Notes
For the last two lines of this stanza, I am indebted to Mr.
Wordsworth. It was on a delightful walk from Nether Stowey to
Dulverton, with him and his sister, in the Autumn of 1797, that
this Poem was planned, and in part composed.
It is a common superstition among sailors that something evil is
about to happen whenever a star dogs the moon.
Sublimates--How dare I edit STC's poetry? Well, only because
the word he used meant, according to Sam Johnson, ``to purify; to
cleanse ... to clear; to brighten'', and that word (defecates) now retains
none of its more chemical meaning; not only that, its current
meaning seriously interferes with what STC meant.
OK, so why sublimates and not, say, evaporates, whose meaning is
probably more chemically accurate? Just following STCs own
example of sacrificing a small bit of the literal accuracy to the
poetry. ``Sublimates'' has the same rhyme and meter as
``defecates'', and besides, it is a sublime-sounding word.
(And it's not inappropriate for a Coleridge poem to have a chemical
word--he was interested in everything, was a good friend of Sir
Humphry Davy, and knew a surprising amount of chemistry.)
A specific STC example? After his first extended sea journey, he
changed the line ``The
furrow followed free'' in The Ancient Mariner to ``The
furrow streamed out free'', because that's how it looked from
onboard ship, even though it was worse as poetry. But he
later changed it back to the original wording.
The following fragment is here published at the request of a poet
of great and deserved celebrity [Lord Byron], 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.
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 inclosed 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
awakening 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
has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the
latter!
![[spacer]](../pictures/spacer.xbm)
Then all the charm
- Is broken--all that phantom-world so fair
Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,
And each mis-shape the other. Stay awile,
Poor youth! who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes--
The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon
The visions will return! And lo, he stays,
And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms
Come trembling back, unite, and now once more
The pool becomes a mirror.
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. ![[Greek: Sameron adion aso]](../greek_gifs/Sameron_athion_aso.xbm)
: 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.
This fragment with a good deal more, not recoverable, composed, in
a sort of Reverie brought on by two grains of Opium taken to check
a dysentery, at a Farm House between Porlock & Linton, a
quarter of a mile from Culbone Church, in the fall of the year,
1797.
From William Bartram (1739-1823) record of his travels to America,
Travels, published 1792:
... in front, just under my feet, was the enchanting and amazing
crystal fountain which incessantly threw up from dark rocky caverns
below, tons of water every minute, forming a basin, capacious
enough for large shallops to ride in, and a creek of four or five
feet depth of water and near twenty yards over, which meanders six
miles through green meadows, ... directly opposite to the mouth or
outlet of the creek, is a continual and amazing ebullition where
the waters are thrown up in such abundance and amazing force, as to
jet and swell up two or three feet above the common surface: white
sand and small particles of shells are thrown up with the waters
near to the top, ... The ebullition is astonishing and continual,
though its greatest force of fury intermits, regularly, for the
space of thiry seconds of time: ...
This transition reminds me of Ravel's Bolero, where the
orchestra screams and grunts and plunks itself down into a
new, sweeter, key, and then builds in intensity again.
Later note - I listened again to a recording of
Bolero, and of course that's not how Bolero really
goes--merely how it goes in my head when I read Kubla.
In all parts of the kingdom these films are called
strangers and supposed to portend the arrival of some absent
friend.
In the June of 1797 some long-expected Friends [William &
Dorothy Wordsworth and Charles Lamb] paid a visit to the
author's cottage; and on the morning of their arrival, he met with
an accident [his wife spilled a skillet of boiling milk on his
foot], which disabled him from walking during the whole time of
their stay. One evening, when they had left him for a few hours, he
composed the following lines in the garden-bower.
The Asplenium Scolopendrium, called in some countries the
Adder's Tongue, in others the Hart's Tongue, but Withering gives
the Adder's Tongue as the trivial name of the Ophioglossum
only.
Some months after I had written this line, it gave me pleasure to
find that Bartram had observed the same circumstance of the Savanna
Crane. `When these Birds move their wings in flight, their strokes
are slow, moderate and regular ; and even when at a considerable
distance or high above us, we plainly hear the quill-feathers :
their shafts and webs upon one another creek as the joints or
working of a vessel in a tempestuous sea.'
