= Lo! Phoebus the glorious descends from his throne! | return to his room, found, to his no small surprise They advance, they float in, the Olympians all! With divinities fills my 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! O give me the nectar! Pour out for the poet, 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. 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 in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in Purchas's "Pilgrimage:". -"Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto; and thus ten miles of fertile ground were enclosed with a wall." The author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than from two to three hun-Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, dred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation, or consciousness of effort. On awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, It was a miracle of rare device, But O that deep romantic chasm which slanted As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, Then reach'd the caverns measureless to man, 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: Archæol. Phil. p. 68. In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, The mariner tells The sun came up upon the left, how the ship sail. ed southward Out of the sea came he! 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. guest heareth the bridal music; but the mariner continueth his tale. The ship drawn by a storm toward the south pole. 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! He struck with his o'ertaking wings, And I had done an hellish thing, With sloping masts and dripping prow, The ship drove fast, loud roar'd the Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, But when the fog cleared off, they 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 ac. complices in the 'Twas right, said they, such birds to crime. 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! 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, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; 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. (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 rears! drought, Was wither'd at the root; The ancient ma riner beholdeth a sign in the ele. ment afar off. my PART III. THERE pass'd a weary time. Each 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 proach, it seem. eth him to be a ship; and at a We could nor laugh nor wail; dear ransom he from the bonds of thirst. A flash of joy. stood; I bit my arm, I suck'd the blood, but the skeleton 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, Like vessel, like crew! Death and Life in-Death have diced for the "The game is done! I've won, I've ship's crew, and won!" Quoth she, and whistles thrice. she, the latter, winneth the a cient mariner. 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 as moon, Too quick for groan or sigh, Each turn'd his face with a ghastly pang, And cursed me with his eye. Four times fifty living men, other, His shipmates drop down dead. But Life-in-Death The souls did from their bodies fly,- Her beams bemock'd the sultry main, begins her work on the ancient They fled to bliss or wo! And thou art long, and lank, and "I fear thee and thy glittering eye, But the ancient Fear not, fear not, thou wedding mariner assureth him of his bodily guest! life, and proceed. This body dropt not down. eth to relate his horrible penance. Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide, wide sea! And never a saint took pity on He despiseth the The many men, so beautiful! creatures of the calm. And they all dead did lie: Like April hoar-frost spread; The charmed water burnt alway And when they rear'd, the elfish light I watch'd their rich attire; Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, Was a flash of golden fire. O happy living things! no tongue A spring of love gush'd from my And a thousand thousand slimy things And I bless'd them unaware: Lived on; and so did I. And envieth that I look'd upon the rotting sea, And drew my eyes away; I look'd to heaven, and tried to pray; I closed my lids, and kept them close, Sure my kind saint took pity on me, The selfsame moment I could pray; PART V. O SLEEP! it is a gentle thing, To Mary queen the praise be given ! For the sky and the sea, and the sea That slid into my soul. and the sky, Lay like a load on my weary eye But the curse liv- The cold sweat melted from their eye of the dead men. limbs, The silly buckets on the deck, That had so long remain'd, eth God's crea 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 I dreamt that they were fill'd with is refreshed with dew; And when I awoke it rain’d. My lips were wet, my throat was cold, An orphan's curse would drag to hell And still my body drank. rain. He heareth sounds and seeth strange sights and But with its sound it shook the sails, commotions in The upper air burst into life! | And a hundred fire-flags sheen, And the coming wind did roar more And the sails did sigh like sedge; the sky and the element. |