOND VOICE 
 
 * Still as a slave before his lord, 
 The Ocean hath no blast ; 
 
 His great bright eye most silently 
 Up to the Moon is cast — 
 
 415 
 
 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.' 
 
 420 
 
 FIRST VOICE 
 
 ' But why drives on that ship so fast, 
 Without or wave or wind ? ' 
 
 SECOND VOICE 
 
 1 The air is cut away before, 
 And closes from behind. 
 
 The Mariner 
 hath been cast 
 into a trance; for 
 the angelic 
 power causeth 
 the vessel to 
 drive northward 
 faster than 
 human life could 
 endure. 
 
 425 
 
 Ely, 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.' 
 
24 
 
 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 The supernatu- 
 ral motion is 
 retarded ; the 
 Mariner awakes, 
 and his penance 
 begins anew. 
 
 The curse is 
 finally expiated. 
 
 I woke, and we were sailing on 430 
 
 As in a gentle weather : 
 'Twas night, calm night, the Moon was high, 
 
 The dead men stood together. 
 
 All stood together on the deck, 
 For a enamel-dungeon fitter : 
 
 All fixed on me their stony eyes, 
 That in the Moon did glitter. 
 
 435 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 25 
 
 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, 
 Yet she sailed softly too : 
 
 Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze 
 On me alone it blew. 
 
 460 
 
 Oh ! dream of joy ! is this indeed 
 The lighthouse top I see ? 
 
 Is this the hill ? is this the kirk ? 
 Is this mine own countree ? 
 
 And the ancient 
 Mariner behold- 
 eth his native 
 4"5 country. 
 
 We drifted o'er the harbour-bar, 
 And I with sobs did pray — 
 
 let me be awake, my God ! 
 Or let me sleep alway. 
 
 470 
 
26 
 
 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT 51 A FINER 
 
 The harbour-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. 
 
 The angelic And the bay was white with silent light, 
 
 spirits leave the „,.„ . . 
 
 dead bodies, Till ri sing from the same, 
 
 Full many shapes, that shadows were, 
 In crimson colours came. 
 
 And appear in A little distance froni the prow 
 
 their own forms „,, . , , 
 
 of light. 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, 
 
 On every corse there stood. 
 
 490 
 
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 27 
 
 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 ; bnt oh ! the silence sank 
 
 Like music on mj heart. 
 
 But soon I heard the clash 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. 
 
28 
 
 THE RIME OF THE ANCIEXT MARINER 
 
 The Hermit of 
 the Wood 
 
 Part VII 
 
 This Hermit good lives in that wood 
 Which slopes down to the sea. 
 
 How loudly his sw^eet voice he rears ! 
 
 He loves to talk with marineres 
 That come from a far countree. 
 
 5'5 
 
 He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve 
 He hath a cushion plump :° 
 
 It is the moss that wholly hides 
 The rotted old oak-stump. 
 
 520 
 
 The skiff-boat neared : I heard them talk, 
 ' Why, this is strange, I trow ! 
 
 Where are those lights so many and fair, 
 That signal made but now ? ' 526 
 
 Approacheth 
 the ship with 
 wonder. 
 
 1 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 
 
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 29 
 
 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 be- 
 low, 
 
 That eats the she-wolf's young.' 
 
 < Dear Lord ! it hath a fiendish look — 
 
 (The Pilot made reply) 
 I am a-f eared ' — ' 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 
 
 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. 
 
 The ship sud- 
 denly sinketh. 
 
 Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound, 
 Which sky and ocean smote, 551 
 
 The ancient 
 Mariner is saved 
 in the Pilot's 
 boat. 
 
30 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 Like one that hath been seven days 
 drowned 
 
 My body lay afloat; 
 Bnt 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 Iioav to row.' 
 
 And now, all in my own countree, 570 
 
 I stood on the firm land ! 
 
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 31 
 
 The Hermit stepped forth from the boat, 
 And scarcely he could stand. 
 
 ' 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 mind was 
 wrenched 
 
 With a woful agony, 
 Which forced me to begin my tale; 
 
 And then it left me free. 
 
 580 
 
 Since then, at an uncertain hour, 
 
 That agony returns ; 
 And till my ghastly tale is told, 
 
 This heart within me burns. 
 
 585 
 
 1° 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 : 
 
 The ancient 
 Mariner ear- 
 nestly entreateth 
 the Hermit to 
 shrieve hirn ; 
 and the penance 
 of life falls on 
 him. 
 
 And ever and 
 anon throughout 
 his future life an 
 agony constrain- 
 eth him to travel 
 from land to 
 land, 
 
32 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 But in the garden-bower the bride 
 And bride-maids singing are : 
 
 And hark the little vesper bell, 595 
 
 Which biddeth me to prayer ! 
 
 Wedding-Guest ! this soul hath been 
 
 Alone on a wide wide sea : 
 So lonely 'twas, that God himself 
 
 Scarce seemed there to be. 600 
 
 sweeter than the marriage-feast, 
 
 'Tis 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 ! 
 
 And to teach, by Farewell, farewell! but this I tell 610 
 
 his own exam- 
 ple, love and To thee, thou Wedding-Guest ! 
 
 reverence to all 
 
 tilings that God He prayeth well, who loveth well 
 Both man and bird and beast. 
 
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 33 
 
 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 
 
 D 
 
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 rive 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, 
 
 35 
 
36 KUBLA KHAN 
 
 As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, 
 Amid whose swift half-intermitted bnrst 
 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 
 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 ! 
 
 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, 
 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, 
 Singing of Mount Abora. 
 
KUBLA KHAN 37 
 
 Could I revive within me 
 
 Her symphony and song, 
 
 To such a deep delight 'twould win me, 
 That with music loud and long, 
 
 I would build that dome in air, 45 
 
 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 ! 
 Weave a circle round him thrice, 5 o 
 
 And close your eyes with holy dread, 
 For he on honey-dew hath fed, 
 And drunk the milk of Paradise. 
 
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, 
 
40 CHRIST ABEL 
 
 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 
 
 'Tis 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 np suddenly, 
 The lovely lady, Christabel ! 
 
CHRIST ABEL 41 
 
 It moaned as near, as near can be, 
 
 But what it is she cannot tell. 4° 
 
 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 
 
42 CHRIST ABEL 
 
 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 earnest 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 : 
 
CHRIST ABEL 43 
 
 They choked my cries with force and fright, 
 
 And tied me on a palfrey white. 
 
 The palfrey was as fleet as wind, S5 
 
 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 
 
 well, bright dame ! may you command 
 
44 CHRIST ABEL 
 
 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 no 
 
 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, 
 
 
CHRIST ABEL 45 
 
 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 aAvake, 
 
 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 ? 
 
46 CHRISTABEL 
 
 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. 
 
 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 Gerald ine press down 
 
 The rushes of the chamber floor. 
 
 The° moon shines dim in the open air, 175 
 
 And not a moonbeam enters here. 
 
CHRISTABEL 47 
 
 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. 
 
 weary lady, Geraldine, 190 
 
 1 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 
 
48 CHRIST ABEL 
 
 How on her death-bed she did say, 
 
 That she should hear the castle-bell 200 
 
 Strike twelve upon my wedding-day. 
 
 mother dear ! that thou wert here ! 
 
 1 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, i 'tis over now ! ' 
 
 Again the wild-flower wine she drank : 220 
 
 Her fair large eyes 'gan glitter bright, 
 
CHRIST ABEL 49 
 
 And from the floor whereon she sank, 
 
 : 53 
 
 The lofty lady stood upright : 
 She was most beautiful to see, 
 Like a lady of a far countree. 
 
 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 befel, 
 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. 
 
50 CHRISTABEL 
 
 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, 
 
CHRIST ABEL 51 
 
 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 ; 
 
CHRISTABEL 
 
 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, T 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, 
 
 Geraldine ! since arms of thine 
 
 Have been the lovely lady's prison. 
 
 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 ! 110 
 
CHRISTABEL 53 
 
 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 the 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 ! 
 
54 CHRISTABEL 
 
 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 
 
CHRIST ABEL 55 
 
 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 her 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 
 
56 CHRISTABEL 
 
 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, Avho 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 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, 
 
CHRIST ABEL 57 
 
 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 Eoland 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 Eoland 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, 
 
58 CHRIST ABEL 
 
 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 
 
 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 44 o 
 
 My tourney court — that there and then 
 
 1 may dislodge their reptile souls 
 From the bodies and forms of men ! ' 
 He spake : his eye in lightning rolls ! 
 
CHRIST ABEL 59 
 
 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, 
 
60 CHRIST ABEL 
 
 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 
 
CHRIST ABEL 61 
 
 To bear thy harp, and learn thy song, 
 
 And clothe you both in solemn vest, 
 
 And over the mountains haste along, 49 o 
 
 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. 
 
 1 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 Eoland 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 
 
62 t URISTABEL 
 
 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, 
 Man} r 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 ; 
 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, 
 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, 
 Warn'd by a vision in my rest ! 
 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, 
 
 515 
 
 53° 
 
CHRIST ABEL 63 
 
 Fluttering, and uttering fearful moan, 535 
 
 Among the green herbs in the forest alone. 
 
 Which when I saw and when I heard, 
 
 I wonder'd what might ail the bird ; 
 
 For nothing near it could I see, 
 
 Save the grass and green herbs underneath 
 
 the old tree. i 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, 
 
64 CHRIST ABEL 
 
 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, 
 
 1 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 ! 
 
CHRISTABEL 65 
 
 °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 look'd 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 
 
66 ('UK 1ST ABEL 
 
 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 
 
 0, 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 
 
CHRIST A BEL 67 
 
 Might prove lier clear 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, 
 
 Dishonour'd 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 
 
68 CHRIST ABEL 
 
 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 
 
 ( 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. 
 
