[285:1] The Wanderings of Cain in its present shape was first published in 1828: included in 1829, and (with the omission of that part of the Prefatory Note which follows the verses) in 1834. The verses ('Encinctured', &c.) were first published in the 'Conclusion' of Aids to Reflection, 1825, p. 383, with the following apologetic note:—'Will the Reader forgive me if I attempt at once to illustrate and relieve the subject ["the enthusiastic Mystics"] by annexing the first stanza of the Poem, composed in the same year in which I wrote the Ancient Mariner and the first Book of Christabel.' The prose was first published without the verses or 'Prefatory Note' in the Bijou for 1828. [See Poems, 1893, Notes, p. 600.]
A rough draft of a continuation or alternative version of the Wanderings of Cain was found among Coleridge's papers. The greater portion of these fragmentary sheets was printed by the Editor, in the Athenaeum of January 27, 1894, p. 114. The introduction of 'alligators' and an 'immense meadow' help to fix the date of The Wanderings of Cain. The imagery is derived from William Bartram's Travels in Florida and Carolina, which Coleridge and Wordsworth studied in 1798. Mr. Hutchinson, who reprints (Lyrical Ballads of 1798, Notes, pp. 259-60) a selected passage from the MS. fragment, points out 'that Coleridge had for a time thought of shaping the poem as a narrative addressed by Cain to his wife'.
'He falls down in a trance—when he awakes he sees a luminous body coming before him. It stands before him an orb of fire. It goes on, he moves not. It returns to him again, again retires as if wishing him to follow it. It then goes on and he follows: they are led to near the bottom of the wild woods, brooks, forests etc. etc. The Fire gradually shapes itself, retaining its luminous appearance, into the lineaments of a man. A dialogue between the fiery shape and Cain, in which the being presses upon him the enormity of his guilt and that he must make some expiation to the true deity, who is a severe God, and persuades him to burn out his eyes. Cain opposes this idea, and says that God himself who had inflicted this punishment upon him, had done it because he neglected to make a proper use of his senses, etc. The evil spirit answers him that God is indeed a God of mercy, and that an example must be given to mankind, that this end will be answered by his terrible appearance, at the same time he will be gratified with the most delicious sights and feelings. Cain, over-persuaded, consents to do it, but wishes to go to the top of the rocks to take a farewell of the earth. His farewell speech concluding with an abrupt address to the promised redeemer, and he abandons the idea on which the being had accompanied him, and turning round to declare this to the being he sees him dancing from rock to rock in his former shape down those interminable precipices.
'Child affeared by his father's ravings, goes out to pluck the fruits in the moonlight wildness. Cain's soliloquy. Child returns with a pitcher of water and a cake. Cain wonders what kind of beings dwell in that place—whether any created since man or whether this world had any beings rescued from the Chaos, wandering like shipwrecked beings from another world etc.
'Midnight on the Euphrates. Cedars, palms, pines. Cain discovered sitting on the upper part of the ragged rock, where is cavern overlooking the Euphrates, the moon rising on the horizon. His soliloquy. The Beasts are out on the ramp—he hears the screams of a woman and children surrounded by tigers. Cain makes a soliloquy debating whether he shall save the woman. Cain advances, wishing death, and the tigers rush off. It proves to be Cain's wife with her two children, determined to follow her husband. She prevails upon him at last to tell his story. Cain's wife tells him that her son Enoch was placed suddenly by her side. Cain addresses all the elements to cease for a while to persecute him, while he tells his story. He begins with telling her that he had first after his leaving her found out a dwelling in the desart under a juniper tree etc., etc., how he meets in the desart a young man whom upon a nearer approach he perceives to be Abel, on whose countenance appears marks of the greatest misery . . . of another being who had power after this life, greater than Jehovah. He is going to offer sacrifices to this being, and persuades Cain to follow him—he comes to an immense gulph filled with water, whither they descend followed by alligators etc. They go till they come to an immense meadow so surrounded as to be inaccessible, and from its depth so vast that you could not see it from above. Abel offers sacrifice from the blood of his arm. A gleam of light illumines the meadow—the countenance of Abel becomes more beautiful, and his arms glistering—he then persuades Cain to offer sacrifice, for himself and his son Enoch by cutting his child's arm and letting the blood fall from it. Cain is about to do it when Abel himself in his angelic appearance, attended by Michael, is seen in the heavens, whence they sail slowly down. Abel addresses Cain with terror, warning him not to offer up his innocent child. The evil spirit throws off the countenance of Abel, assumes its own shape, flies off pursuing a flying battle with Michael. Abel carries off the child.'
