Part 31 (1/2)

The lonesome Spirit from the south-pole carries on the s.h.i.+p as far as the Line, in obedience to the angelic troop, but still requireth vengeance.

The Polar Spirit's fellow-daemons, the invisible inhabitants of the element, take part in his wrong; and two of them relate, one to the other, that penance long and heavy for the ancient Mariner hath been accorded to the Polar Spirit, who returneth southward.

PART VI

The Mariner hath been cast into a trance; for the angelic power causeth the vessel to drive northward faster than human life could endure.

The supernatural motion is r.e.t.a.r.ded; the Mariner awakes, and his penance begins anew.

The curse is finally expiated.

And the ancient Mariner beholdeth his native country.

The angelic spirits leave the dead bodies,

And appear in their own forms of light.

PART VII

The Hermit of the Wood,

Approacheth the s.h.i.+p with wonder.

The s.h.i.+p suddenly sinketh.

The ancient Mariner is saved in the Pilot's boat.

The ancient Mariner earnestly entreateth the Hermit to shrieve him; and the penance of life falls on him.

And ever and anon throughout his future life an agony constraineth him to travel from land to land,

And to teach, by his own example, love and reverence to all things that G.o.d made and loveth.

p. 27. _Christabel_. Coleridge at his best represents the imaginative temper in its essence, pure gold, with only just enough alloy to give it firm bodily substance. ”Christabel” is not, like ”Kubla Khan,” a disembodied ecstasy, but a coherent effort of the imagination. Yet, when we come to the second part, the magic is already half gone out of it. Rossetti says, in a printed letter, with admirable truth: ”The conception, and partly the execution, of the pa.s.sage in which Christabel repeats by fascination the serpent-glance of Geraldine, is magnificent; but that is the only good narrative pa.s.sage in part two. The rest seems to have reached a fatal facility of jingling, at the heels whereof followed Scott.” A few of the lines seem to sink almost lower than Scott, and suggest a Gilbert parody:

”He bids thee come without delay With all thy numerous array.

And he will meet thee on the way With all his numerous array.”

But in the conclusion, which has nothing whatever to do with the poem, Coleridge is his finest self again: a magical psychologist. It is interesting to know that Crashaw was the main influence upon Coleridge while writing ”Christabel,” and that the ”Hymn to the Name and Honour of the admirable S. Teresa” was ”ever present to his mind while writing the second part.”

p. 61. _Love_. This poem was originally published, in the _Morning Post_ of December 21, 1799, as part of an ”Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie.” This introduction begins:

”O leave the lily on its stem; O leave the rose upon the spray; O leave the elder-bloom, fair maids!