NOTES 
 
 THE ANCIENT MARINER 
 
 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was first printed anony- 
 mously in the Lyrical Ballads, 1798, and reprinted in subse- 
 quent editions of that work in 1800, 1802, and 1805. The text 
 of 1800 differed materially from that of 1798 in being freed 
 from much of its archaic spelling — a device for making it 
 appear more like the Sir Patrick Spens type of ballad, and in 
 the omission of the merely horrible. On its next appearance, 
 which was in 1817, in Sibylline Leaves, some additional changes 
 in the text were made, and the motto from Burnet and the 
 marginal gloss were added. After this there were no altera- 
 tions of any consequence. 
 
 In the Memoirs of William Wordsworth, Vol. I., pp. 107, 108, 
 the following account of the origin of the poem is given by 
 Wordsworth: "In the autumn of 1797 he (Coleridge), my 
 sister, and myself started from Alfoxden pretty late in the 
 afternoon with a view to visit Linton and the Valley of Stones 
 near to it. Accordingly we set off. and proceeded along the 
 Quantock Hills towards Watchet, and in the course of this walk 
 was planned the poem of The Ancient Mariner, founded on a 
 dream, as Mr. Coleridge said, of his friend, Mr. Cruikshank. 
 Much the greater part of the story was Mr. Coleridge's inven- 
 tion, but certain parts I suggested ; for example, some crime 
 
 69 
 
70 • NOTES 
 
 was to be committed which should bring upon the Old Navi- 
 gator, as Coleridge afterwards delighted to call him, the spectral 
 persecution, as a consequence of that crime and his own wan- 
 derings. I had been reading in Shelvocke's Voyages 1 a day or 
 two before, that, while doubling Cape Horn, they frequently 
 saw albatrosses in that latitude, the largest sort of sea-fowl, 
 some extending their wings twelve or thirteen feet. ' Suppose,' 
 said I, ' you represent him as having killed one of these birds 
 on entering the South Sea, and that the tutelary spirits of these 
 regions take upon them to avenge the crime.' The incident 
 was thought fit for the purpose, and adopted accordingly. I 
 also suggested the navigation of the ship by the dead men, but 
 do not recollect that I had anything more to do with the scheme 
 of the poem. The gloss with which it was subsequently ac- 
 companied was not thought of by either of us at the time, at 
 least not a hint of it was given to me, and I have no doubt 
 it was a gratuitous afterthought. We began the composition 
 together on that, to me, memorable evening. I furnished two 
 or three lines at the beginning of the poem, in particular : 
 
 1 Shelvocke, in describing his voyage between " the streights of 
 le Mair " and the coast of Chili, says they saw no fish," nor one sea- 
 bird, except a disconsolate black Albitross, who accompanied us 
 for several days, hovering about us as if he had lost himself, till 
 Hartley (my second captain), observing in one of his melancholy 
 tits that this bird was always hovering near us, imagin'd from his 
 colour that it might be some ill-omen. That which, I suppose, 
 induced him the more to encourage his superstition was the con- 
 tinued series of contrary tempestuous winds, which had oppress'd 
 us ever since we had got into this sea. But be that as it would, he 
 after some fruitless attempts at length shot the albitross, not doubt- 
 ing (perhaps) that we should have a fair wind after it." — Shel- 
 vocke, Voyage round the World by the way of the great South 
 Sea, etc., London, 1726. 
 
NOTES • 71 
 
 ' And listeu'd like a three years' child : 
 The Mariner had his will.' 
 
 These trifling contributions, all but one, which Mr. Coleridge 
 has with unnecessary scrupulosity recorded, slipped out of his 
 mind, as they well might. As we endeavored to proceed con- 
 jointly (I speak of the same evening) our respective manners 
 proved so widely different that it would have been quite pre- 
 sumptuous in me to do anything but separate from an under- 
 taking upon which I could only have been a clog." 
 
 In a conversation with the Rev. Alexander Dyce (Xote in 
 Poems of S. T. C, ed. 1852) Wordsworth said the dream of 
 Coleridge's friend was of "a skeleton ship, with figures in it," 
 and claimed, besides the stanza containing the two lines quoted 
 above, the lines : 
 
 " And thou art long, and lank, and brown, 
 As is the ribbed sea-sand." 
 
 Coleridge's own account of the matter has been quoted in 
 the Introduction. It has also been claimed that Coleridge must 
 have derived some help from Captain Thomas James' Strange 
 and dangerous Voyage . . . in his intended Discovery of the 
 North- West Passage into the South Sea, London, 1633, and a 
 document to be found in La Bigne's Magna Bibliotheca Vete- 
 rum Patrum, 1018, — a letter from Saint Paulinus to Macarius. 
 Regarding the latter see Gentleman'' s Magazine for October, 
 1853. But whatever Coleridge's indebtedness to these sources, 
 it should not be forgotten that he used this material as Shak- 
 spere used the sources of his wonderful plays, — it was, after 
 all, simply the skeleton which his imagination enabled him to 
 clothe with living flesh and blood. 
 
 Translation of Motto. — I can easily believe that in the uni- 
 verse the invisible beings are more than the visible. But who 
 
72 NOTES 
 
 shall reveal to us the nature of them all, the rank, the relation- 
 ships, the distinguishing features, and the offices of each ? 
 What is it they do ? Where is it they dwell ? Always about 
 the knowledge of these wonders the mind of man has circled, 
 nor ever reached it. In the meantime, I deny not, it is pleas- 
 ant sometimes to contemplate in the mind, as in a picture, the 
 image of this greater and better world ; that the intellect, 
 wonted to the petty details of daily life, be not narrowed over- 
 much, nor sink utterly to paltry thoughts. But, meanwhile, 
 the truth must be vigilantly sought after, and a temperate 
 judgment maintained, that we may distinguish things certain 
 from things uncertain, day from night. 
 
 The Glosses. — These marginal notes should be read both in 
 connection with the poem and by themselves. If read with the 
 text they will be found to give a clearer conception of the idea 
 of the poem ; if read by themselves they will be seen to consti- 
 tute one of Coleridge's finest prose compositions. See Pater, 
 Appreciations, p. 100 ; Craik, English Prose, Vol. V., p. 79. 
 
 1. 1. It is, etc. Note the rhetorical ellipsis, and for ballads 
 beginning in a similar manner see Child, English and Scottish 
 Popular Ballads, I., 113 ; II., 256, 321 ; V., 48, 54. The poem 
 begins abruptly, and in like manner nearly every important 
 detail and incident in the poem is introduced, as, for example, 
 the ship, the storm-blast, the Albatross, etc. 
 
 1. 2. One of three. Observe the poet's use of the numbers 
 three, seven, and nine. "The odd numbers have always been 
 regarded as particularly appropriate to the mystical or super- 
 natural. See, for example, llossetti's Blessed Damozel: 
 
 1 She had three lilies in her hand, 
 And the stars in her hair were seven.' 
 
 " Tennyson writes in the Hesperides : 
 
NOTES 73 
 
 ' . . . Five and three, 
 Let it not be noised abroad, make an awful mystery.' 
 
 "There are, you remember, nine muses, seven wonders of 
 the world, three fates, etc." — Herbert Bates, ed. of Ancient 
 Mariner. 
 
 I. 3. By thy, etc. Much is gained by this indirect descrip- 
 tion of the Ancient Mariner. Look through the poem for other 
 examples of the same sort. 
 
 II. 9-12. In the 1798 version there were two stanzas here : 
 
 But still he holds the wedding-guest — 
 
 There was a Ship, quoth he — 
 " Nay, if thou'st got a laughsome tale, 
 
 " Marinere ! come with me." 
 
 He holds him with his skinny hand, 
 
 Quoth he, there was a Ship — 
 " Now get thee hence, thou grey-beard Loon! 
 
 " Or my Staff shall make thee skip." 
 
 Other changes worth noting, not pointed out later, are the 
 following: 41-54, 07, 85, 143-152, 159, 167, 234, 238, 242, 
 268, 309, 313-326, 327-328, 345-349, 359, 387-388, 443, 533, 
 583-585. 
 
 1. 10. There was a ship. "It is perhaps the most vivid 
 realization ever put into words of that large life of the world 
 which embraces the tiny fragmentary life of the individual. 
 The ship sails in upon the changed scene under the wondering 
 gazer's unwilling eyes. Its shadow comes between him and 
 the board which he knows is spread so near, the procession 
 which he can see passing, shadowy, across those shadowy seas. 
 Which is the real ? which the vision ? The mind grows giddy, 
 the imagination trembles and wavers. Our senses become con- 
 
74 NOTES 
 
 fused, unable to identify what we see from what we hear ; and 
 finally, triumphantly, the unseen sweeps in and holds posses- 
 sion, more real, more true, more unquestionable than anything 
 that eye can see." — Mrs. Oliphant, BlackicoocV s Magazine, 
 Vol. 110, p. 507. 
 
 1. 11. Loon. Compare Macbeth, V. 3. 11. 
 
 1. 12. Eftsoons. At once, immediately. Why "dropt" in 
 this line, and '♦holds" in 1. 9 ? Examine the tenses through- 
 out the poem, and try to discover just what the poet accom- 
 plishes by his frequent changes. 
 
 1.13. His glittering eye. " Like his own 'Ancient Mariner,' 
 when he had once fixed your eye he held you spell-bound, and 
 you were constrained to listen to his tale ; you must have been 
 more powerful than he to have broken the charm ; and I know 
 no man worthy to do that." — C. and M. C. Clarke, Becolle.c- 
 tions of Writers, p. 32. For a somewhat similar comment by 
 John Sterling, see Russell, Characteristics, p. 1G. 
 
