"A murderous fiend, by fiends adored, He kills the sire and starves the son; The husband kills, and from her board Steals all his widow's toil had won; Plunders God's world of beauty; rends away All safety from the night, all comfort from the day. "Then wisely is my soul elate, That strife should vanish, battle cease: The mother of the Prince of peace. TELL'S BIRTHPLACE. IMITATED FROM STOLBERG. MARK this holy chapel well! Here first, an infant to her breast, The eye of the hawk, and the fire therein ! To nature and to holy writ The straining oar and chamois chase HUMAN LIFE. ON THE DENIAL OF IMMORTALITY, Ir dead, we cease to be; if total gloom O man! thou vessel, purposeless, unmeant, Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes! Surplus of nature's dread activity, Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finish'd vase, Retreating slow, with meditative pause, She form'd with restless hands unconsciously! Blank accident! nothing's anomaly! If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state, Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears, The counter-weights!-Thy laughter and thy tears Mean but themselves, each fittest to create, And to repay the other! Why rejoices Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good? Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood, Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices, Image of image, ghost of ghostly elf, That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold! Lo! Phoebus the glorious descends from his throne! Terrestrial hall! How shall I yield you Due entertainment, Me rather, bright guests! with your wings of upbuoyance Bear aloft to your homes, to your banquets of joy- That the roofs of Olympus may echo my lyre! soul! O give me the nectar! Hebe! pour free! Quicken his eyes with celestial dew, That Styx the detested no more he may view, The wine of th' immortals Forbids me to die! KUBLA KHAN; OR, A VISION IN A DREAM. [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. return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone had been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter. Then all the charm Is broken-all that phantom-world so fair Yet, from the still surviving recollections in his As a contrast to this vision, I have annexed a fragment of a very different character, describing with equal fidelity the dream of pain and disease. -Note to the first edition, 1816.] IN Xanadu did Kubla Khan So twice five miles of fertile ground In the summer of the year 1797, the author, then But O that deep romantic chasm which slanted As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, The shadow of the dome of pleasure and detained by him above an hour, and on his A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! THE PAINS OF SLEEP. ERE on my bed my limbs I lay, In humble trust mine eyelids close, No wish conceived, no thought express'd! A sense o'er all my soul imprest But yesternight I pray'd aloud Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me: And whom I scorn'd, those only strong! For all seem'd guilt, remorse, or wo, So two nights pass'd: the night's dismay The third night, when my own loud scream Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum universitate. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit? et gradus et cognationes et discrimina et singulorum munera ? Quid agunt? quæ loca habitant? Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit ingenium humanum, nunquam attigit. Juvat, interea, non diffiteor, quandoque in animo, tanquam in tabulâ, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contemplari: ne mens assuefacta hodiernæ vitæ minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat in pusillas cogitationes. Sed veritati interea invigilandum est, modusque servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a nocte, distinguamus.-T. BURNET: Archaol. Phil. p. 68. In mist or cloud, on ma o shroud, The mariner tells The sun came up upon the left, how the ship sail. Out of the sea came he! ed southward with a good wind And he shone bright, and on the right Whiles all the night, through fog and fair weather, Went down into the sea. till it reached the line. The wedding. Higher and higher every day, Till over the mast at noon smoke white, Glimmer'd the white moonshine. "God save thee, ancient mariner! The wedding-guest here beat his From the fiends that plague thee thus ! breast, For he heard the loud bassoon. The bride hath paced into the hall, guest heareth the Red as a rose is she; oridal music; but the mariner continueth his tale. Nodding their heads before her goes The wedding-guest he beat his breast, Why look'st thou so?"-With my I shot the ALBATROSS. PART II. THE SUN now rose upon the right: Still hid in mist, and on the left And thus spake on that ancient man, And the good south wind still blew And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he Was tyrannous and strong; behind, But no sweet bird did follow, Nor any day for food or play He struck with his o'ertaking wings, And I had done an hellish thing, With sloping masts and dripping prow, And it would work 'em wo: The ancient mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen. His shipmates cry out against the ancient mariner, for killing the bird of good-luck. The ship drove fast, loud roar'd the Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, But when the fog blast, And southward aye we fled. cleared off, they The glorious sun uprist: justify the same, Then all averr'd, I had kill'd the bird and thus make And now there came both mist and That brought the fog and mist. snow, And it grew wondrous cold; themselves accomplices in the 'Twas right, said they, such birds to crime. slay And ice, mast-high, came floating by, That bring the fog and mist. 'Twas sad as sad could be; And we did speak only to break It crack'd and growl'd, and roar'd and The silence of the sea! howl'd, Like noises in a swound! At length did cross an albatross: through the snow As if it had been a Christian soul, fog, and was received with great joy and hospitality. We hail'd it in God's name. It ate the food it ne'er had eat, All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody sun, at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the moon. Day after day, day after day, Water, water, everywhere, The very deep did rot: O Christ! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs been suddenly becalmed. And the albatross begins to be avenged, A spirit had followed them; one of the invisible in About, about, in reel and rout And some in dreams assured were nor angels; concerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus, may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no climate or element without one or more. When that strange shape drove sud denly Betwixt us and the sun. And straight the sun was fleck'd with It seemeth him bars, (Heaven's mother send us grace!) As if through a dungeon-grate he With broad and burning face. Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat And every tongue, through utter How fast she nears and nears! drought, The ancient masign in the ele riner beholdeth a ment afar off. Had I from old and young! Instead of the cross, the albatross About neck was hung. my PART III. Was parch'd, and glazed each eye. At first it seem'd a little speck It moved and moved, and took at last A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist! At its nearer ap. With throats unslaked, with black eth him to be a lips baked, A flash of joy. I bit my arm, but the skeletoa of a ship. Are those her ribs through which the And its ribs are sun Did peer, as through a grate; And is that woman all her crew? seen as bars on the face of the setting sun. Is that a DEATH, and are there two? The spectre- woman and her death-mate, and no other on board Her lips were red, her looks were the skeleton-ship. free, Her locks were yellow as gold: she, Who thicks man's blood with cold. The naked hulk alongside came, won!" Quoth she, and whistles thrice. Like vesel, like crew! Death and Lifein-Death have diced for the ship's crew, and she, the latter, winneth the ancient mariner. We listen'd and look'd sideways up! At the rising of My life-blood seem'd to sip! The stars were dim, and thick the night, The steersman's face by his lamp With throats unslaked, with black From the sails the dew did drip the moon, One after one, by the star-dogg'd One after an- Too quick for groan or sigh, pang, And cursed me with his eye. Four times fifty living men, other His shipmates drop down dead. |