LINENOTES:
moonlight. Ah, why dost thou groan so deeply? MS. Bijou, 1828.
with me? Is it because we are not so happy, as they? Is it because I groan sometimes even as thou groanest? Then Cain stopped, &c. MS. Bijou, 1828.
by fire: his hair was black, and matted into loathly curls, and his countenance was dark and wild, and told, &c. MS. Bijou, 1828.
by the terrible groan the Earth gave when, &c. MS. Bijou, 1828.
But ere they arrived there they beheld, MS. Bijou, 1828.
advancing] coming up MS. Bijou, 1828.
The face of Cain turned pale, but Enos said, 'Ere yet, &c. MS. Bijou, 1828.
Enos crept softly round the base of the rock and stood before MS. Bijou, 1828.
of a dream; and ere he had recovered himself from the tumult of his agitation, the Shape, &c. MS. Bijou, 1828.
and walked Bijou, 1828. rocks] rock MS.
but] and MS.
the] their MS.
TO ——[292:1]
With common persons pleas'd and common things,
While every thought and action tends to thee,
And every impulse from thy influence springs.
? 1798.
FOOTNOTES:
[292:1] First published without title in Literary Remains, 1836, i. 280 (among other short pieces and fragments 'communicated by Mr. Gutch'). First collected, again without title, in P. and D. W., 1877-80.
LINENOTES:
Title] To —— 1893. The heading Ubi Thesaurus Ibi Cor was prefixed to the illustrated edition of The Poems of Coleridge, 1907.
THE BALLAD OF THE DARK LADIÉ[293:1]
A FRAGMENT
And boughs so pendulous and fair,
The brook falls scatter'd down the rock:
And all is mossy there!
The Dark Ladié in silent pain;
The heavy tear is in her eye,
And drops and swells again.
Up the castled mountain's breast, 10
If he might find the Knight that wears
The Griffin for his crest.
And she had linger'd there all day,
Counting moments, dreaming fears— 15
Oh wherefore can he stay?
She sees far off a swinging bough!
'Tis He! 'Tis my betrothéd Knight!
Lord Falkland, it is Thou!' 20
She sobs a thousand hopes and fears,
Her kisses glowing on his cheeks
She quenches with her tears.
They scoff and bid me fly to thee!
O give me shelter in thy breast!
O shield and shelter me!
I gave what I can ne'er recall, 30
I gave my heart, I gave my peace,
O Heaven! I gave thee all.'
While to his heart he held her hand,
'Nine castles hath my noble sire, 35
None statelier in the land.
The fairest castle of the nine!
Wait only till the stars peep out,
The fairest shall be thine: 40
Hath wholly closed yon western bars,
And through the dark we two will steal
Beneath the twinkling stars!'—
The twinkling stars? How, Henry? How?'
O God! 'twas in the eye of noon
He pledged his sacred vow!
Shall lead me from my mother's door, 50
Sweet boys and girls all clothed in white
Strewing flowers before:
With music meet for lordly bowers,
The children next in snow-white vests, 55
Strewing buds and flowers!
My jet black hair in pearly braids,
Between our comely bachelors
And blushing bridal maids. 60
1798.
FOOTNOTES:
[293:1] First published in 1834. 'In a manuscript list (undated) of the poems drawn up by Coleridge appear these items together: Love 96 lines . . . The Black Ladié 190 lines.' Note to P. W., 1893, p. 614. A MS. of the three last stanzas is extant. In Chapter XIV of the Biographia Literaria, 1817, ii. 3 Coleridge synchronizes the Dark Ladié (a poem which he was 'preparing' with the Christabel). It would seem probable that it belongs to the spring or early summer of 1798, and that it was anterior to Love, which was first published in the Morning Post, December 21, 1799, under the heading 'Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladié'. If the MS. List of Poems is the record of poems actually written, two-thirds of the Dark Ladié must have perished long before 1817, when Sibylline Leaves was passing through the press, and it was found necessary to swell the Contents with 'two School-boy Poems' and 'with a song modernized with some additions from one of our elder poets'.
LINENOTES:
With music fit for lovely Bowers,
The children then in snowy robes,
Strewing Buds and Flowers.
pace] go MS. S. T. C.
KUBLA KHAN[295:1]:
Or, A Vision in a Dream. A Fragment.
The following fragment is here published at the request
of a poet of great and deserved celebrity [Lord Byron], 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. 5
In the summer of the year 1797[295:2], 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 effects of which he fell asleep 10
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 inclosed with a wall.'[296:1] 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 20
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, 30
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 has been cast, but, alas!
without the after restoration of the latter!
Is broken—all that phantom-world so fair
Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,
And each mis-shape['s] the other. Stay awhile,
Poor youth! who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes—
The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon 40
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. Σαμερον αδιον ασω[297:1]
[Αὔριον ἅδιον ἄσω 1834]: but the to-morrow 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 50
dream of pain and disease.[297:2]
KUBLA KHAN
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea. 5
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills, 10
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted 15
By woman wailing for her demon-lover![297:3]
[297:4]And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst 20
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 25
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached 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! 30
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device, 35
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice![298:1]
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played, 40
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long, 45
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice![298:2]
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair! 50
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
1798.
FOOTNOTES:
[295:1] First published together with Christabel and The Pains of Sleep, 1816: included in 1828, 1829, and 1834.
[295:2] There can be little doubt that Coleridge should have written 'the summer of 1798'. In an unpublished MS. note dated November 3, 1810, he connects the retirement between 'Linton and Porlock' and a recourse to opium with his quarrel with Charles Lloyd, and consequent distress of mind. That quarrel was at its height in May 1798. He alludes to distress of mind arising from 'calumny and ingratitude from men who have been fostered in the bosom of my confidence' in a letter to J. P. Estlin, dated May 14, 1798; and, in a letter to Charles Lamb, dated [Spring] 1798, he enlarges on his quarrel with Lloyd and quotes from Lloyd's novel of Edmund Oliver which was published in 1798. See Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1895, i. 245, note 1. I discovered and read for the first time the unpublished note of November 3, 1810, whilst the edition of 1893 was in the press, and in a footnote to p. xlii of his Introduction the editor, J. D. Campbell, explains that it is too late to alter the position and date of Kubla Khan, but accepts the later date (May, 1798) on the evidence of the MS. note.
[296:1] 'In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace, encompassing sixteene miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, pleasant Springs, delightfull Streames, and all sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous house of pleasure.'—Purchas his Pilgrimage: Lond. fol. 1626, Bk. IV, chap. xiii, p. 418.
[297:1] The quotation is from Theocritus, i. 145:—ἐς ὕστερον ἅδιον ᾀσῶ.
[297:2] The Pains of Sleep.
[297:3] And woman wailing for her Demon Lover. Motto to Byron's Heaven and Earth, published in The Liberal, No. II, January 1, 1823.
[297:4] With lines 17-24 compare William Bartram's description of the 'Alligator-Hole.' Travels in North and South Carolina, 1794, pp. 286-8.
[298:1] Compare Thomas Maurice's History of Hindostan, 1795, i. 107. The reference is supplied by Coleridge in the Gutch Memorandum Note Book (B. M. Add. MSS., No. 27, 901), p. 47: 'In a cave in the mountains of Cashmere an Image of Ice,' &c.
[298:2] In her 'Lines to S. T. Coleridge, Esq.,' Mrs. Robinson (Perdita) writes:—
Thy "caves of ice", and "fields of dew".'
It is possible that she had seen a MS. copy of Kubla Khan containing these variants from the text.
LINENOTES:
Title of Introduction:—Of the Fragment of Kubla Khan 1816, 1828, 1829.
om. 1834.
there] here S. L. 1828, 1829.
Enfolding] And folding 1816. The word 'Enfolding' is a pencil emendation in David Hinves's copy of Christabel. ? by S. T. C.
In the early copies of 1893 this line was accidentally omitted.
drunk] drank 1816, 1828, 1829.
RECANTATION[299:1]
ILLUSTRATED IN THE STORY OF THE MAD OX
And work'd with yoke and chain,
Was turn'd out on an April day,
When fields are in their best array,
And growing grasses sparkle gay 5
At once with Sun and rain.
With truth I may aver it;
The ox was glad, as well, he might,
Thought a green meadow no bad sight, 10
And frisk'd,—to shew his huge delight,
Much like a beast of spirit.
The ox is only glad!'
But still they pour from cots and farms— 15
'Halloo!' the parish is up in arms,
(A hoaxing-hunt has always charms)
'Halloo! the ox is mad.'
Plunge! through the hedge he drove: 20
The mob pursue with hideous rout,
A bull-dog fastens on his snout;
'He gores the dog! his tongue hangs out!
He's mad, he's mad, by Jove!'
A sage of sober hue.
But all at once, on him they fall,
And women squeak and children squall,
'What? would you have him toss us all?
And dam'me, who are you?' 30
And curse him o'er and o'er!
'You bloody-minded dog! (cries one,)
To slit your windpipe were good fun,
'Od blast you for an impious son[300:1] 35
Of a Presbyterian wh—re!'
And run against the altar!
You fiend!' the sage his warnings ceas'd,
And north and south, and west and east, 40
Halloo! they follow the poor beast,
Mat, Dick, Tom, Bob and Walter.
Stood trembling in his shoes;
The ox was his—what cou'd he say?
His legs were stiffen'd with dismay, 45
The ox ran o'er him mid the fray,
And gave him his death's bruise.
No tale, (tho' in print, more true is) 50
My Muse stops short in mid career—
Nay, gentle Reader, do not sneer!
I cannot chuse but drop a tear,
A tear for good old Lewis!)
All follow'd, boy and dad,
Bull-dog, parson, shopman, clown:
The publicans rush'd from the Crown,
'Halloo! hamstring him! cut him down!'
They drove the poor Ox mad. 60
Why ev'n a Rat may plague you:
There's no Philosopher but sees
That Rage and Fear are one disease—
Though that may burn, and this may freeze, 65
They're both alike the Ague.
Fac'd round like any Bull!
The mob turn'd tail, and he pursued,
Till they with heat and fright were stew'd, 70
And not a chick of all this brood
But had his belly full!
Old Nicholas, to a tittle!
But all agree he'd disappear, 75
Would but the Parson venture near,
And through his teeth,[302:1] right o'er the steer,
Squirt out some fasting-spittle.
The Trojans he could worry: 80
Our Parson too was swift of feet,
But shew'd it chiefly in retreat:
The victor Ox scour'd down the street,
The mob fled hurry-scurry.
Through his hedge, and through her hedge,
He plung'd and toss'd and bellow'd loud—
Till in his madness he grew proud
To see this helter-skelter crowd
That had more wrath than courage! 90
He made for these poor ninnies,
They all must work, whate'er betide,
Both days and months, and pay beside
(Sad news for Av'rice and for Pride), 95
A sight of golden guineas!
The man that kept his senses—
And now he cried,—'Stop, neighbours, stop!
The Ox is mad! I would not swop, 100
No! not a school-boy's farthing top
For all the parish-fences.'
'What means this coward fuss?
Ho! stretch this rope across the plat— 105
'Twill trip him up—or if not that,
Why, dam'me! we must lay him flat—
See! here's my blunderbuss.'
The Ox was only glad— 110
Let's break his Presbyterian head!'
'Hush!' quoth the sage, 'you've been misled;
No quarrels now! let's all make head,
You drove the poor Ox mad.'
With the morning's wet newspaper,
In eager haste, without his hat,
As blind and blund'ring as a bat,
In came that fierce Aristocrat,
Our pursy woollen-draper. 120
And in he rush'd and panted!
'Well, have you heard?' No, not a whit.
'What, ha'nt you heard?' Come, out with it!
'That Tierney votes for Mister Pitt, 125
And Sheridan's recanted!'
1798.