 I. 14. The Wedding-Guest. ''Mark . . . how significant is 
 the pause which allows time to present the final relinquishment 
 on the part of the wedding-guest of all thought of escape ; what- 
 ever interruption he makes henceforth is in the interest of the 
 narrative, and betrays its control over him ; he no longer seeks 
 to retard or dismiss it." — Gertrude Garrigues, Journal of 
 Spec. Phil., Vol. 14, p. 829. Examine those lines in which 
 the wedding-guest is mentioned, and try to discover the poet's 
 reason for introducing the character. 
 
 II. 15-16. These lines, as well as lines 22G-227, were fur- 
 nished by Wordsworth. 
 
 1. 18. He cannot choose, etc. See 11. 38, 586-590. 
 
 1. 20. Bright-eyed. A study of the epithets in the poem 
 
NOTES lb 
 
 will give some insight into an important phase of Coleridge's 
 poetic art. "The power of poetry is, by a single word perhaps, 
 to instil that energy into the mind, which compels the imagina- 
 tion to produce the picture." — Coleridge, Lectures on JShak- 
 spere and Milton (Bohn ed.), p. 138. In this connection, see 
 Sherman, Analytics of Literature, p. 52 ff. ; on the general 
 subject of Coleridge's diction, see Lowell, Works, Vol. VI., 
 pp. 74-75. 
 
 I. 21. The ship, etc. This stanza should be compared with 
 "the opening stanzas of Tennyson's The Voyage; indeed the 
 whole of that poem shows Coleridge's influence." — Syle, From 
 Milton to Tennyson. 
 
 II. 25-28. A whole clay — and it is all sun, just what a sailor 
 would see so much of at sea — is crowded into these four lines. 
 This economy of words, but not of ideas, because Coleridge's 
 well-chosen words are almost without limit in their suggestive- 
 ness, is characteristic of the whole poem, and, we might add, 
 of all works of the highest art. Another feature of the stanza 
 is that, with the exception of the two prepositions, upon and 
 into, all of the words are monosyllables. An interesting study 
 will be to compare this stanza, and others like it, with those 
 in which words of more than one syllable abound, noting the 
 difference of effect. See also the monosyllabic song at the 
 opening of Part VII. of Tennyson's Princess. 
 
 The whole picture is a "grand image of the loneliness, the 
 isolation from all other created things, of that speck upon the 
 boundless, noiseless waters. Throughout the whole poem this 
 sentiment of isolation is preserved with a magical and most 
 impressive reality ; all the action is absolutely shut up within the 
 doomed ship." — Mrs. Oliphant, Literary History of England, 
 Vol. I., p. 247. 
 
76 NOTES 
 
 1. 30. Where, then, is the ship ? Observe that only ten 
 lines have been used in bringing the ship to this point. 
 
 1. 31. Here we are suddenly torn away from the sea picture, 
 and borne back to the wedding-feast where the bride and the 
 minstrelsy fill our minds with thoughts quite different from 
 those that haunt the crazed brain of the old seafarer. When 
 we are again at sea, it is not upon the sun or the ship that our 
 attention is centred, but upon the Storm-blast, and in this way 
 surprise and contrast are made use of to sting our imaginations 
 into producing the picture. 
 
 1. 32. Bassoon. " During Coleridge's residence in Stowey 
 his friend Poole reformed the church choir, and added a bassoon 
 to its resources. Mrs. Sanford (T. Poole and His Friends, I., 
 247), happily suggests, that this ' was the very original and pro- 
 totype of the " loud bassoon " whose sound moved the wedding- 
 guest to beat his breast.' " — Campbell, Poetic Works of 
 Coleridge. See illustration in Standard Dictionary. 
 
 1. 35. Nodding their heads. Compare Coleridge's Ballad 
 of the Dark Ladle, 11. 53-56. 
 
 1. 36. Minstrelsy. Define. 
 
 1. 37. The Wedding-Guest, etc. What does the poet gain 
 by his frequent repetitions, not only here, but elsewhpre in the 
 poem? Not infrequently much of a poet's charm lies in his' 
 skilful repetitions, a fact that will be appreciated by all readers 
 of Poe. 
 
 1. 41. The ship drawn, etc. Mr. Campbell suggests that 
 drawn in the gloss be emended to driven. His reasons for the 
 change will be found in The Athenceum, No. 3256, p. 371, and 
 in a note at p. 597 of his edition of Coleridge's poems. For a de- 
 fence of the present reading, see The Athenaeum, No. 3257, p. 405. 
 
NOTES 11 
 
 1. 47. Still treads, etc. Explain this line. 
 
 I. 50. Southward aye we fled. "Anyone examining the 
 poem with a critical eye for its machinery and groundwork, 
 will have noticed that Coleridge is careful not to introduce any 
 element of the marvellous or supernatural until he has trans- 
 ported the reader beyond the pale of definite geographical know- 
 ledge, and thus left behind him all those conditions of the known 
 and the familiar, all those associations with recorded fact and 
 experience, which would have created an inimical atmosphere. 
 ... In some half-dozen stanzas, beginning with ' The ship 
 was cleared,' we find ourselves crossing the Line and driven far 
 towards the Southern Pole. Beyond a few broad indications 
 thus vouchsafed, Coleridge very astutely takes pains to avoid 
 anything like geography. We reach that silent sea into which 
 we are the first that ever burst, and that is sufficient for imagina- 
 tive ends. It is enough that the world, as known to actual 
 navigators, is left behind, and a world which the poet is free 
 to colonize with the wildest children of his dreaming brain, has 
 been entered. Forthwith, to all intents and purposes, we may 
 say, in the words of Goethe as rendered by Shelley : 
 
 ' The bounds of true and false are passed ; — 
 Lead us on, thou wandering gleam.' " 
 
 — Watson, Excursions in Criticism, pp. 98-99. 
 
 II. 51-70. And now there came, etc. " If Coleridge read 
 Captain James' 'North-west Passage' log, he probably noted 
 the following entries. ... 'All day and all night, it snow'd 
 hard ' ; ' The nights are very cold ; so that our rigging freezes ' ; 
 • It prooved very thicke foule weather, and the next day, by two 
 a Clocke in the morning, we found ourselves incompassed about 
 with Ice ' ; ' We had Ice not farre off about us, and some pieces 
 as high as our Top-mast-head'; 'The seventeenth ... we 
 
78 NOTES 
 
 heard . . . the rutt against a banke of Ice that lay on the 
 Shoare. It made a hollow and hideous noyse, like an over-fall 
 of water, which made us to reason amongst our selves con- 
 cerning it, for we were not able to see about us, it being darke 
 night and foggie ' ; ' The Ice . . . crackt all over the Bay, 
 with a fearf nil noyse ' ; ' These great pieces that came a grounde 
 began to breake with a most terrible thundering noyse ' ; ' This 
 morning . . . we unfastened our Ship, and came to Saile, 
 steering betwixt great pieces of Ice that were a grounde in 
 40 fad., and twice as high as our Top-mast-head.' " — Campbell. 
 See Hie Athenceum for 1890. 
 
 1. 51. And through, etc. Clifts is an old form of clefts; 
 drifts is used in the sense of driving clouds of mist and snow 
 (see 1. 51). 
 
 1. 59. The ice, etc. " In the beginning of the mariner's 
 narrative, the language has all the impetus of a storm, — and 
 when the ship is suddenly locked among the polar ice, the 
 change is as instantaneous as it is awful.'" — Blackwood' 1 s 
 Magazine, Vol. 6, p. 5. 
 
 1. G2. Like noises, etc. Swound = swoon. What could 
 have been "more weirdly imagined of the 'cracks and growls' 
 of the rending iceberg than that they sounded 'like noises in a 
 swound ' ? " — Traill, Coleridge, p. 52. Observe also the effect 
 of remoteness produced by this comparison. 
 
 1. 61. Thorough. An older form of through, used here for 
 the sake of the metre. But why are so many archaic forms 
 found in the poem? Make a list of them and then consult some 
 good dictionary for their -meanings. 
 
 1. 69. Thunder-fit. A noise like thunder ; the word fit is 
 derived from the Anglo-Saxon Jitt, which meant struggle. 
 
NOTES 79 
 
 1. 74. Mariner's. Some editions read mariners', as in 1. 90. 
 
 1. 75. Shroud. See illustration in Standard Dictionary. 
 
 1. 76. Vespers. Evenings. 
 
 1. 79. God save thee, etc. Observe how the speech of the 
 Wedding-Guest increases the effect upon us of the Mariner's 
 confession. We are beginning to understand why this char- 
 acter was introduced. 
 
 1. 82. I shot the Albatross. "... the old man shrinks 
 from that avowal of his offence which he yet knows he must 
 make. He lingers and lingers on his description of the Alba- 
 tross, and of its growing familiarity with the sailors, and goes 
 on adding circumstance to circumstance, each of which is an 
 aggravation of the deed, but which serves to postpone his 
 acknowledgement of it, till at last it is elicited by a demand 
 of the cause of his obvious agony, and then it bursts from him 
 in the fewest words that could express the fact," — Westminster 
 Beview, Vol. 12., p. 29. "All the subsequent miseries of the 
 crew are represented by the poet as having been the conse- 
 quences of this violation of the charities of sentiment." — 
 Blackwood's Magazine, Vol. 6, p. 6. 
 
 1. 83. Although this stanza is varied but slightly from that 
 at 1. 25, it should be so read as to indicate clearly the change 
 in the course the ship is now taking. See what Lowell says 
 about being alone with the sun at sea. Works (Houghton), 
 Vol. I., p. 105. 
 
