She turned her from Sir Leoline; That o'er her right arm fell again; And folded her arms across her chest, 580 And couched her head upon her breast, And looked askance at ChristabelJesu Maria, shield her well! A snake's small eye blinks dull and shy, And the lady's eyes they shrunk in her head, 585 Each shrunk up to a serpent's eye, And with somewhat of malice, and more of dread, One moment-and the sight was fled! 590 Stumbling on the unsteady ground 595 She rolled her large bright eyes divine The maid, alas! her thoughts are gone, 605 And passively did imitate That look of dull and treacherous hate! And when the trance was o'er, the maid "By my mother's soul do I entreat That thou this woman send away!" She said: and more she could not say: For what she knew she could not tell, 620 O'ermastered by the mighty spell. Why is thy cheek so wan and wild, 625 The same, for whom thy lady died! 635 Sir Leoline! And wouldst thou wrong thy only child, Within the Baron's heart and brain 640 His heart was cleft with pain and rage, His cheeks they quivered, his eyes were wild- And all his hospitality 645 To the insulted daughter of his friend 655 Led forth the lady Geraldine! THE CONCLUSION OF PART II. A little child, a limber elf, A fairy thing with red round cheeks, 660 Makes such a vision to the sight Must needs express his love's excess 665 With words of unmeant bitterness. Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together Thoughts so unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm. 670 Perhaps 'tis tender too and pretty At each wild word to feel within And what, if in a world of sin (O sorrow and shame should this be true!). 676 Such giddiness of heart and brain Comes seldom save from rage and pain, So talks as it's most used to do. 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 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 sur face 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 Poor youth! who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes- The visions will return! And lo! he stays, And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms Come trembling back, unite, and now once more 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 |