The upper air burst into life! In his loneliness The moving Moon went up the sky, And a hundred fire-flags sheen, and fixedness he yearneth towards the journeying Moon, and the stars that still so And nowhere did abide : Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside journ, yet still move onward; and everywhere the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed rest, and their native country and their own natural homes, which they enter unan nounced, as lords that are certainly expected, and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival. By the light of the Moon he beholdeth God's creatures of the great calm. Their beauty and their happiness. He blesseth them in his heart. The spell begins to break. By grace of the holy Mother, the ancient Mariner is refreshed with rain. Her beams bemock'd the sultry main, The charmed water burnt alway Beyond the shadow of the ship And when they rear'd, the elfish light Within the shadow of the ship Was a flash of golden fire. O happy living things! no tongue A spring of love gush'd from my And I bless'd them unaware: in the sky and the element. The loud wind never reach'd the The bodies of the ship, Yet now the ship moved on! They groan'd, they stirr'd, they all uprose, Nor spake, nor moved their eyes; The helmsman steer'd, the ship Yet never a breeze up blew; Sure my kind saint took pity on me, Where they were wont to do; The self-same moment I could pray The Albatross fell off, and sank To Mary Queen the praise be given!" I fear thee, ancient Mariner!" ship's crew are inspired, and the ship moves on; But not by the souls of the men, nor by dæmons of earth or middle air, but by a blessed troop of angelic spirits, sent down by the invocation of the For when it dawn'd-they dropp'd guardian saint. their arms, My lips were wet, my throat was cold, And cluster'd round the mast; My garments all were dank; Sure I had drunken in my dreams, And still my body drank. Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, And from their bodies pass'd. I moved, and could not feel my Around, around, flew each sweet limbs : I was so light-almost I thought that I had died in sleep, And was a blessed ghost. sound, Then darted to the Sun; Slowly the sounds came back again, 73 The lonesome spirit from the south-pole carries on the ship as far as the line, in obedience to the angelic troop, but still requireth vengeance. Sometimes, a-drooping from the sky, With their sweet jargoning! PART VI. FIRST VOICE. BUT tell me, tell me! speak again, And now 't was like all instruments, What is the OCEAN doing? Now like a lonely flute; And now it is an angel's song, SECOND VOICE. Still as a slave before his lord, His great bright eye most silently It ceased; yet still the sails made on Up to the Moon is cast A pleasant noise till noon, A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, If he may know which way to go; That to the sleeping woods all night See, brother, see! how graciously Till noon we quietly sailed on, Under the keel nine fathom deep, The sails at noon left off their tune, The Sun, right up above the mast, With a short uneasy motion. Then like a pawing horse let go, her "Is it he?" quoth one, "Is this the heavy for the an- By him who died on cross, cient Mariner She looketh down on him. I view'd the ocean green, hath been accord- With his cruel bow he laid full low Of what had else been seen ed to the Polar Spirit, who returneth southward. We drifted o'er the harbor bar, The harbor-bay was clear as glass, And on the bay the moonlight lay, He singeth loud his godly hymns away The Albatross's blood. PART VII. THIS Hermit good lives in that wood He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve He hath a cushion plump: The skiff-boat near'd: I heard them Why this is strange, I trow! The rock shone bright, the kirk no That signal made but now?" less That stands above the rock: The moonlight steep'd in silentness And the bay was white with silent The angelic spir- Till, rising from the same, its leave the dead bodies, And appear in their own forms of light. The Hermit of the Wood, Strange, by my faith!" the Hermit Approacheth the "And they answer not our cheer! How thin they are and sere! Full many shapes that shadows were, Unless perchance it were A little distance from the prow No voice did they impart- The ship suddenly sinketh. Stunn'd by that loud and dreadful The ancient Ma sound, Which sky and ocean smote, My head was turn'd perforce away, Like one that hath been seven days And I saw a boat appear. The Pilot and the Pilot's boy, I saw a third-I heard his voice : drown'd My body lay afloat; But swift as dreams, myself I found Upon the whirl, where sank the ship, riner is saved in the Pilot's boat. The ancient Mariner earnestly entreateth the Hermit to shrive him; and the penance of life falls on him. And ever and anon throughout his future life an eth him to travel from land to land, agony constrain I moved my lips-the Pilot shriek'd, But in the garden-bower the bride The holy Hermit raised his eyes, I took the oars: the Pilot's boy, And bride-maids singing are: O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been Laugh'd loud and long, and all the So lonely 'twas, that God himself while With a woful agony, Scarce seemed there to be. O sweeter than the marriage-feast, To walk together to the kirk, And youths and maidens gay! Farewell, farewell! but this I tell Which forced me to begin my tale; He prayeth best, who loveth best And then it left me free. Since then, at an uncertain hour, And till my ghastly tale is told, I pass, like night, from land to land; I have strange power of speech; I know the man that must hear me : All things both great and small; The Mariner, whose eye is bright, He went like one that hath been What loud uproar bursts from that And is of sense forlorn, door! The wedding-guests are there: A sadder and a wiser man And to teach, by his own example, love and reverence to all things that God made and loveth. Christabel. PREFACE.* 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 THE first part of the following poem was written in for this, I have only my own indolence to blame. the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-The dates are mentioned for the exclusive purpose seven, at Stowey in the county of Somerset. The of precluding charges of plagiarism or servile imisecond 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 loveliness of a vision, I trust that I shall yet be able to embody in verse the three parts yet to come. It is probable, that if the poem had been finished *To the edition of 1816. tation 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. 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 doggrel version of two monkish Latin hexameters. "Tis mine and it is likewise yours; Let it be mine, good friend! for I 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 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. CHRISTABEL. PART L "Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, And hark, again! the crowing cock, 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; Is the night chilly and dark? The lovely lady, Christabel, What makes her in the wood so late, A furlong from the castle gate? And she in the midnight wood will pray She stole along, she nothing spoke, She kneels beneath the huge oak-tree, My sire is of a noble line, And my name is Geraldine : Five warriors seized me yestermorn, Me, even me, a maid forlorn: They choked my cries with force and fright, And tied me on a palfrey white. They spurr'd amain, their steeds were white; As sure as Heaven shall rescue me, I have no thought what men they be; Some mutter'd words his comrades spoke : |