 1. 90. Mariners'. Both here and in 1. 7-4 the 1798 version 
 has the singular, Marinere's. Notice that the rhyme (follow: 
 hollo) produces the effect of an echo. Eind other passages 
 where the rhymes are in like manner especially appropriate. 
 
 1. 97. Like God's own head. This phrase modifies Sun ; 
 
80 NOTES 
 
 a construction that may be shown in reading the passage aioud 
 if a brief pause is made after red. Dowden makes the follow- 
 ing comment : "How majestically the sunrise at sea is expressed. 
 ... It is like the solemn apparition of one of the chief actors 
 in this strange drama of crime, and agony, and expiation, and 
 in the new sense of wonder with which we witness that oldest 
 spectacle of the heavens we can well believe in other miracles." 
 
 — New Studies in Literature, p. 343. 
 
 1.104. The furrow followed free. In Sibylline Leaves (1817) 
 the line was printed : 
 
 "The furrow stream'd off free," 
 
 and Coleridge added in a foot-note : "In the former edition the 
 line was — 
 
 ' The furrow follow'd free ' ; 
 
 but I had not been long on board a ship before I perceived that 
 this was the image as seen by a spectator from the shore, or 
 from another vessel. From the ship itself the Wake appears 
 like a brook flowing off from the stern. 1 ' But in 1828 he 
 restored the old line, because, after all, it seemed to him more 
 musical. See Dowden, New Studies in Literature, p. 338, and 
 Brandl, Coleridge and the English Romantic Movement, p. 201. 
 
 1. 105-106. Contrast the movement of these lines with that 
 of the two following. 
 
 1. 111. All in a hot, etc. This "reminds one of some of 
 Turner's pictures. This great artist, as well as Coleridge, had 
 a keen eye for the subtle aspects of nature that hard and brill- 
 iant minds like Macaulay's find so uninteresting. For similnr 
 touches see 11. 171-180, 199-200, 263-271, 314-326, 368-372." 
 
 — Stle. How do vou account for the size of the sun '? 
 
NOTES 81 
 
 1. 117. Coleridge here suggests one of the limitations of 
 
 painting. See Lessing's Lnocoon, §§ XV., XVI. ff. Hales 
 
 compares Hamlet, II. 2. 502. 
 
 1. 127. About, etc. See Macbeth, I. 3. 33. 
 
 I. 128. The death-fires, etc. See fetch-candle, corposant, in 
 some dictionary ; also Brand's Popular Antiquities. 
 
 II. 129-130. The water, etc. See 11. 270-271. The spirit 
 of these lines is easily caught by a reader familiar with the 
 famous Witch Scene in Macbeth, IV. 1. See Blackwood'' s 
 Magazine, Vol. 0, p. 6. 
 
 1. 138. The slow movement of this line adds to the effect of 
 the figure. It should be noted that an important feature of 
 Coleridge's work, whether in prose or verse, is the naturalness 
 and appropriateness of his figures. These are everywhere so 
 exceedingly apt that we never think that any other than the 
 one he has chosen would have quite suited his purpose, — in- 
 deed, they fit so well into his work that we scarcely ever think 
 of them as mere figures of rhetoric. Not infrequently he takes 
 the most prosaic idea, and, by his exquisite placing of it, at once 
 elevates it into the realm of poetry. 
 
 1. 139. Well-a-day. Define. 
 
 1. 141. Instead of the cross. Compare the following lines: 
 76, 178, 233-234, 286, 294-296, 489, 574-575, 595-596. In read- 
 ing this line be careful not to stress the last syllable of Albatross 
 too strongly ; nowhere in the poem, indeed, should too much 
 be made of the rhymes. 
 
 1. 142. " I do not think that Coleridge could have known the 
 size cf the fowl when he caused it to be hung round the neck 
 of his Ancient Mariner. 1 ' — Hawthorne, Works, Vol. VIII., 
 p. 557. See article on Albatross, Encyclopcedia Britannica. 
 
82 NOTES 
 
 1. 152. A certain shape, etc. See Brandl, Coleridge and 
 English Romantic Movement, pp. 197-198. 
 
 I wist. Wist is the preterit of wite, to know. For instances 
 of the use of this form in the old ballads see Child, Ballads 
 
 (Glossary). 
 
 1. 153. A speck, etc. Here the Mariner becomes oblivious to 
 all but the scene in his mind's eye, and wanders with dreamy 
 thought over the moving picture he has described — builds, as 
 it were, " a bridge from Dreamland for his lay." Then, after 
 a pause, he regains sufficient presence of mind to go on with the 
 story, which he takes up in the next line. 
 
 1. 157. Black lips baked. Observe the appropriateness of 
 the labials. 
 
 1. 164. They for joy did grin. " I took the thought of ' grin- 
 ning for joy ' . . . from my companion's remark to me when we 
 had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon, 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." — Table-Talk, May 31, 
 1830. See Letters of S. T. Coleridge, I., p. 81, note. 
 
 1. 168. Hither, etc. This, the last of his speech to his com- 
 panions, is broken off by the amazement which takes from him 
 all power of speech, — so overcome is he by the realization of 
 the fact that the ship moves without breeze or tide. The latter 
 fact suggests the legend of the "Flying Dutchman." 
 
 1. 175. That strange shape. " Fancies of the strange things 
 which may very well happen, even in broad daylight, to men 
 shut up alone in ships far off at sea, seem to have arisen in the 
 human mind in all ages with a peculiar readiness, and often 
 have about them the fascination of a certain dreamy grace, 
 
NOTES 83 
 
 which distinguishes them from other kinds of marvellous in- 
 ventions. This sort of fascination the Ancient Mariner brings 
 to its highest degree ; it is the delicacy, the dreamy grace in 
 his presentation of the marvellous, that makes Coleridge's work 
 so remarkable. The too palpable intruders from the spirit 
 world, in almost all ghost literature, in Scott and Shakespeare 
 even, have a kind of coarseness or crudeness. Coleridge's 
 power is in the very fineness with which, as with some really 
 ghostly finger, he brings home to our inmost sense his inven- 
 tions, daring as they are — the skeleton ship, the polar spirit, 
 the inspiriting of the dead bodies of the ship's crew. The Bime 
 of the Ancient Mariner has the plausibility, the perfect adapta- 
 tion to reason and the general aspect of life, which belong to 
 the marvellous when actually presented as part of a credible 
 experience in our dreams." — Fater, Ward's English Poets. 
 See Dixon, English Poetry, p. 80. 
 
 Drove. What is the effect produced by the use of this word ? 
 Compare 11. 22, 105, 199, 200, 201, etc. 
 
 1. 177. And straight the Sun, etc. See Hazlitt, Sketches and 
 Essays (Bonn edition), p. 274. 
 
 I. 181. Gossameres. Look up derivation of word. 
 
 II. 185-213. On 185-189 see Campbell's note. In the 1798 
 version lines 185-213 read as follows : 
 
 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 were 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. 
 
84 NOTES 
 
 Her lips are red, her looks are free, 
 
 Her locks are yellow as gold : 
 Her skin is as white as leprosy, 
 And she is far liker Death than he ; 
 
 The flesh makes the still air cold. 
 
 The naked Hnlk alongside came 
 
 And the Twain were playing dice ; 
 " The Game is done ! I've won, I've won ! " 
 
 Quoth she, and whistled thrice. 
 
 A gust of wind sterte up hehind 
 
 And whistled thro' his bones; 
 Thro' the holes of his eyes and the hole of his mouth 
 
 Half-whistles and half-groans. 
 
 With never a whisper in the Sea 
 
 Off darts the Spectre-ship ; 
 While clomhe above the Eastern bar 
 The horned Moon, with one bright Star 
 
 Almost atween the tips. 
 
 One after one by the horned Moon 
 (Listen, O Stranger! to me). 
 
 1. 188. Is that a Death ? Compare other pictures of Death 
 in poetry, notably Milton's in Paradise Lost, II., 666-073. See 
 also Coleridge's Lectures on Shakspere (Bohn edition), pp. 
 90-91, for a comment on Milton's description which applies 
 almost equally well to the present passage. In the first edition 
 there was a stanza describing Death which Coleridge finally 
 omitted, thus rejecting " from his work the horrors, while re- 
 taining the terrors, of death " (Swinburne). " Relying largely, 
 as he did in his poems which deal with the supernatural, on 
 the effect produced by their psychological truth, Coleridge 
 could afford to subdue the supernatural, and refine it to the 
 utmost. ... he did not need, as Monk Lewis did, to drag into 
 
NOTES 85 
 
 his verse all the horrors of the churchyard and the nether pit of 
 Hell. . . . [In this instance he] felt that these hideous inci- 
 dents of the grave only detracted from the finer horror of the 
 voluptuous beauty of his White Devil, the nightmare Life-in- 
 Death. . . . She it was, this Life-in-Death, who with her 
 numbing spell haunted Coleridge himself in after days." — 
 Dowdex, New Studies in Literature, pp. 338-340. 
 
 1. 193. Night-mare. Look up meaning of second part of 
 compound. 
 
 I. 197. The game is done, etc. For illustration see Dora's 
 edition of the poem, and on the impossibility of illustrating 
 the poem effectively see Johnson's Three Americans and Three 
 Englishmen, pp. 49-51. It is important to note the effect upon 
 the Ancient Mariner of Life-in-Death, and how easily her pos- 
 session of him explains the events to happen later on. 
 
 I've won, etc. So most editions ; the 1829 text reads I've, 
 I've won. 
 
 II. 199-202. This stanza has been much admired. See 
 Traill, Coleridge, p. 52; Lowell, Works, Vol. VI, p. 74. How 
 is the effect of rapidity produced ? What is meant in the gloss 
 by " the courts of the Sun " ? 
 
 11. 201-211. For a recast of these lines, which was found 
 among some papers of Coleridge dated 1806, 1807, and 1810, 
 see Campbell's note. 
 