For God's sake, don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me
gentle-hearted in print, ... Substitute drunken-dog, ragged-head,
seld-shaven, odd ey'd, stuttering, or any other epithet which truly
and properly belongs to the gentleman in question.
In 1796, Charles Lamb's sister Mary had killed her mother and
wounded her father in a fit of insanity.
``for'' in the sense of ``instead of''.
I seem to have an indistinct recollection of having read either in
one of the ponderous tomes of George of Venice, or in some other
compilation from the uninspired Hebrew writers [STC did not
classify all Hebrew writers as ``uninspired''], an apologue or
Rabbinical tradition to the following purpose :
While our first parents stood before their offended Maker, and
the last words of the sentence were yet sounding in Adam's ear, the
guileful false serpent, a counterfeit and a usurper from the
beginning, presumptuously took on himself the character of advocate
or mediator, and pretending to intercede for Adam, exclaimed :
`Nay, Lord, in thy justice, not so ! for the Man was the least in
fault. Rather let the Woman return at once to the dust, and let
Adam remain in this thy Paradise.' And the word of the Most High
answered Satan : `The tender mercies of the wicked are
cruel. Treacherous Fiend ! if with guilt like thine, it had
been possible for thee to have the heart of a Man, and to feel the
yearning of a human soul for its counterpart, the sentence, which
thou now counsellest, should have been inflicted on thyself.'
The title of the following poem was suggested by a fact
mentioned by Linnaeus, of a date-tree in a nobleman's garden which
year after year had put forth a full show of blossoms, but never
produced fruit, till a branch from another date-tree had been
conveyed from a distance of some hundred leagues. The first leaf of
the MS. from which the poem has been transcribed, and which
contained the two or three introductory stanzas, is wanting : and
the author has in vain taxed his memory to repair the loss. But a
rude draught of the poem contains the substance of the stanzas, and
the reader is requested to receive it as the substitute. It is not
impossible, that some congenial spirit, whose years do not exceed
those of the Author at the time the poem was written, may find a
pleasure in restoring the Lament to its original integrity by a
reduction of the thoughts to the requisite metre.
[Does some ``congenial spirit'' want to take him up on this?
He was probably 32 when he first wrote it. Send attempts, or URLs
(complete pathnames) to html or ascii files containing same, to mtiefert@mindspring.com.]
L'athée n'est point à mes yeux un faux esprit ; je
puis vivre avec lui aussi bien et mieux qu'avec le dévot,
car il raisonne davantage, mais il lui manque un sens, et mon
âme ne se fond point entièrement avec la sienne : il
est froid au spectacle le plus ravissant, et il cherche un
syllogisme lorsque je rends une action de grâce.--`Appel
à l'impartiale postérité, par la Citoyenne
Roland', troisième partie, p. 67. [translation]
Ah! poor dear--too much in love to realize she would try to
clip his philosopher-poet's wings!
The only birds of paradise that Europeans had seen till then were
dead specimens, stuffed, without legs.
The ``Hexameters'' were sent in a letter, written in the winter of 1798-99 from
Ratzeburg [Germany] to the Wordsworths at Goslar.--E. H.
Coleridge [STC's grandson] (note in his edition of STC's
complete poetical works) [Dorothea = Dorothy, William
Wordsworth's sister.]
- end of line 3:
- False metre.
- end of line
11:
- 'Still flying onwards' were perhaps better.
- end of line
25:
- False metre.
... Fifth Stanza. An address to Liberty, in which the Poet
expresses his conviction that those feelings and that grand
ideal of Freedom which the mind attains by its contemplation of
its individual nature, and of the sublime surrounding objects ...
do not belong to men, as a society, nor can possibly be either
gratified or realised, under any form of human government; but
belong to the individual man, so far as he is pure, and inflamed
with the love and adoration of God in Nature.
This was an early version of The
Prelude.
The first part of the following poem was written in the year one thousand seven hundred
and ninety seven, at Stowey, in the county of Somerset. The
second part, after my return from Germany, in the year one thousand eight hundred,
at Keswick, Cumberland. [Since the latter date, my poetic powers
have been, till very lately, in a state of suspended animation. But
as, in my very first conception of the tale, I had the whole
present to my mind, with the wholeness, no less than the liveliness
of a vision; I trust that I shall be able to embody in verse the three parts yet to come, in the course
of the present year.--These sentences omitted in 1834
edition.] 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 poets [Sir Walter Scott
& Lord Byron] 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 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. Though the latter may vary from seven
[actually, four] 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.
