but the whole, by fine affinities working together as one, now convince us, and now leave us in doubt among a crowd of vague apprehensions, that in Geraldine's exceeding beauty is veiled one of the powers of darkness, and that Christabel is about to suffer some unimaginable woe. The story of the five warriors on white steeds furiously driving her, on on her white palfrey-" and once we crossed the shade of night;" her affected-for we feel somehow it is not real-ignorance of all about them, and of when, and where, and why they left her-and yet it may be true;" her gracious stars the lady blest"-hardly the words of a Christian lady on such a rescue, yet haply blameless ;-her sinking down on the threshold as if beneath the weight of wicked intent towards her who mercifully lifts her up in her arms; her incapacity of prayer— "And Christabel devoutly cried To the Lady by her side; 'Praise we the Virgin all divine Who hath rescued thee from thy distress!Alas, alas!' said Geraldine, 'I cannot speak for weariness' yet she had been speaking eloquently-and yet faintness from fatigue may have come over her-who can say?-not Christabel, who fears not now, and only pities;-the moaning of the old mastiff in her sleep, of which we had before been told that she howls-as some say-" at seeing of my lady's shroud "-the shroud of Christabel's mother, who died the hour she herself was born;-from the ashes of the dead fire in the hall a tongue of light shooting out as the stranger lady passed by-and by that light her eye seen-and manifestly it is an evil eye-the dimming of the silver lamp "fastened to an angel's feet," as Geraldine sinks down upon the floor below, unable to bear the holy light; her agitation, and transformation into a demoniac muttering curses at mention by Christabel of her mother's name, and proffer of "a wine of virtuous powers, my mother made it of wild flowers," and which are all laid by the compassionate creature to the charge of that "ghastly ride;"-the restoration of the possessed to her senses, and more than her former beauty-when all these occurrences happening momentarily in utter stillness and solitariness-ominous of far-away evil nearing and nearing-and many other half-lines-or single words freighted with fear-all sink down our heart for sake of the sinless Christabel-yet all have not prepared us for the shock that then comes -a horror hinted, not revealed-and indescribable as something shuddered at in sleep. "But through her brain of weal and woe Dropt to her feet, and full in view, Christabel is a dream-and so is the Ancient Mariner-though the poet does not call them dreamsand how many worlds, within the imagination of a great poet, are involved in the wide world of sleep! A poet's dream, put into poetry, is seen to be as obedient to laws as a philosopher's meditation put into prose-and though made up of the wild and wonderful, consistent with itself, as the gravest mood of speculative thought. A fairy's palace, and a mermaid's grot, are constructed by processes as skilful and scientific, as the towers and temples of the cities of men-and the visionary architecture is as enduring as the Pyramids. Of the beauty or the grandeur of a thousand dreams, one beautiful or grand dream is built; and there it gleams or glooms among entities recognised as illustrative of the mystery of life-unsubstantial, but real a fiction, but a truth. Imagination is no liar-a veracious witness she of events happening in her own domain-invisible to sense-and incredible to reason-till she pictures them in her own light-and then seeing is believing-and the miraculous creates its own faith. The ordinary rules of evidence are set aside-improbability is a word with out meaning—and there is felt to be no limit to the possibilities of nature. Unnatural! Nothing is unnatural that stirs our heart-stringsher voice it is, if from some depth within us steals a response. The preternatural-and the supernatural thank heaven-is an empire bounded only by the soul's desires-and what may bound the soul's desires? Not the night of baffled darkness, that lies, in infinitude, behind all the stars. Coleridge has told us, in his Biographia Literaria, that he and Wordsworth used, during the first year of their friendship, frequently to converse on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting sympathy 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-he beautifully says " which accident of light and shade, while moonlight or sunset diffused over a true and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability 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 interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of just emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real, and real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself 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. 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 supernatural, or, at least, romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a purer interest, and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of belief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. 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 analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and diverting 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." How gloriously Wordsworth has achieved his gracious object, all the world knows; in poetry that, beyond that of any other man, has purified, and elevated all those feelings that constitute our faith in the goodness of God, as displayed in the external world, and in the internal senses by which we hold communion with nature. Coleridge fell far short of the completion of his magnificent design-from other causes than want of power; but Christabel is a fragment of the beautiful belonging to it, and the Ancient Mariner a whole of the sublime, in a region where the sublimities are as endless as the shapes of Cloudland which Fancy every moment can modify into a new world by a breath. Coleridge was commanded by his genius to choose the sea, and sing of the power superstition holds in the empire of the hoary deep. "There was a Ship, quoth he," and at his bidding she sailed away into the realms of frost and snow. No good Ship the Endeavour circumnavigating the globe. No Fury bound on voyage of discovery to the Pole. No name hath she-captain's name too unknown-" the many men so beautiful" the only notice of the number of her crew-and such epithets are bestowed on them only as on deck they all lie dead. The sole survi- one day-and many more-happily vor narrates "her travel's history" -and