 1. 203. Looked sideways up. Observe how delicately Cole- 
 ridge has suggested the fear of these men, and how much 
 stronger suggestion is than statement. 
 
 1. 209. Bar. Define. 
 
 1. 211. Within the nether tip. "It is a common supersti- 
 tion among sailors that something evil is about to happen when- 
 
86 NOTES 
 
 ever a star dogs the moon." — Coleridge, in MS. note. " But 
 no sailor ever saw a star within the nether tip of a horned moon." 
 — Campbell. Hunt out other passages in poetry where the 
 moon is alluded to or described. 
 
 I. 218. With heavy thump. The rhyme in this line has been 
 criticised as sounding "to a modern ear undignified," but the 
 words thump, lump, with what assistance they get from the 
 next line, suggest to the ear the sound of the falling bodies. 
 
 1.223. My cross-bow. "The use of the cross-bow fixes 
 the date of the Ancient Mariner's supposed life in or before the 
 sixteenth century. The cross-bow, or arbalest, was not used 
 in England after the reign of Henry VIII." — Twombly, edition 
 of Ancient Mariner. What else does the line suggest, and 
 what is gained by an allusion to it at the end of each Part ? 
 
 II. 226-227. And thou, etc. See note to 11. 15-16. 
 
 1.234. Never a saint. "A here has its older force; it 
 = one, a single." — Hales, Longer English Poems. 
 
 11. 236-237. The many men, etc. See De Quincey's Works 
 (Masson), III., p. 43, for Lamb's ungenerous remark about 
 these lines. 
 
 1. 239. And so did I. What is gained by the association ? 
 
 1. 215. Or ever : before ever. See Hales, Longer English 
 Poems, p. 210. 
 
 1. 250. " The long-drawn third line gives an impression of 
 weariness, which is increased by retarding the stanza with an 
 extra line and rhyme- word.'' — Moody, ed. of Ancient Marino-. 
 
 1. 260. Is a curse, etc. It will be interesting for the student 
 hereafter to observe the curses mentioned elsewhere in litera- 
 ture. See Macbeth, II. 2. 36-37 ; Lady of the Lake (Rolfe's 
 edition) III., 191, note. 
 
NOTES 87 
 
 11. 263-266. " Notice the contrast between the beauty of this 
 stanza and the horrors of the narrative." — Gibbs, ed. of A ncient 
 Mariner. 
 
 1. 271. " I read this description of the ship in moonlight at 
 sea, in a tropic calm. The beauty of the illustration of the 
 frost is equalled by its truth, the motion of the moon is almost 
 heard in the verse, and yet the whole is a finished picture. . . . 
 But Coleridge is uncontent to leave the description of the sky 
 without throwing round it the light of the higher imagination, 
 and it is characteristic of the quaint fantasy which belonged 
 to his nature that he puts the thoughts which lift the whole 
 scene into the realm of the imagination into the prose gloss at 
 the side — and it is perhaps the loveliest little thought in all 
 his writings." — Brooke, Theology in the English Poets, pp. 
 88-89. 
 
 1. 272. Beyond, etc. Perhaps the nearest approach in nature 
 to the phenomenon described by Coleridge is "the trail of a shoal 
 of fish through the phosphorescent water," which Lowell says is 
 the most beautiful thing he ever saw at sea. See Lowell, Works, 
 I., pp. 103-104 ; also, Letters of S. T. Coleridge, I., p. 260. 
 
 1. 277. Within, etc. Contrast this picture with the one in 
 the preceding stanza. 
 
 1. 281. " Nor are his strange creatures of the sea those 
 hideous worms which a vulgar dealer in the supernatural might 
 have invented. Seen in a great calm by the light of the moon 
 these creatures of God are beautiful in the joy of their life. . . . 
 And it is through a sudden welling forth of sympathy with 
 their happiness, and a sudden sense of their beauty, that the 
 spell which binds the afflicted mariner is snapped. That 
 one self-centred in crude egoism should be purified and con- 
 verted through a new sympathy with suffering and sorrow is a 
 
88 NOTES 
 
 common piece of morality ; this purification through sympathy 
 with joy is a piece of finer and higher doctrine." — Dowden, 
 New Studies in Literature, p. 341. 
 
 1. 290. The Albatross fell off. What similar to this happens 
 in Pilgrim' 1 s Progress f 
 
 1. 291. The last two stanzas may be said to contain the 
 principle of the poem, — here the climax is reached. 
 
 1. 292. Oh sleep ! etc. " I have heard Rossetti say that what 
 came most of all uppermost in Coleridge was his wonderful 
 intuitive knowledge and love of the sea, whose billowy roll, 
 and break, and sibilation, seemed echoed in the very mechan- 
 ism of his verse. Sleep, too, Rossetti thought, had given up to 
 Coleridge her utmost secrets ; and perhaps it was partly due 
 to his own sad experience of the dread curse of insomnia, as 
 well as to keen susceptibility to poetic beauty, that tears so 
 frequently filled his eyes, and sobs rose to his throat when he 
 recited [this stanza] — affirming, meantime, that nothing so 
 simple and touching had ever been written on the subject.' 1 — 
 Caixe, Recollections of I). G. Rossetti, pp. 164-165. If the 
 latter were true it would indeed be no mean tribute to the pres- 
 ent passage, since the subject has occupied the mind of nearly 
 every poet who has ever lived. See Macbeth, II. 2. 37-41 ; 
 2 Henry IV., III. 1. 5-31; Keats' Endymion, I., 453-463; 
 Coleridge's The Pains of Sleep, etc. 
 
 1. 297. Silly : empty, useless. The word has an interesting 
 history. 
 
 I. 308. A blessed ghost. " A blessed ghost, as opposed to a 
 lost, damned ghost ; or a blessed ghost, as opposed to a very 
 miserable living man." — Herbert Bates. 
 
 II. 318-326, 367-372. On the singular charm of the images 
 
NOTES 89 
 
 in these two passages see Brooke, Theology of English Poets, 
 p. 90. 
 
 11. 324-32G. Like waters, etc. Coleridge's description of 
 the lightning falling 
 
 " with never a jag, 
 A river steep and wide," 
 
 though contrary to the popular conception, which represents the 
 lightning as zig-zagged and raw-edged, is nevertheless true to 
 nature. In his Nature for Its Oton Sake, p. 94, Prof. Van 
 Dyke says that the lightning " runs in streams and rivulets, and 
 when seen in photograph it often looks like an outlined map of 
 the Nile, with its many mouths leading to the Mediterranean." 
 
 1. 344. For a comment on certain similar phenomena see 
 Kolines, Pages from an Old Volume of Life, Works, Vol. 
 VIII., pp. 201-202. 
 
 1. 352. The spirits in the bodies, and not the bodies them- 
 selves, sing. 
 
 I. 359. I heard the sky-lark. Read Shelley's and Words- 
 worth's odes To a Skylark. See Keeler's and Davis' Studies 
 in English Composition, p. 79. In reading the last line of this 
 stanza do not stress the last syllable oijargoning, but pronounce 
 it lightly and observe the effect. 
 
 II. 3(>7-372. These lines prove that for certain effects lan- 
 guage is superior to both painting and sculpture. Explain. 
 Are there any other similar instances in the poem ? 
 
 1. 372. In the 1798 version four stanzas followed 1. 371 : 
 
 Listen, O listen, thou Wedding-guest! 
 
 • : Marinere ! thou hast thy will : 
 " For that, which comes out of thine eye, doth make 
 
 " My body and soul to be still." 
 
90 NOTES 
 
 Never sadder tale was told 
 
 To a man of woman born : 
 Sadder and wiser than wedding-guest ! 
 
 Thou'lt rise to-morrow morn. 
 
 Never sadder tale was heard 
 
 By a man of woman born : 
 The Marineres all return 'd to work 
 
 As silent as beforne. 
 
 The Marineres all 'gau pull the ropes, 
 
 Bat look at me they n'old: 
 Though I, I am as thin as air — 
 
 They cannot me behold. 
 
 1.383. The Sun, etc. "The ship has now reached the 
 equator, returning north. In line 30 she is represented as 
 having crossed the line, going south. In Coleridge's prose 
 comment, on 11. 103-10(3, he represents the ship, at that point 
 of the narratice, as having reached the line, going north. But 
 this is contradicted by 11. 328, 335, 367-3G8, 373-376, all of 
 which imply a sailing north from the point reached in 107." 
 — Syle. 
 
 1. 385. But in a minute, etc. See Christian Examiner, Vol. 
 14, p. 114. 
 
 1. 395. My living life. As contrasted with his present life- 
 in-death. 
 
 I. 407. As soft, etc. See Kubla Khan, 52-53, lines that 
 have been applied to Coleridge himself. How do the lines that 
 follow aid in showing that " The other was a softer voice " ? 
 
 II. 414-417. Still as a slave, etc. For sources of these 
 lines see The Athenaeum, Xo. 325(5, pp. 371-372. 
 
 11. 422-429. If Coleridge read James' Voyage., the latter 
 
NOTES 91 
 
 part of the following passage may have helped in the invention 
 of Part VI. of his poem : " What hath been long agoe fabled by 
 some Portingaies, that should have comne this way out of the 
 South Sea : the nieere shaddowes of whose mistaken Relations 
 have comne to us : I leave to be confuted by their owne vanitie. 
 These hopes have stirred up, from time to time, the more active 
 spirits of this our kingdome, to research that meerely imaginary 
 passage. For mine owne part, I give no credit to them at all ; 
 and as little to the vicious, and abusive wits of later Portingals 
 and Spaniards ■. who never speake of any difficulties : as shoalde 
 water, Ice, nor sight of land: but as if the;/ had been brought 
 home in a dreame or engine' 1 '' (p. 107). See gloss at line 422 ; 
 also Athenceum, March 15, 1890, quoted in Campbell's note. 
 
