He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small ;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”

The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,

Is gone and now the Wedding-Guest
Turn'd from the bridegroom's door.

He went like one that hath been stunn'd,
And is of sense forlorn :

A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.

verence to all things that God made and loveth.

CHRISTABEL.

[1797-1800.]

[The Fragment of Christabel, although communicated to many friends in MS. during the previous eighteen years, was not printed till 1816, when it was published by Mr. Murray of Albemarle-street, as a thin octavo of 64 pages in conjunction with Kubla Khan, a Vision, and The Pains of Sleep.

Some years before that publication two of the MS. copies of Christabel alluded to came under the inspection and one of them into the possession of Mr. J. Payne Collier, who in the volume entitled Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, by the late S. T. Coleridge, edited by him in 1856, has noticed (pp. xxxix-xliii) a few verbal differences between these and the published version.-ED.]

63

CHRISTABEL.

PREFACE.

THE first part of the following poem was written in the year 1797, at Stowey, in the county of Somerset. The second part, after my return from Germany, in the year 1800, at Keswick, Cumberland. Since the latter date my poetic powers have been, till very lately, in a state of suspended animation. But as, in my very first conception of the tale, I had the whole present to my mind with the wholeness no less than with the liveliness of a vision, I trust that I shall be able to embody in verse the three parts yet to come in the course of the present year. It is probable that if the poem had been finished at either of the former periods, or if even the first and second part had been published in the year 1800, the impression of its originality would have been much greater than I dare at present expect. But for this I have only my own indolence to blame. The dates are mentioned for the exclusive purpose of precluding charges of plagiarism or servile imitation from myself. For there is amongst us a set of critics who seem to hold that every possible thought and image is traditional; who have no notion that there are such things as fountains in the world, small as well as great; and who would therefore charitably derive every rill they behold flowing from a perforation made in some other man's tank. I am confident, however, that as far as the present poem is concerned, the celebrated poets whose