he is "Long, and lank, and brown As is the ribbed sea-sand." The "Ancient Mariner" is laden with countless years generation after generation has left him wandering to and fro over many landsand his life, long as the raven's, has been all one dream of that dreadful voyage-silent as the grave-till ever and anon the ghastly fit waxes into words, and then "he hath strange powers of speech." To him the sweet and sacred festivities of the human world have no meaning -no being : "The bridegroom's doors are opened wide, The guests are met, the feast is set: "He holds him with his skinny hand, "He holds him with his glittering eye→→→ "The wedding-guest sat on a stone: And thus spake on that ancient man, The magician has prepared his spell er even with fear than with frost. "The bright-eyed mariner!" Aye, well may his eyes be bright-for has he not for scores of years been mad-and the " Spirit that dwells in frost and snow his keeper-but the walls of the house, in which he wanders ruefully about, wide and wild as the wasteful skies. "The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared, Merrily did we drop, Below the kirk, below the hill, These are the last sweet images of sails the bark away into the main. And he shone bright, and on the right Higher and higher every day, Till over the mast at noon.' "" Red as a rose is she; Nodding their heads, before her goes "The wedding-guest he beat his breast, We have a dim remembrance either of having read or written something to this effect-twenty years, or less, or more ago that the actual surface-life of the world is here 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 Mariner must look and listen to the pomps-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 exquisitely and deeply natural world-has been revealed and the repose of his spirit can only be in the contemplation of things that are not to pass away. The sad and solemn indifference of his mood is communicated to his hearer-and we feel, even after reading what he had heard, it were better" to turn from the bridegroom's door." But we are thinking now-as we were then-on the most mournful and pathetic close of the poem-whereas we began to speak of the beginning -and come ye with us on board, and drive southward in storm. "And now the storm-blast came, and he "With sloping masts and dipping prow, The ship drove fast, loud roar'd the blast, "And now there came both mist and snow, And ice, mast-high, came floating by, "And through the drifts the snowy clifts Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken- "The ice was here, the ice was there, It crack'd and growl'd, and roar'd and howl'd, Like noises in a swound!" It has been said by the highest of all authorities-even Wordsworth himself that in this wonderful poem, the imagery is somewhat too laboriously accumulated-but we are glad not to feel that objection; and in due humility, we venture to say that it is not so. The Ancient Mariner had told his tale many a time and oft to auditors seized on all on a sudden, when going about their ordinary business, and certainly he never told it twice in the self-same words. Each oral edition was finer and finer than all the preceding editions, and the imagery in the polar winter of his imagination, kept perpetually agglomerating and piling itself up into a more and more magnificent multitude of strange shapes, like icebergs magnifying themselves by the waves frozen as they dash against the crystal walls. Neither can we think, with our master, reverent follower and affectionate friend as we are, that it is a fault in the poem, that the Ancient Mariner is throughout passive-always worked upon-never at work. Were that a fault, it would indeed be a fatal one, for in that very passiveness -which is powerlessness-lies the whole meaning of the poem. He delivers himself up-or rather his own one wicked act has delivered him up, into the power of an unerring spirit, and he has no more will of his own, than the ship who is in the hands of the wind. "And some in dreams assured were Death, and Death-in-Life, are dicers "God save thee, Ancient Mariner, We remember the time when there was an outcry among the common critics, “What! all for shooting a bird!" We answered them then as now-but now they are all dead and buried, and blinder and deeper even than when alive-that no one who will submit himself to the magic that is around him, and suffer his senses and his imagination to be blended together, and exalted by the melody of the charmed words, and the splendour of the unnatural apparitions, with which the mysterious scene is opened, will experience any revulsion towards the very centre and spirit of this haunted dream "I SHOT THE ALBATROSS." All the subsequent miseries of the crew, we then said, are represented as having been the consequence of this violation of the charities of sentiment; and these are the same miseries that were spoken of by the said critics, as being causeless and unmerited. There is-we now repeat, without the risk of wanting the sympathies of one single human being-man, woman, or child-the very essence of tenderness in the sorrowful delight with which the Ancient Mariner dwells upon the image of the pious bird of good omen, as it "Every day for food or play, and the convulsive shudder with "The very deep did rot: O Christ! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs "About, about, in reel and rout "And some in dreams assured were "And every tongue, through utter drought, We could not speak, no more than if "Ah! well-a-day! what evil looks are The sufferings that ensue painted with a power far transcending that of any other poet who has adventured on the horrors of heart, and out of it oozed some drops "Alone, alone, all, all alone, My soul in agony. "The many men so beautiful! "I looked upon the rotting sea, I looked upon the rotting deck, thirst, inanition, and drop-by-drop "With throats unslaked, with black lips We could nor laugh nor wail; "With throats unslaked, with black lips Agape they heard me call: This is the true Tragedy of Remorse and also of Repentance. Thirst had dried, and furred, and hardened his throat the same as the throats of the other wretches-but God had cracked too his stoney "I looked to heaven, and tried to pray; "I closed my lids, and kept them close, For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the Lay like a load on my weary eye, "The cold sweat melted from their limbs, The look with which they looked on me "An orphan's curse would drag to hell But oh! more horrible than that "The moving Moon went up the sky, "Her beams bemocked the sultry main, |