 1. 428. Slow and slow. Why ? 
 
 1. 429. See 1. 391-392. 
 
 I. 443. The ocean green. " Is the ocean actually green by 
 moonlight ? " — Herbert Bates. 
 
 II. 440-451. Like one, etc. " This stanza introduces us into 
 the realm of the supernatural much as does Shakespeare's 
 Macbeth. It takes us to the primeval imagination as it created 
 the spirits of good and evil which wait on man to reward or 
 to punish. Mr. Stopford Brooke says: 'I never met a sailor 
 whose ship had been among the lonely places of the sea who did 
 not know of these hauntings.' . . . In these days of utilitarianism, 
 when we are taught that it is more important to know the law 
 of the suction-pump than to know Hamlet, it is well to get back 
 to the great principle which underlies such art as the Ancient 
 Mariner, Macbeth, Paradise Lost, The Divine Comedy, Faust, 
 The Prometheus of iEschylus. and the Book of Job." — Geokge, 
 edition of Ancient Mariner. See Dixon, English Poetry, p. 82. 
 
92 NOTES 
 
 I. 455. In ripple or in shade. " Visible either by a ripple or 
 by a belt of darker water. But is breeze on moonlit water 
 dark? 11 — Herbert Bates. 
 
 II. 465-466. See 11. 23-24. 
 
 1. 470. let me, etc. What is the meaning of his prayer ? 
 
 I. 475. In the 1798 version these stanzas followed this line : 
 
 The moonlight bay was white all o'er, 
 
 Till rising from the same, 
 Full many shapes, that shadows were, 
 
 Like as of torches came. 
 
 A little distance from the prow 
 
 Those dark-red shadows were ; 
 But soon I saw that my own flesh 
 
 Was red as in a glare. 
 
 I turn'd my head in fear and dread, 
 
 And by the holy rood, 
 The bodies had advanc'd, and now 
 
 Before the mast they stood. 
 
 They lifted up their stiff right arms, 
 
 They held them strait and tight ; 
 And each right arm burnt like a torch, 
 
 A torch that's borne upright. 
 Their stony eyeballs glitter'd on 
 
 In the red and smoky light. 
 
 I pray'd and turn'd my head away 
 
 Forth looking as before. 
 There was no breeze upon the bay, 
 
 No wave against the shore. 
 
 II. 478-470. The moonlight, etc. "... how pleasantly, 
 how reassuringly, the whole nightmare story itself is made to 
 end, among the clear fresh sounds and lights of the bay, where 
 it began.' 1 — Pater, Appreciations, p. 101. 
 
NOTES 93 
 
 1. 482. Full many shapes, etc. Can you account for these 
 shapes, — their color and their location ? 
 
 1. 503. In the 1798 version the following stanza appeared 
 after this line : 
 
 " Then vanish'd all the lovely lights; 
 
 The bodies rose anew: 
 With silent pace, each to his place, 
 
 Came back the ghastly crew. 
 The wind, that shade nor motion made, 
 
 On me alone it blew." 
 
 Campbell notes that "the Editor of 1877-1880 says that in a 
 copy of 1798 Coleridge put his pen through the stanza and 
 wrote on the margin : 
 
 " Then vanish'd all the lovely lights, 
 The spirits of the air, 
 No souls of mortal men were they, 
 But spirits bright and fair." 
 
 1. 520. He hath, etc. Just why does this line add so much 
 to our appreciation of the two following lines ? From what the 
 Hermit says and from what is said about him, what can you 
 judge as to his character ? Does he differ at all from the 
 hermits you have read <about ? 
 
 1. 535. Ivy-tod. Ivy-bush. 
 
 1. 519. The ship went down, etc. For a criticism upon the 
 sinking of the vessel see Quarterly Beview, Vol. 52, pp. 28, 29. 
 
 1. 5G0. The Pilot shrieked. " With what consummate art are 
 we left to imagine the physical traces which the mariner's long 
 agony has left behind it by a method far more terrible than any 
 direct description — the effect, namely, which the sight of him 
 produces upon others." — Traill, Coleridge, p. 52. Why, by 
 
94 XOTES 
 
 the way, is this effect greater upon the Pilot and his boy than 
 upon the Hermit ? 
 
 1. 505. Who now doth crazy go. On insanity caused by sud- 
 den fright see Holmes, A Mortal Antipathy, Works, VII., p. 91. 
 
 I. 58(5. I pass, like night, etc. This recalls the legend of 
 the Wandering Jew. 
 
 1.591. What loud uproar, etc. "Notice with what dra- 
 matic skill this poem is set. The mariner's tale — gloomy, 
 weird, supernatural — stands out in compelling contrast against 
 the scenery of the bridal — cheerful, domestic, humanistic. If 
 you look especially at the marvellous way in which the super- 
 natural element is introduced, you will perhaps agree with me 
 that no poet— not even the mighty Shakespeare himself — has 
 so brought home to us those spiritual existences which, to a 
 devout mind, attend our every movement and preserve our 
 going out and our coming in." — Syle. 
 
 II. 612-613. He prayeth well, etc. "The Poem illustrates 
 . . . the personal, simple religion of Coleridge. We see in it 
 how childlike the philosophic man could be in his faith, how 
 little was enough for him. Its religion is all contained in [these 
 lines]." — Brooke, Theology in English Poets, p. 90. "Mrs. 
 Barbauld once told me that she admired the Ancient Mariner 
 very much, but that there were two faults in it, — it was im- 
 probable, and had no moral. As for the probability, I owned 
 that that might admit some question ; but as to the want of a 
 moral, I told her that in my own judgment 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 imagi- 
 nation. It ought to have had no more moral than the Arabian 
 Nights tale of the merchant's sitting down to eat dates by the 
 
NOTES 95 
 
 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." — Table-Talk, May 31, 1830. For some attempts 
 to "interpret" the poem see Johnson, Three Americans and 
 Three Englishmen, p. 48 ; Gertrude Garrigues, Journal of 
 Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 14, p. 329 ff. ; North American 
 Review, Vol. 39, pp. 451, 452 ; I)e Quincey, The Spanish Nun, 
 Works (Masson), Vol. xiii., pp. 195-196. 
 
 Conclusion. — "The conclusion has always appeared to us 
 to be happy and graceful in the utmost degree. The actual 
 surface-life of the world is brought close into contact with the 
 life of sentiment, — the soul that is as much alive, and enjoys, 
 and suffers as much in dreams and visions of the night as by 
 daylight, One feels with what a heavy eye the Ancient Mari- 
 ner must look and listen to the pomps and merry-makings — 
 even to the innocent enjoyments — of those whose experience 
 has only been of things tangible. One feels that to him another 
 world — we do not mean a supernatural, but a more exqui- 
 sitely and deeply natural, world — has been revealed, — and 
 that the repose of his spirit can only be in the contemplation of 
 things that are not to pass away. The sad and solemn indiffer- 
 ence of his mood is communicated to his hearer, — and we feel 
 that even after reading what he has heard, it were better to 
 ' turn from the bridegroom's door.' " — Blackwood? s Magazine, 
 Vol. 6, p. 7. " It brings our feet back to the common soil with 
 a bewildered sweetness of relief and gentle quiet after the pro- 
 digious strain of mental excitement, which is like nothing else 
 we remember in poetry. The effect is one of those which only 
 supreme genius could produce, — genius which dares to sink 
 from the highest notes of spiritual music to the absolute sim- 
 plicity of exhausted nature. Thus we are set down on the soft 
 
96 NOTES 
 
 grass, in a tender bewilderment, out of the clouds. It is over, 
 this visionary voyage — we are back again on the mortal soil 
 from whence we started ; but never more, never again, can the 
 visible and the invisible have to us the same meaning. For 
 once in our lives, if never before, we have crossed the borders 
 of the unseen.' 1 — Mrs. Oliphant, Blackwood's Magazine, Vol. 
 110, p. 509. 
 
 KUBLA KHAN 
 
 This poem was written in 1798, 1 but not published until 1810. 
 It was then issued in a pamphlet containing Christabel and The 
 Pains of Sleep, and preceeded by this note : 
 
 " The following fragment is here published at the request of 
 a poet of great and deserved celebrity, and as far as the author's 
 own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity 
 than on the ground of any supposed poetic merits.' 1 
 
 "In the summer of the year 1797, the author, then <m 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 was 
 inclosed with a wall. 12 The author continued for about three 
 
 1 It would seem that the poem was written in 179S, and not, as 
 Coleridge himself says, "in the summer of the year 1797." For a 
 discussion of the matter see Letters of S. T. Coleridge, Vol. I., 
 p. 245, note. 
 
 2 " In Xamdu did Cuhlai Can build a stately Palace, encompass- 
 ing sixteene miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile 
 
NOTES 97 
 
 hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, dur- 
 ing 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 he called composition in which all the images 
 rose up before him as tilings, with a parallel production of the 
 correspondent expressions, without any sensation or conscious- 
 ness 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 import 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. ..." See Andrew 
 Lang's comment in LiltelVs Living Age, Vol. 206, p. 285. 
 
 1. 5. Down to a sunless sea. " But what a grand flood is 
 this, flowing down through measureless caverns to a sea with- 
 out a sun ! I know no other sea equal to it, except Keats', 
 in his Ode to a Nightingale; and none can surpass that." — 
 Leigh Hunt, Imagination and Fancy, (Am. ed.), pp. 211-212. 
 
 1. 36-40. A damsel, etc. See Talfourd, Memoirs of Charles 
 Lamb (Phila., 1892), p. 80. 
 
