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SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

109

And how she wept, and clasped his knees; | On thy bald, awful head, O sovran Blanc !
And how she tended him in vain;
The Arvé and Arveiron at thy base
And ever strove to expiate
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful
Form!

The scorn that crazed his brain;

And that she nursed him in a cave,
And how his madness went away,
When on the yellow forest-leaves

A dying man he lay;

- His dying words—but when I reached
That tenderest strain of all the ditty,
My faltering voice and pausing harp
Disturbed her soul with pity!

All impulses of soul and sense
Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve;
The music and the doleful tale,

The rich and balmy eve;

And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng,
And gentle wishes long subdued,

Subdued and cherished long.

She wept with pity and delight,
She blushed with love, and virgin shame;
And like the murmur of a dream,

I heard her breathe my name.

Her bosom heaved, she stepped aside,
As conscious of my look she stept,
Then suddenly, with timorous eye,
She fled to me and wept.

She half enclosed me with her arms,
She pressed me with a meek embrace;
And, bending back her head, looked up,
And gazed upon my face.

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Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines How silently! Around thee and above Deep is the air, and dark, substantial, black,

An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it As with a wedge! But when I look again, It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,

Thy habitation from eternity! O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee,

Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer

I worshipped the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody, So sweet we know not we are listening to it,

Thou, the meanwhile, wert blending with

my thought,

Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy,
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing, there,
As in her natural form, swelled vast to
Heaven!

Awake, my soul ! not only passive praise Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,

Mute thanks, and secret ecstasy! Awake, Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart,

awake!

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From dark and icycaverns called you forth, | Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! Down those precipitous, black, jagged

rocks,

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thou

That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused
with tears,

Solemnly seemest like a vapory cloud
To rise before me Rise, O, ever rise,
Rise like a cloud of incense from the
Earth!

Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,

Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,

Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky, And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun, Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

CHRISTABEL.

PART I.

'T Is the middle of night by the castle clock,

And the owls have awakened the crowing
cock;
Tu-whit! tu-whoo!

And hark, again! the crowing cock,
How drowsily it crew.

Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,
Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;
From her kennel beneath the rock
She maketh answer to the clock,
Four for the quarters, and twelve for the
hour;

Ever and aye, by shine and shower,
Sixteen short howls, not over-loud;
Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.

Is the night chilly and dark?
The night is chilly, but not dark.
The thin gray cloud is spread on high,
It covers but not hides the sky.
The moon is behind, and at the full;
And yet she looks both small and dull.
The night is chill, the cloud is gray;
"T is a month before the month of May,
And the Spring comes slowly up this way.

The lovely lady, Christabel, Whom her father loves so well, What makes her in the wood so late, A furlong from the castle gate? She had dreams all yesternight Of her own betrothed knight;

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