THE PANG MORE SHARP THAN ALL.

AN ALLEGORY.

I.

HE too has flitted from his secret nest,
Hope's last and dearest child without a

name !

Has flitted from me, like the warmthless flame,
That makes false promise of a place of rest
To the tired Pilgrim's still believing mind;—
Or like some Elfin Knight in kingly court,
Who having won all guerdons in his sport,
Glides out of view, and whither none can find!

II.

Yes! he hath flitted from me-with what aim,
Or why, I know not! 'Twas a home of bliss,
And he was innocent, as the pretty shame
Of babe, that tempts and shuns the menaced kiss,
From its twy-cluster'd hiding place of snow!
Pure as the babe, I ween, and all aglow

As the dear hopes, that swell the mother's breast-
Her eyes down gazing o'er her clasped charge ;-
Yet gay as that twice happy father's kiss,
That well might glance aside, yet never miss,
Where the sweet mark emboss'd so sweet a targe-
Twice wretched he who hath been doubly blest!

III.

Like a loose blossom on a gusty night
He flitted from me-and has left behind

(As if to them his faith he ne'er did plight)
Of either sex and answerable mind

Two playmates, twin-births of his foster-dame :-
The one a steady lad (Esteem he hight)
And Kindness is the gentler sister's name.

Dim likeness now, though fair she be and good,
Of that bright boy who hath us all forsook ;-
But in his full-eyed aspect when she stood,
And while her face reflected every look,
And in reflection kindled-she became
So like him, that almost she seem'd the same !

IV.

Ah! he is gone, and yet will not depart !—
Is with me still, yet I from him exiled!
For still there lives within my secret heart
The magic image of the magic Child,
Which there he made up-grow by his strong art,
As in that crystal* orb-wise Merlin's feat,-
The wondrous "World of Glass," wherein inisled
All long'd for things their beings did repeat ;-
And there he left it, like a Sylph beguiled,
To live and yearn and languish incomplete!

V.

Can wit of man a heavier grief reveal ?
Can sharper pang from hate or scorn arise ?—
Yes! one more sharp there is that deeper lies,
Which fond Esteem but mocks when he would
heal.

VOL. II.

*Faërie Queene, B. III. c. 2, S. 19.

T

Yet neither scorn nor hate did it devise,
But sad compassion and atoning zeal !
One pang more blighting-keen than hope betray'd!
And this it is my woeful hap to feel,

When, at her Brother's hest, the twin-born Maid
With face averted and unsteady eyes,
Her truant playmate's faded robe puts on ;
And inly shrinking from her own disguise
Enacts the faery Boy that's lost and gone.
O worse than all! O pang all pangs above
Is Kindness counterfeiting absent Love!

KUBLA KHAN: OR, A VISION IN A DREAM.

[OF THE FRAGMENT OF KUBLA KHAN.

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.

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 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 has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter. Yet from the still surviving recollections in his mind,

*The exact words are these:-"In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace, encompassing 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. 4. chap. 13, p. 418.-Ed.

+ Purpose-1816.

the Author has frequently purposed to finish for himself what had been originally, as it were, given to him. Αύριον* ἅδιον ἄσω : 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.]

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 there were † gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
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
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 :

* Σαμερον-1816.

† And here were, &c.-1816.

And folding-il.