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Lo! Phoebus the glorious descends from his throne! | return to his room, found, to his no small surprise They advance, they float in, the Olympians all!

With divinities fills my
Terrestrial hall!

How shall I yield you

Due entertainment,
Celestial choir ?

Me rather, bright guests! with your wings of upbuoyance

Bear aloft to your homes, to your banquets of joy-
ance,

That the roofs of Olympus may echo my lyre!
Ha! we mount! on their pinions they waft up my
soul!

O give me the nectar!
O fill me the bowl!
Give him the nectar!

Pour out for the poet,
Hebe! pour free!

Quicken his eyes with celestial dew,

That Styx the detested no more he may view,
And like one of us gods may conceit him to be!
Thanks, Hebe! I quaff it! Io pæan, I cry!

The wine of th' immortals

Forbids me to die!

KUBLA KHAN;

OR, A VISION IN A DREAM.

[THE following fragment is here published at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity, 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.

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
Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,
And each misshapes the other. Stay a while,
Poor youth! who scarcely darest lift up thine eyes-
The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon
The visions will return! And lo, he stays,
And soon the fragments dimof 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. Σapepov ačiov aow: but the to-mor-
row 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. -Note to the first edition, 1816.]

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.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Infolding sunny spots of greenery.

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 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 hun-Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, dred 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, It was a miracle of rare device,

But O 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
By woman wailing for her demon lover!
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:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
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,

Then reach'd 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!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.

and detained by him above an hour, and on his A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perch'd for vespers nine:

The mariner tells The sun came up upon the left,

how the ship sail. ed southward

Out of the sea came he!

with a good wind And he shone bright, and on the right Whiles all the night, through fog

and fair weather, Went down into the sea.

till it reached the line.

The wedding. guest heareth the bridal music; but the mariner continueth his tale.

The ship drawn

by a storm toward

the south pole.

Higher and higher every day,

Till over the mast at noon

smoke white,

Glimmer'd the white moonshine.

"God save thee, ancient mariner!

The wedding-guest here beat his From the fiends that plague thee thus!

He struck with his o'ertaking wings, And I had done an hellish thing,
And chased us south along.

With sloping masts and dripping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,

The ship drove fast, loud roar'd the Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, But when the fog

cleared off, they justify the same, Then all averr'd, I had kill'd the bird and thus make

And now there came both mist and That brought the fog and mist.

snow,

And it grew wondrous cold;

themselves ac. complices in the

'Twas right, said they, such birds to crime.
slay

And ice, mast-high, came floating by, That bring the fog and mist.
As green as emerald.

'Twas sad as sad could be ;

And we did speak only to break

It crack'd and growl'd, and roar'd and The silence of the sea!

All in a hot and copper sky,

The bloody sun, at noon,

Right up above the mast did stand,

No bigger than the moon.

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink:
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

been suddenly becalmed.

And the albatross begins to be avenged.

(Heaven's mother send us grace!)

As if through a dungeon-grate he
peer'd

With broad and burning face.

Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat
loud,)

And every tongue, through utter How fast she nears and rears!
Are those her sails that glance in the
sun,

drought,

Was wither'd at the root;

The ancient ma

riner beholdeth a

sign in the ele.

ment afar off.

my

PART III.

THERE pass'd a weary time. Each
throat

Was parch'd, and glazed each eye.
A weary time! a weary time!
How glazed each weary eye,
When looking westward, I beheld
A something in the sky.

At first it seem'd a little speck
And then it seem'd a mist;

It moved and moved, and took at last
A certain shape, I wist.

A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!
And it still near'd and near'd:
As if it dodged a water-sprite,
It plunged and tack'd and veer'd.

At its nearer ap- With throats unslaked, with black
lips baked,

proach, it seem.

eth him to be a

ship; and at a We could nor laugh nor wail;
freeth his speech Through utter drought all dumb we

dear ransom he

from the bonds of

thirst.

A flash of joy.

stood;

I bit my arm, I suck'd the blood,
And cried, A sail! a sail!

but the skeleton of a ship.

Are those her ribs through which the And its ribs are

sun

Did peer, as through a grate;

And is that woman all her crew?

seen as bars on

the face of the setting sun.

Is that a DEATH, and are there two? The spectre
IS DEATH that woman's mate?

woman and her

death-mate, and no other on board

Her lips were red, her looks were the skeleton-ship.

free,

Like vessel, like crew!

Death and Life in-Death have diced for the

"The game is done! I've won, I've ship's crew, and

won!"

Quoth she, and whistles thrice.

she, the latter, winneth the a cient mariner.

The steersman's face by his lamp
gleam'd white;

With throats unslaked, with black From the sails the dew did drip

the moon,

One after one, by the star-dogg'd One after as

moon,

Too quick for groan or sigh,

Each turn'd his face with a ghastly

pang,

And cursed me with his eye.

Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan,)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropp'd down one by one.

other,

His shipmates drop down dead.

But Life-in-Death The souls did from their bodies fly,- Her beams bemock'd the sultry main, begins her work

on the ancient They fled to bliss or wo!

And thou art long, and lank, and
As is the ribb'd sea-sand.*

"I fear thee and thy glittering eye,
And thy skinny hand so brown.”—

But the ancient Fear not, fear not, thou wedding

mariner assureth

him of his bodily

guest!

life, and proceed. This body dropt not down.

eth to relate his

horrible penance. Alone, alone, all, all alone,

Alone on a wide, wide sea!

And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.

He despiseth the The many men, so beautiful!

creatures of the

calm.

And they all dead did lie:

Like April hoar-frost spread;
But where the ship's huge shadow lay,

The charmed water burnt alway
A still and awful red.

And when they rear'd, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.

I watch'd their rich attire;
Within the shadow of the ship

Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coil'd and swam; and every
track

Was a flash of golden fire.

O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare;

A spring of love gush'd from my
heart,

And a thousand thousand slimy things And I bless'd them unaware:

Lived on; and so did I.

And envieth that I look'd upon the rotting sea,
they should live,
and so many lie
dead.

And drew my eyes away;
I look'd upon the rotting deck,
And there the dead men lay.

I look'd to heaven, and tried to pray;
But or ever a prayer had gush'd,
A wicked whisper came, and made
My heart as dry as dust.

I closed my lids, and kept them close,
And the balls like pulses beat;

Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I bless'd them unaware.

The selfsame moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.

PART V.

O SLEEP! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!

To Mary queen the praise be given !
She sent the gentle sleep from heaven,

For the sky and the sea, and the sea That slid into my soul.

and the sky,

Lay like a load on my weary eye
And the dead were at my feet.

But the curse liv- The cold sweat melted from their
eth for him in the

eye of the dead

men.

limbs,

The silly buckets on the deck,

That had so long remain'd,

eth God's crea

calm.

Their beauty and their happiness.

He blesseth them in his heart.

The spell begins to break.

By grace of the holy mother, the ancient mariner

I dreamt that they were fill'd with is refreshed with

dew;

And when I awoke it rain’d.

My lips were wet, my throat was cold,
My garments all were dank;
Sure I had drunken in my dreams,

An orphan's curse would drag to hell And still my body drank.

rain.

He heareth

sounds and seeth strange sights and

But with its sound it shook the sails, commotions in
That were so thin and sere.

The upper air burst into life!

| And a hundred fire-flags sheen,
To and fro they were hurried about!
And to and fro, and in and out,
The wan stars danced between.

And the coming wind did roar more
loud,

And the sails did sigh like sedge;

the sky and the element.