The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. IN SEVEN PARTS. 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. ARCHEOL. PHIL. p. 68. PART I. IT is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. An ancient Mariner meeteth three gallants, bid "By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, den to a Now wherefore stopp'st thou me ? "The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin ; The guests are met, the feast is set : May'st hear the merry din." He holds him with his skinny hand, "There was a ship," quoth he. weddingfeast, and detaineth one. To the tired Pilgrim's still believing mind; II. Yes! He hath flitted from me-with what aim, Of babe, that tempts and shuns the menaced kiss, As the dear hopes, that swell the mother's breast: III. Like a loose blossom on a gusty night He flitted from me-and has left behind Two playmates, twin-births of his foster-dame : So like him, that almost she seemed the same! IV. Ah! He is gone, and yet will not depart ! Which there he made up-grow by his strong art, V. Can wit of man a heavier grief reveal? Can sharper pang from hate or scorn arise? One pang more blighting-keen than hope betrayed! When at her Brother's hest, the twin-born Maid * Faerie Queen, в. III. c. 2. s. 19. KUBLA KHAN: OR, A VISION IN A DREAM. A FRAGMENT. IN the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farmhouse 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 effect 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 hundred 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, and detained by him above an hour, and on his 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 And each mis shape the other. Stay awhile, Poor youth! who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon Yet from the still surviving recollections in his mind, the Author has frequently purposed to finish for himself what had been originally, as it were, given to him. Aptov adiov arw: but the to-morrow is yet to come. 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. KUBLA KHAN. N Xanadu did Kubla Khan IN A stately pleasure-dome decree : Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground 1816. With walls and towers were girdled round: But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seeth ing, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced : |