And Geraldine, in maiden wise, With blushing cheek and courtesy fine That o'er her right arm fell again; And couched her head upon her breast, A snake's small eye blinks dull and shy, And the lady's eyes they shrunk in her head, Each shrunk up to a serpent's eye, And with somewhat of malice, and more of dread, The maid, alas! her thoughts are gone, She nothing sees-no sight but one! The maid, devoid of guile and sin, I know not how, in fearful wise So deeply had she drunken in That look, those shrunken serpent eyes, To this sole image in her mind; That look of dull and treacherous hate! And when the trance was o'er, the maid By my mother's soul do I entreat Why is thy cheek so wan and wild, Sir Leoline? Thy only child Lies at thy feet, thy joy, thy pride, So fair, so innocent, so mild; The same, for whom thy lady died! O by the pangs of her dear mother Think thou no evil of thy child! For her, and thee, and for no other, She prayed the moment ere she died: Prayed that the babe for whom she died, Might prove her dear lord's joy and pride! That prayer her deadly pangs beguiled, Sir Leoline! And wouldst thou wrong thy only child, Her child and thine ? Within the Baron's heart and brain To the wrong'd daughter of his friend. THE CONCLUSION TO PART II, A LITTLE child, a limber elf, A fairy thing with red round cheeks, Must needs express his love's excess At each wild word to feel within (O sorrow and shame should this be true!) Comes seldom save from rage and pain, PART 1, 1797.-PART II, 1800 KUBLA KHAN; OR, A VISION IN A DREAM. A FRAGMENT. 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 effect of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment 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 conscious. ness 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 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, Poor youth! who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes |