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"A murderous fiend, by fiends adored,

He kills the sire and starves the son; The husband kills, and from her board Steals all his widow's toil had won; Plunders God's world of beauty; rends away All safety from the night, all comfort from the day.

"Then wisely is my soul elate,

That strife should vanish, battle cease:
I'm poor and of a low estate,

The mother of the Prince of peace.
Joy rises in me, like a summer's morn:
Peace, peace on earth! the Prince of peace is born!"

TELL'S BIRTHPLACE.

IMITATED FROM STOLBERG.

MARK this holy chapel well!
The birthplace, this, of William Tell.
Here, where stands God's altar dread,
Stood his parents' marriage bed.

Here first, an infant to her breast,
Him his loving mother prest;
And kiss'd the babe, and bless'd the day,
And pray'd as mothers used to pray:
"Vouchsafe him health, O God, and give
The child, thy servant, still to live!"
But God has destined to do more
Through him, than through an armed power.
God gave him reverence of laws,
Yet stirring blood in freedom's cause-
A spirit to his rocks akin,

The eye of the hawk, and the fire therein !

To nature and to holy writ
Alone did God the boy commit:
Where flash'd and roar'd the torrent, oft
His soul found wings, and soar'd aloft!

The straining oar and chamois chase
Had form'd his limbs to strength and grace:
On wave and wind the boy would toss,
Was great, nor knew how great he was!
He knew not that his chosen hand,
Made strong by God, his native land
Would rescue from the shameful yoke
Of slavery-the which he broke !

HUMAN LIFE.

ON THE DENIAL OF IMMORTALITY,

Ir dead, we cease to be; if total gloom
Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare
As summer gusts, of sudden birth and doom,
Whose sound and motion not alone declare,
But are their whole of being! If the breath
Be life itself, and not its task and tent,
If e'en a soul like Milton's can know death,

O man! thou vessel, purposeless, unmeant, Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes! Surplus of nature's dread activity,

Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finish'd vase, Retreating slow, with meditative pause,

She form'd with restless hands unconsciously! Blank accident! nothing's anomaly!

If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state, Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears, The counter-weights!-Thy laughter and thy tears Mean but themselves, each fittest to create, And to repay the other! Why rejoices

Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good? Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood, Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices, Image of image, ghost of ghostly elf,

That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold!
Yet what and whence thy gain if thou withhold
These costless shadows of thy shadowy self?
Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun!
Thou hast no reason why! Thou canst have none :
Thy being's being is a contradiction.

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Lo! Phoebus the glorious descends from his throne!
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.

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

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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 dim of 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. Eapepov adiov 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 con-
fines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence
of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been pre-
scribed, 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-
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 conscious-
ness of effort. On awaking he appeared to him-
self 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 pre-
served. 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,
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
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!

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THE PAINS OF SLEEP.

ERE on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to love compose,

In humble trust mine eyelids close,
With reverential resignation,

No wish conceived, no thought express'd!
Only a sense of supplication,

A sense o'er all my soul imprest
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, everywhere,
Eternal Strength and Wisdom are.

But yesternight I pray'd aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd

Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:
A lurid light, a trampling throng,
Sense of intolerable wrong,

And whom I scorn'd, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still!
Desire with loathing strangely mix'd,
On wild or hateful objects fix'd.
Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!
And shame and terror over all!
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know,
Whether I suffer'd, or I did:

For all seem'd guilt, remorse, or wo,
My own or others', still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.

So two nights pass'd: the night's dismay
Sadden'd and stunn'd the coming day.
Sleep, the wide blessing, seem'd to me
Distemper's worst calamity.

The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child;
And having thus by tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,

Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum universitate. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit? et gradus et cognationes et discrimina et singulorum munera ? Quid agunt? quæ loca habitant? Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit ingenium humanum, nunquam attigit. Juvat, interea, non diffiteor, quandoque in animo, tanquam in tabulâ, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contemplari: ne mens assuefacta hodiernæ vitæ minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat in pusillas cogitationes. Sed veritati interea invigilandum est, modusque servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a nocte, distinguamus.-T. BURNET: Archaol. Phil. p. 68.

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

The mariner tells The sun came up upon the left, how the ship sail. Out of the sea came he!

ed southward

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.

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 !

breast,

For he heard the loud bassoon.

The bride hath paced into the hall, guest heareth the Red as a rose is she;

oridal music; but the mariner continueth his tale.

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Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.

The wedding-guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear;

Why look'st thou so?"-With my
cross-bow

I shot the ALBATROSS.

PART II.

THE SUN now rose upon the right:
Out of the sea came he,

Still hid in mist, and on the left
Went down into the sea.

And thus spake on that ancient man, And the good south wind still blew
The bright-eyed mariner :-

And now the STORM-BLAST came, and

he

Was tyrannous and strong;

behind,

But no sweet bird did follow,

Nor any day for food or play
Came to the mariner's hollo!

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,

And it would work 'em wo:
For all averr'd, I had kill'd the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay,
That made the breeze to blow !

The ancient mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good

omen.

His shipmates cry out against the ancient mariner, for killing the bird of good-luck.

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

blast,

And southward aye we fled.

cleared off, they The glorious sun uprist: 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 accomplices 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.

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'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!

howl'd,

Like noises in a swound!

At length did cross an albatross:
Thorough the fog it came;

through the snow As if it had been a Christian soul,

fog, and was received with great joy and hospitality.

We hail'd it in God's name.

It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steer'd us through!

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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,

A spirit had followed them; one

of the invisible in

About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white.

And some in dreams assured were
of the spirit that plagued us so;
habitants of this Nine fathom deep he had follow'd us
planet, neither From the land of mist and snow.
departed souls

nor angels; concerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus, may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no climate or element without one or

more.

When that strange shape drove sud

denly

Betwixt us and the sun.

And straight the sun was fleck'd with It seemeth him

bars,

(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 nears!
Are those her sails that glance in the

drought,

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The ancient masign in the ele

riner beholdeth a

ment afar off.

Had I from old and young!

Instead of the cross, the albatross

About neck was hung.

my

PART III.

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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
proach, it seein-

eth him to be a

lips baked,

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A flash of joy.

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

but the skeletoa 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,

Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-Mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was

she,

Who thicks man's blood with cold.

The naked hulk alongside came,
And the twain were casting dice;
"The game is done! I've won, I've

won!"

Quoth she, and whistles thrice.

Like vesel, like crew!

Death and Lifein-Death have diced for the

ship's crew, and

she, the latter, winneth the ancient mariner.

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We listen'd and look'd sideways up! At the rising of
Fear at my heart, as at a cup,

My life-blood seem'd to sip!

The stars were dim, and thick the

night,

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

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

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the moon,

One after one, by the star-dogg'd One after an-
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.

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