The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume I Part 101

In the summer of the year 1797[295:2], the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devons.h.i.+re.

In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep 10 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.'[296:1] 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 20 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, 30 with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had pa.s.sed 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!

Then all the charm Is broken--all that phantom-world so fair Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread, And each mis-shape['s] the other. Stay awhile, Poor youth! who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes-- The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon 40 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.

[From _The Picture; or, the Lover's Resolution_, II. 91-100.]

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. Sae??? ad??? as?[297:1]

[?????? ?d??? ?s? _1834_]: 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 50 dream of pain and disease.[297:2]

KUBLA KHAN

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. 5 So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, 10 Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted 15 By woman wailing for her demon-lover![297:3]

[297:4]And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst 20 Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail: And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion 25 Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! 30 The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device, 35 A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice![298:1]

A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, 40 Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me, That with music loud and long, 45 I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice![298:2]

And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flas.h.i.+ng eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.

1798.

FOOTNOTES:

[295:1] First published together with _Christabel_ and _The Pains of Sleep_, 1816: included in 1828, 1829, and 1834.

[295:2] There can be little doubt that Coleridge should have written 'the summer of 1798'. In an unpublished MS. note dated November 3, 1810, he connects the retirement between 'Linton and Porlock' and a recourse to opium with his quarrel with Charles Lloyd, and consequent distress of mind. That quarrel was at its height in May 1798. He alludes to distress of mind arising from 'calumny and ingrat.i.tude from men who have been fostered in the bosom of my confidence' in a letter to J. P. Estlin, dated May 14, 1798; and, in a letter to Charles Lamb, dated [Spring]

1798, he enlarges on his quarrel with Lloyd and quotes from Lloyd's novel of _Edmund Oliver_ which was published in 1798. See _Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, 1895, i. 245, note 1. I discovered and read for the first time the unpublished note of November 3, 1810, whilst the edition of 1893 was in the press, and in a footnote to p. xlii of his _Introduction_ the editor, J. D. Campbell, explains that it is too late to alter the position and date of _Kubla Khan_, but accepts the later date (May, 1798) on the evidence of the MS. note.

[296:1] 'In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace, encompa.s.sing sixteene miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, pleasant Springs, delightfull Streames, and all sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous house of pleasure.'--_Purchas his Pilgrimage_: Lond. fol. 1626, Bk. IV, chap.

xiii, p. 418.

[297:1] The quotation is from Theocritus, i. 145:--?? ?ste??? ?d??? ?s?.

[297:2] _The Pains of Sleep._

[297:3] And woman wailing for her Demon Lover. Motto to Byron's _Heaven and Earth_, published in _The Liberal_, No. II, January 1, 1823.

[297:4] With lines 17-24 compare William Bartram's description of the 'Alligator-Hole.' _Travels in North and South Carolina_, 1794, pp.

286-8.

[298:1] Compare Thomas Maurice's _History of Hindostan_, 1795, i. 107.

The reference is supplied by Coleridge in the _Gutch Memorandum Note Book_ (B. M. Add. MSS., No. 27, 901), p. 47: 'In a cave in the mountains of Cashmere an Image of Ice,' &c.

[298:2] In her 'Lines to S. T. Coleridge, Esq.,' Mrs. Robinson (Perdita) writes:--

'I'll mark thy "sunny domes" and view Thy "caves of ice", and "fields of dew".'

It is possible that she had seen a MS. copy of _Kubla Khan_ containing these variants from the text.

LINENOTES:

t.i.tle of Introduction:--Of the Fragment of Kubla Khan 1816, 1828, 1829.

[1-5] om. 1834.

[8] there] here S. L. 1828, 1829.

[11] Enfolding] And folding 1816. The word 'Enfolding' is a pencil emendation in David Hinves's copy of Christabel. ? by S. T. C.

[19] In the early copies of 1893 this line was accidentally omitted.

[54] drunk] drank 1816, 1828, 1829.

RECANTATION[299:1]

ILl.u.s.tRATED IN THE STORY OF THE MAD OX

I

An Ox, long fed with musty hay, And work'd with yoke and chain, Was turn'd out on an April day, When fields are in their best array, And growing gra.s.ses sparkle gay 5 At once with Sun and rain.

II

The gra.s.s was fine, the Sun was bright-- With truth I may aver it; The ox was glad, as well, he might, Thought a green meadow no bad sight, 10 And frisk'd,--to shew his huge delight, Much like a beast of spirit.

III

'_Stop, neighbours, stop, why these alarms?

The ox is only glad!_'

But still they pour from cots and farms-- 15 'Halloo!' the parish is up in arms, (A _hoaxing_-hunt has always charms) 'Halloo! the ox is mad.'

IV