 1. 36-53. "In some of the smaller pieces, as the conclusion 
 
 Medowes, pleasant Springs, delightfull Streames, and all sorts of 
 beasts of chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous 
 house of pleasure." — Pitrchas, His Pilgrimage, London, Fol. 1(326, 
 Bk. IV., chap, xiii., p. 418. 
 
 H 
 
98 NOTES 
 
 of the Kubla Khan, for example, not only the lines by them- 
 selves are musical, but the whole passage sounds all at once 
 as an outburst or crash of harps in the still air of autumn. 
 The verses seem as if played to the ear upon some unseen 
 instrument; and. the poet's manner of reciting verse is similar. 
 It is not rhetorical, but musical ; so very near recitative, that 
 for anyone else to attempt it would be ridiculous ; and yet it 
 is perfectly miraculous with what exquisite searching he elicits 
 and makes sensible every particle of the meaning, not leaving 
 a shadow of a shade of the feeling, the mood, the degree, 
 untouched." — Quarterly Review, Vol. 52, p. 8. 
 
 CHRISTABEL 
 
 This poem was first published, with the following preface, in 
 1816: 
 
 " The first part of the following poem was written in the 
 year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven, at Stowey, 
 in the county of Somerset. The second part, after my return 
 from Germany, in the year one thousand eight hundred, at 
 Keswick, Cumberland. Since the latter date, my poetic powers 
 have been, till very lately, in a state of suspended animation. 
 But as, in my very first conception of the tale, I had the whole 
 present to my mind, with the wholeness, no less than with the 
 liveliness, of a vision, I trust that I shall be able to embody in 
 verse the three parts yet to come, in the course of the present 
 year. 
 
 "It is probable, that if the poem had been finished at either 
 of the former periods, or if even the first and second part had 
 been published in the year 1800, the impression of its originality 
 would have been much greater than I dare at present expect. 
 But for this, I have only my own indolence to blame. The 
 
NOTES 99 
 
 dates are mentioned for the exclusive purpose of precluding 
 charges of plagiarism or servile imitation from myself. For 
 there is amongst us a set of critics, who seem to hold that 
 every possible thought and image is traditional ; who have no 
 notion that there are such things as fountains in the world, 
 small as well as great ; and who would therefore charitably 
 derive every rill they behold flowing, from a perforation made 
 in some other man's tank. 1 I am confident, however, that as 
 far as the present poem is concerned, the celebrated poets 
 whose writings I might be suspected of having imitated, either 
 in particular passages, or in the tone and the spirit of the 
 whole, would be among the first to vindicate me from the 
 charge, and who, on any striking coincidence, would permit 
 me to address them in this doggerel version of two monkish 
 Latin hexameters : 
 
 Tis mine, and it is likewise yours ; 
 
 But an if this will not do, 
 Let it be mine, good friend, for I 
 
 Am the poorer of the two. 
 
 " I have only to add that 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 
 
 1 Tennyson's expression of the same thought is perhaps more 
 familiar: " But there is, I fear, a prosaic set growing up among us, 
 editors of booklets, bookworms, index-hunters, or men of great 
 memories and no imagination, who impute themselves to the poet, 
 and so believe that he, too, has no imagination, but is forever pok- 
 ing his nose between the pages of some old volume in order to see 
 what he can appropriate." — Letter to Mr. S. E. Dawson, November 
 21, 1882. 
 
100 NOTES 
 
 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. 11 
 
 1. 1. 'Tis the middle of night, etc. "The circumstances 
 with which the poem opens are admirably conceived. There is 
 in all the images introduced a certain fearful stillness and 
 ominous meaning, the effect of which can never be forgotten. 
 The language, also, is so much in harmony with the rude era of 
 the tale that it seems scarcely to have been written in the 
 present age, as is indeed a wonderful proof of what genius can 
 effect in defiance of unfavorable associations. Whoever has had 
 his mind penetrated with the true expression of a Gothic building 
 will find a similar impression conveyed by the vein of language 
 employed in this legend. The manners, also, and forms of 
 courtesy ascribed to the personages, are full of solemn grace." 
 Blackwood 1 s Magazine, Vol. 6, p. 9. For suggestions as to 
 the sources of the three scenes in Part I., — the meeting in the 
 wood, the castle, and the bed-chamber, — see Brandl, Coleridge 
 and the English Romantic Movement, pp. 210-213. 
 
 1. 3. Tu-whit, etc. "An onomatopoeia which occurs in one 
 of Shakespeare's best-known lyrics." — Traill. See Tenny- 
 son's two songs to The Owl. 
 
 1. 14. Is the night chilly and dark? Brandl observes that 
 the style of this poem is characterized by " an accumulation of 
 question and interjection. 1 ' 
 
 1. 18. The moon is behind, etc. Dowden thinks a suggestion 
 of the description may be found in Dorothy Wordsworth's 
 Journal. See Knight's Life of W. Wordsworth, Vol. I., p. 134. 
 
 1. 23. Christabel. On the origin of the name see Caine's 
 
NOTES 101 
 
 Recollections of D. G. Bossetti, pp. 151-153. " With the most 
 exquisite feeling for womanhood in its general features, he seems 
 to have been incapable of drawing strongly the features of any 
 individual woman. . . . Even Christabel is a figure somewhat 
 faintly drawn, — a figure expressing indeed the beauty, inno- 
 cence, and gentleness of maidenhood, but without any of the 
 traits of a distinctive personality.''' — Dowden, New Studies 
 in Literature, p. 321. 
 
 I. 48. There is not wind, etc. Dowden refers again to 
 Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal. See Knight's Life of William 
 
 Wordsworth, Vol. I., p. 141. 
 
 II. 58-65. For the various readings to this passage, and 
 others following, see notes to Campbell's edition. 
 
 1. 113. That strove to be, etc. Like one's steps in a night- 
 mare. 
 
 1. 131. Lifted her up. "The lifting her over the sill seems 
 to be something like the same superstition that we have in 
 Scott's Eve of St. John : 
 
 ' But I had not had pow'r to come to thy bow'r, 
 If thou had'st not charm'd me so.' " 
 
 — C. B., Notes and Queries, First Series, Vol. I., p. 324. In 
 Vol. II., p. 47, C. Forbes quotes from The Abbot: " 'Reverend 
 father,' replied Magdalen, ' hast thou never heard that there are 
 spirits powerful to rend the walls of a castle asunder when 
 once admitted, which yet cannot enter the house unless they 
 are invited, nay, dragged over the threshold ? Twice hath 
 Roland Groeme been thus drawn into the household of Avenel 
 by those who now hold the title. Let them look to the issue.' " 
 See Tlie Abbot, chap. 15, ad finis, and note. 
 
102 NOTES 
 
 I. 158. But when the lady passed, etc. " With what ex- 
 quisite delicacy are all these hints of the true character of this 
 stranger imagined — the difficulty of passing the threshold, 
 the dread and incapacity of prayer, the moaning of the old 
 mastiff in his sleep, the rekindling of the dying embers as 
 she passes, the influence of the lamp k fastened to the angel's 
 feet.' . . . After the notion of evil has once been suggested 
 to the reader, the external beauty and great mildness of de- 
 meanor ascribed to the stranger produce only the deeper 
 feeling of terror, and they contrast, in a manner singularly 
 impressive, with the small revelations which every now and 
 then take place of what is concealed beneath them." — Black- 
 wood' s Magazine, Vol. G, pp. 10-11. 
 
 II. 175-183. The moon shines, etc. " Nowhere out of Keats' 
 Eve of St. Agnes is there any 'interior' to match that of 
 Christabel's chamber, done as it is in little more than half a 
 dozen lines." — Traill, Coleridge, p. 54. 
 
 1. 238. And lay down, etc. On the singular beauty of this 
 line see Leigh Hunt, Imagination and Fancy (Am. ed. ), 
 pp. (3-7. 
 
 I. 252. Behold ! etc. There has been much speculation as 
 to the sight revealed to Christabel. See Campbell's note ; 
 Caine, Recollections of D. G. Bossetti, pp. 153-151 ; Dowden, 
 New Studies in Literature, p. 339; Notes and Queries, First 
 Series, Vol. I., p. 324. 
 
 II. 408-426. Coleridge, in a letter to Poole, called these lines 
 " the best and sweetest" he ever wrote. Rossetti thought that 
 they were written separately and then fitted into the poem. 
 See Pater, Appreciations, pp. 102-103 ; also Letters of S. T. Cole- 
 ridge, Vol. II., p. 6 J9, note. 
 
NOTES 103 
 
 1. 422. Like cliffs, etc. See Caine, Recollections of D. G. 
 Bossetti, pp. 101-162, for some geological strictures on this line 
 and lines 424, 426. 
 
 I. 583. A snake's small eye, etc. See Brandl, Coleridge, 
 etc., p. 214. "It is that description of the serpent-look of the 
 witch's eyes which, on being read in a company at Lord Byron's, 
 is said to have caused Shelley to faint." — Keed, Lectures on 
 British Poets, Vol. II., p. 125. 
 
 II. 605-603. And positively, etc. " We see how such a poet 
 obtains his music. Such forms of melody can proceed only 
 from the most beautiful inner spirit of sympathy and imagina- 
 tion, lie sympathizes, in his universality, with antipathy 
 itself. If Began or Goneril had been a young and handsome 
 witch of the times of chivalry, and attuned her violence to 
 craft, or betrayed it in venomous looks, she could not have 
 beaten the soft-voiced, appalling spells, or sudden, snake-eyed 
 glances of the lady Geraldine, — looks which the innocent 
 Christabel, in her fascination, feels compelled to 'imitate.' 
 . . . This is as exquisite in its knowledge of the fascinating 
 tendencies of fear as it is in its description." — Leigh Hunt, 
 Imagination and Fancy, pp. 205, 206. 
 