This phenomenon, which the Author has himself experienced, and of
which the reader may find a description in one of the earlier
volumes of the Manchester Philosophical Transactions, is
applied figuratively in the following passage of the Aids to
Reflection:--
`Pindar's fine remark respecting the different effects of Music,
on different charactes, holds equally true of Genius--as many as
are not delighted by it are disturbed, perplexed, irritated. The beholder either
recognizes it as a projected form of his own Being, that moves
before him with a Glory round its head, or recoils from it as a
Spectre.'--Aids to
Reflection, p. 220.
Imitated, though in the movements rather than the thoughts, from
the vii-th of Gli Epitafi of Chiabrera.
N.B. The above is perhaps not Poetry,--but rather a sort of middle
thing between Poetry and Oratory--sermoni propriora.--Some parts
are, I am conscious, too tame even for animated prose.
`A beautiful white cloud of Foam at momentary intervals coursed by
the side of the Vessel with a Roar, and little stars of flame
danced and sparkled and went out in it : and every now and then
light detachments of this white cloud-like foam dashed off from the
vessel's side, each with its own small constellation, over the Sea,
and scoured out of sight like a Tartar Troup over a wilderness.'
The Friend, p. 220 [From Satyrane's First Letter, published
in The Friend, No. 14, Nov. 23, 1809.]
... a specimen of the Sublime dashed to pieces by cutting too close
with the fiery Four-in-Hand round the corner of Nonsense.
Under the name of Nehemiah Higginbottom I contributed three
sonnets, the first of which had for its object to excite a
good-natured laugh at the spirit of doleful egotism and at the
recurrence of favourite phrases, with the double defect of being at
once trite and licentious. The second was on low creeping language
and thoughts under the pretence of simplicity. The third, the phrases of which were
borrowed entirely from my own poems, on the indiscriminate use of
elaborate and swelling language and imagery. ... So general at the
time and so decided was the opinion concerning the characteristic
vices of my style that a celebrated physician (now alas ! no more)
speaking of me in other respects with his usual kindness to a
gentleman who was about to meet me at a dinner-party could not,
however, resist giving him a hint not to mention The House that
Jack Built in my presence, for that I was as sore as a boil
about that sonnet, he not knowing that I was myself the author of
it.
The following relation was to have occupied a third and fourth
canto, and to have closed the tale. Over the mountains, the Bard,
as directed by Sir Leoline, hastes with his disciple; but in
consequence of one of those inundations supposed to be common to
this country, the spot only where the castle once stood is
discovered--the edifice itself being washed away. He determines to
return. Geraldine, being acquainted with all that is passing, like
the weird sisters in Macbeth, vanishes. Reappearing,
however, she awaits the return of the Bard, exciting in the
meantime, by her wily arts, all the anger she could rouse in the
Baron's breast, as well as that jealousy of which he is described
to have been susceptible.
The old Bard and the youth at length arrive, and therefore she
can no longer personate the character of Geraldine, the daughter of
Lord Roland de Vaux, but changes her appearance to that of the
accepted, though absent, lover of Christabel. Now ensues a
courtship most distressing to Christabel, who feels--she knows not
why--great disgust for her once favored knight.
This coldness is very painful to the Baron, who has no more
conception than herself of the supernatural transformation. She at
last yields to her father's entreaties, and consents to approach
the altar with the hated suitor. The real lover, returning, enters
at this moment, and produces the ring which she had once given him
in sign of her betrothment. Thus defeated, the supernatural being
Geraldine disappears. As predicted, the castle bell tolls, the
mother's voice is heard, and, to the exceeding great joy of the
parties, the rightful marriage takes place, after which follows a
reconciliation and explanation between father and daughter.
(from Gillman's The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
1838)
The Garden of Boccaccio, an engraving by Thomas Stothard,
1755-1834, which is not included (yet, as of 12/5/94) in the prints
database at Australian National University.
Press b on the keyboard or the Back button in Mosaic
to return.
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