all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
50 His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice,8 And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.9
ca. 1797-98 1816
7. Apparently a reminiscence of Milton's Paradise 9. Lines 50ff. echo in part the description, in Lost 4.280?82: 'where Abassin Kings their issue Plato's Ion 533-34, of inspired poets, who are 'like
guard / Mount Amara (though this by some sup-Bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from
posed /True Paradise) under the Ethiop line.' the rivers when they are under the influence of
8. A magic ritual, to protect the inspired poet from Dionysus but not when they are in their right intrusion. mind.'
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CHRISTABEL / 44 9
Christabel1
Preface
The first part of the following poem was written in the year 1797, at Stowey, in the county of Somerset. The second part, after my return from Germany, in the year 1800, at Keswick, Cumberland. 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 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. I am confident, however, that as far as the present poem is concerned, the celebrated poets2 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.3 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.
Part 1
'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, And the owls have awakened the crowing cock;
1. Coleridge had planned to publish Christabel in uscript. Coleridge has in mind Scott's Lay of the the 2nd edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800) but had La$t Minstrel (1805) and Byron's Siege of Corinth not been able to complete the poem. When Chris-(1816), which showed the influence of Christabel, tabel was finally published in 1816 in its present especially in their meter. fragmentary state, he still hoped to finish it, for the 3. Much of the older English versification, follow-
Preface contained this sentence (deleted in the ing the example of Anglo-Saxon poetry, had been
edition of 1834): 'But as, in my very first concep-based on stress, or 'accent,' and some of it shows
tion of the tale, I had the whole present to my as much freedom in varying the number of sylla
mind, with the wholeness, no less than with the bles as does Christabel. The poem, however, is a
liveliness of a vision; I trust that I shall be able to radical departure from the theory and practice of
embody in verse the three parts yet to come, in the versification in the 18th century, which had been
course of the present year.' based on a recurrent number of syllables in each
2. Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, who had read line. and admired Christabel while it circulated in man
.
45 0 / SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDG E Tu?whit! Tu?whoo! And hark, again! the crowing cock, How drowsily it crew. Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, Hath a toothless mastiff bitch; From her kennel beneath the rock She maketh answer to the clock, Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; Ever and aye,? by shine and shower, Sixteen short howls, not over loud; Some say, she sees my lady's shroud. always Is the night chilly and dark? The night is chilly, but not dark. The thin gray cloud is spread on high, It covers but not hides the sky. The moon is behind, and at the full; And yet she looks both small and dull. The night is chill, the cloud is gray: '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, 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 weaF of her lover that's far away. well-being 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:4 She kneels beneath the huge oak tree, And in silence prayeth she. The lady sprang up suddenly, The lovely lady, Christabel! It moaned as near, as near can be, But what it is, she cannot tell.? 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 To move away the ringlet curl
4. In Celtic Britain the mistletoe (a parasitic plant) had been held in veneration when it was found growing?as it rarely does?on an oak tree. (Its usual host is the apple tree.)
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CHRISTABEL / 45 1
From the lovely lady's cheek