 11. 653-677. Campbell thinks it " highly improbable that the 
 lines were composed for Christabel. They were sent to Southey 
 in a letter of May 6, 1801, and were therefore probably written 
 about that time." In the letter to Southey these lines follow 
 immediately after an expression of anxiety as to the little 
 Hartley's health, and are in turn followed by a sentence which 
 fully explains their import: 'A very metaphysical account of 
 fathers calling their children rogues, rascals, and little varlets, 
 etc." See Letters of S. T. Coleridge, Vol. I., pp. 355-356, for 
 E. H. Coleridge's note on the passage. For another interpreta- 
 
104 NOTES 
 
 tion of the passage see Notes and Queries, First Series, Vol. V., 
 pp. 339-340. 
 
 The Conclusion of Christabel. — Although Coleridge made 
 many allusions in his letters and conversations to finishing the 
 poem, nothing ever came of all his plans. In Gillman's Life 
 of Coleridge, however, the following conclusion is reported 
 (pp. 301-303) : 
 
 '•The following relation was to have occupied a third and 
 fourth canto, and to have closed the tale. Over the mountains 
 the Bard, as directed by Sir Leoline, hastes with his disciple ; 
 but in consequence of one of those inundations, supposed to be 
 common to this country, the spot only where the castle once 
 stood is discovered, the edifice itself being washed away. He 
 determines to return. Geraldine, being acquainted with all that 
 is passing, like the weird sisters in Macbeth, vanishes. Reap- 
 pearing, however, she awaits the return of the bard, exciting in 
 the meantime, by her wily arts, all the anger she could rouse in 
 the baron's breast, as well as that jealousy of which he is 
 described to have been susceptible. The old Bard and the 
 youth at length arrive, and therefore she can no longer person- 
 ate the character of Geraldine, the daughter of Lord Roland de 
 Vaux. but changes her appearance to that of the accepted though 
 absent lover of Christabel. Now ensues a courtship most dis-' 
 tressing to Christabel, who feels, she knows not why, great 
 disgust for her once favored knight, This coldness is very 
 painful to the Baron, who has no more conception than herself 
 of the supernatural transformation. She at last yields to her 
 father's entreaties, and consents to approach the altar with this 
 hated suitor. The real lover, returning, enters at this moment, 
 and produces the ring which she had once given him in sign 
 of her betrothment. Thus defeated, the supernatural being, 
 
NOTES 105 
 
 Geraldine, disappears. As predicted, the castle bell tolls, the 
 mother's voice is heard, and to the exceeding great joy of the 
 parties, the rightful marriage takes place, after which follows a 
 reconciliation and explanation between the father and daugh- 
 ter." See also Eossetti, Lives of Famous Poets, p. 250 ; Caine, 
 Recollections of D. G. Rossetti, p. 154 ; Wordsworth's Prose 
 Works, Vol. til, p. 427. 
 
INDEX 
 
 A (= one), 86. 
 
 abruptness in introducing details 
 and incidents, 72. 
 
 albatross, 70, 79, 81, 88. 
 
 Ancient Mariner, conclusion of, 
 95-96; grammatical notes, 74, 
 79, 82; impossibility of illus- 
 trating, 85 ; metre of, 78, 80, 81, 
 86 ; moral of, 94-95 ; origin of, 
 xviii-xix, 69-71; published in 
 Lyrical Ballads, xix, 69; phi- 
 losophy of, 88, 94-95 ; religion 
 in, 81; sources of, 69-71, 74, 
 77-78, 90, 90-91; Swinburne 
 on, xxxiv; text, changes in, 
 69 ; textual notes, 73, 76, 79, 80, 
 83-84, 85, 89-90, 92, 93 ; Words- 
 worth on, xxxiii. 
 
 archaisms, use of, 78. 
 
 association, use of, 86. 
 
 bar, 85. 
 
 bassoon, 76. 
 
 Behold! her bosom, etc., 102. 
 
 black lips baked, 82. 
 
 Bowles' Sonnets, xi. 
 
 Boyer, James, ix-x. 
 
 Burnet, motto from, 69; transla- 
 tion of motto, 71-72. 
 
 Christabel, character of, 101; 
 origin of name, 100-101. 
 
 Christabel, conclusion of, 98, 
 104-105 ; date, xxv, 98 ; ' inte- 
 rior' of (lines 175-183), 102; 
 interjection in, use of, 100; 
 geology of, 103 ; lines 408-426, 
 102; lines 656-677, 103-104; 
 metre of, 99-100; music of, 
 103; opening lines, 100; origi- 
 nality of, 98-99; question in, 
 use of, 100 ; text of, 101. 
 
 clifts, 78. 
 
 Coleridge, as critic, xii, xx, xxiii, 
 xxxi; as journalist, xv, xxiv, 
 xxx-xxxi; as lecturer, xv, 
 xxiv; as man, xxix-xxx; as 
 monologist, viii, xii, xxvi- 
 xxviii, xxxiv, 74 ; as philoso- 
 pher, viii, xi, xx, xxii-xxiv, 
 xxxi; as poet, x, xi, xv, xvi- 
 xx, xxii-xxiv, xxv, xxxii ; as 
 preacher, ix, xv ; as theologian , 
 xxxi ; as translator, xx-xxi ; 
 
 107 
 
108 
 
 INDEX 
 
 and Lamb, viii, xxi ; and Poole, 
 xxi; and Southey, xiii-xiv; 
 and Wordsworth, xvi-xx, xxi, 
 xxxii, 69-71 ; at Cambridge, 
 xii-xiii ; at Christ's Hospital, 
 vii-xii ; at Highgate, xxi, xxv- 
 xxix ; birth, v ; boyish pas- 
 times, aversion to, vi, vii, x ; 
 childhood, vi-vii ; death, xxix ; 
 decline of poetical powers, 
 xxii-xxiii, 98 ; domestic troub- 
 les, xv, xxi, xxix; enlistment 
 in army, xiii ; financial straits, 
 xiii, xiv-xvi, xxi ; from 1799- 
 1816, xxi-xxii ; Germany, visit 
 to, xx ; marriage, xiv; mental 
 character, xxix ; opium, use of, 
 xvi, xxi-xxii, xxv, 96; parent- 
 age, v-vi; pension, xx, xxv- 
 xxvi ; place in literature, xxx- 
 xxxii ; precocity, vii-viii ; prose 
 works, xxv; reading, early, 
 vi-vii, viii, x, xi. 
 
 contrast, use of, 76, 87. 
 
 crazy go, Who now doth, 91. 
 
 crime of Ancient Mariner, 69-70, 
 79. 
 
 cross-bow, 86. 
 
 curses in literature, 86. 
 
 death-fires, 81. 
 Death in poetry, 84. 
 description, indirect, 73. 
 drifts, 78. 
 
 I eftsoons, 74. 
 ellipsis, rhetorical, 72. 
 epithets, 74-75. 
 eye, A snake's small, 103. 
 eye, His glittering, 74. 
 
 figures, use of, 81. 
 
 furrow followed free, The, 80. 
 
 geography, use of, 76, 77, 90. 
 ghost, a blessed, 88. 
 glosses, the, 69, 70, 72, 85, 87. 
 gossameres, 83. 
 g?*in, They for joy did, 82. 
 
 Hermit, 93, 94. 
 
 horrible, omission of, 69, 84-85. 
 
 honey-dew, As soft as, 90. 
 
 In ripple or in shade, 92. 
 I pass, like night, 94. 
 isolation, sense of, 75, 79. 
 It is an ancient Mariner, 72. 
 Ivy-tod, 93. 
 
 Kubla Khan, date, xxv, 96; 
 music of, 97-98 ; origin of, 90- 
 97 ; source of, 96. 
 
 language superior to painting 
 
 and sculpture, 89. 
 lay down in her loveliness, And, 
 
 102. 
 Lifted her up, 101. 
 lightning, description of, 89. 
 living life, 90. 
 
INDEX 
 
 109 
 
 loon, 74. 
 
 Lyrical Ballads, xvii-xx, xxxiii, 
 69. 
 
 minstrelsy, 76. 
 monosyllables, use of, 75. 
 
 Night-mare, 85. 
 Nodding their heads, 76. 
 numbers, use of, 72-73. 
 
 ocean green, 91. 
 one of three, 72-73. 
 or ever, 86. 
 
 painting, limitation of, 81, 89. 
 pantisocracy, xiv. 
 Pilot shrieked, 93. 
 poetry, x, xviii-xix, xxxii. 
 
 reading, suggestions on expres- 
 
 sive, 79, 80, 81, 89. 
 repetition, use of, 76. 
 
 sculpture, limitation of, 89. 
 shapes, Full many, 93. 
 shroud, 79. 
 silly, 88. 
 
 sky -lark, 89. 
 
 slave, Still as a s. be/ore his lord, 
 
 90. 
 Sleep, 88. 
 
 suggestion, use of, 85. 
 sunless sea, Down to a, 97. 
 supernatural, use of, 73-74, 77, 
 
 82-83, 87-88, 89, 91, 94, 95-96, 
 
 101, 102. 
 surprise, use of, 76. 
 sioound, 78. 
 
 TJiat strove to be, and were not, 
 
 fast, 101. 
 Thorough, 78. 
 thunder-fit, 78. 
 Tu-whit, etc., 100. 
 
 unreal, vividness of the, 73-74. 
 
 vespers, 79. 
 
 Wedding-Guest, 74, 79. 
 well-a-day, 81. 
 
 wist, 82. 
 
 Within the nether tip, 85-86. 
 
 words, economy in use of, 75. 
 
Exercises in Rhetoric and English 
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