Samuel Coleridge - The Complete Essays, Lectures & Letters of S. T. Coleridge (Illustrated)

They crossed the court: right glad they were.

Following the popular superstition that dogs are supposed to see ghosts, and therefore see the supernatural, the mastiff yells, when Geraldine appears:

Outside her kennell, the mastiff old

Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold.

The mastiff old did not awake,

Yet she an angry moan did make!

And what can ail the mastiff bitch?

Never till now she uttered yell,

Beneath the eye of Christabel.

Geraldine had already worked upon the kindness of Christabel, so that she had lifted her over the threshold of the gate, which Geraldine’s fallen power had prevented her passing of herself, the place being holy and under the influence of the Virgin.

”Praise we the Virgin all divine,

Who hath rescued thee from thy distress,

Alas! Alas! said Geraldine,

I cannot speak for weariness.

They pass the hall that echoes still,

Pass as lightly as you will!

The brands were flat, the brands were dying,

Amid their own white ashes lying;

But when the lady passed there came

A tongue of light, a fit of flame;

And Christabel saw the lady’s eye,

And nothing else saw she thereby

Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall,

Which hung in a murky old nitch in the wall.

O! softly tread, said Christabel,

My father seldom sleepeth well.”

Geraldine, who affects to be weary, arrives at the chamber of

Christabel — this room is beautifully ornamented,

”Carved with figures strange and sweet,

All made out of the carver’s brain,

For a lady’s chamber meet

The lamp with twofold silver chain

Is fasten’d to an angel’s feet.”

Such is the mysterious movement of this supernatural lady, that all this is visible, and when she passed the dying brands, there came a fit of flame, and Christabel saw the lady’s eye.

The silver lamp burns dead and dim;

But Christabel the lamp will trim.

She trimm’d the lamp and made it bright,

And left it swinging to and fro,

While Geraldine, in wretched plight,

Sank down upon the floor below.

O weary lady Geraldine,

I pray you drink this cordial wine,

It is a wine of virtuous powers;

My mother made it of wild flowers.

And will your mother pity me,

Who am a maiden most forlorn?

Christabel answer’d — Woe is me!

She died the hour that I was born,

I have heard the grey-hair’d friar tell,

How on her deathbed she did say,

That she should hear the castle bell

Strike twelve upon my wedding-day.

O mother dear! that thou wert here!

I would, said Geraldine, she were!

The poet now introduces the real object of the supernatural transformation: the spirit of evil struggles with the deceased and sainted mother of Christabel for the possession of the lady. To render the scene more impressive, the mother instantly appears, though she is invisible to her daughter. Geraldine exclaims in a commanding voice

”Off, wandering mother! Peak and pine!

I have power to bid thee flee?”

Alas! what ails poor Geraldine?

Why stares she with unsettled eye

Can she the bodiless dead espy?

And why with hollow voice cries she,

”Off, woman, off! this hour is mine —

Though thou her guardian spirit be,

”Off, woman, off! ‘tis given to me.”

Here, Geraldine seems to be struggling with the spirit of Christabel’s mother, over which for a time she obtains the mastery.

Then Christabel knelt by the lady’s side,

And rais’d to heaven her eyes so blue —

Alas! said she, this ghastly ride —

Dear lady! it hath wilder’d you!

The lady wiped her moist cold brow,

And faintly said, “‘Tis over now!”

Again the wildflower wine she drank,

Her fair large eyes ‘gan glitter bright,

And from the floor whereon she sank,

The lofty lady stood upright

She was most beautiful to see,

Like a lady of a far countrée.

And thus the lofty lady spake —

All they who live in the upper sky,

Do love you, holy Christabel!

And you love them, and for their sake

And for the good which me befell,

Even I in my degree will try,

Fair maiden to requite you well.

But now unrobe yourself: for I

Must pray, ere yet in bed I lie.

Quoth Christabel, so let it be!

And as the lady bade, did she.

Her gentle limbs did she undress,

And lay down in her loveliness.

But all this had given rise to so many different thoughts and feelings, that she could not compose herself for sleep, so she sits up in her bed to look at Geraldine who drew in her breath aloud, and unbound her cincture. Her silken robe and inner vest then drop to her feet, and she discovers her hideous form:

A sight to dream of, not to tell!

O shield her, shield sweet Christabel!

Yet Geraldine nor speaks — nor stirs;

Ah! what a stricken look was hers!

She then lies down by the side of Christabel, and takes her to her arms, saying in a low voice these words:

In the touch of this bosom there worketh a spell,

Which is lord of thy utterance, Christabel!

Thou knowest to-night, and wilt know tomorrow,

This mark of my shame, this seal of my sorrow;

But vainly thou warrest,

For this is alone in

Thy power to declare,

That in the dim forest

Thou heardst a low moaning,

And found’st a bright lady, surpassingly fair

And didst bring her home with thee in love and in charity,

To shield her and shelter her from the damp air.

The conclusion to part the first is a beautiful and well drawn picture, slightly recapitulating some of the circumstances of the opening of the poem.

THE CONCLUSION TO PART THE FIRST.

It was a lovely sight to see,

The lady Christabel, when she

Was praying at the old oak tree.

Amid the jagged shadows

Of mossy leafless boughs,

Kneeling in the moonlight,

To make her gentle vows;

Her slender palms together prest,

Heaving sometimes on her breast;

Her face resigned to bliss or bale —

Her face, oh call it fair, not pale,

And both blue eyes more bright than clear,

Each about to have a tear.

With open eyes (ah woe is me!)

Asleep and dreaming fearfully,

Fearfully dreaming, yet I wis,

Dreaming that alone which is —

O sorrow and shame! Can this be she,

The lady who knelt at the old oak tree?

And lo! the worker of these harms,

That holds the maiden in her arms,

Seems to slumber still and mild

As a mother with her child.

A star hath set, a star hath risen,

O Geraldine! since arms of thine

Have been the lovely lady’s prison.

O Geraldine! one hour was thine —

Thou’st had thy will! By tairn and rill,

The night-birds all that hour were still.

At the ceasing of the spell, the joyousness of the birds is described, and also the awakening of Christabel as from a trance. — During this rest (her mother) the guardian angel is supposed to have been watching over her. But these passages could not escape coarse minded critics, who put a construction on them which never entered the mind of the author of Christabel, whose poems are marked by delicacy.

The effects of the apparition of her mother, supposed to be seen by

Christabel in a vision, are thus described:

What if her guardian spirit ‘twere,

What if she knew her mother near?

But this she knows, in joys and woes,

That saints will aid if men will call:

For the blue sky bends over all!

Here terminates the first canto.

The passage from this sleep and the reappearance by daylight of

Geraldine, has always been considered a masterpiece.