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.
The second part begins with a moral reflection, and introduces Sir Leoline, the father of Christabel, with the following observation, on his rising in the morning:
Each matin bell, the Baron saith!
Knells us back to a world of death.
These words Sir Leoline first said
When he rose and found his lady dead.
These words Sir Leoline will say
Many a morn to his dying day.
After a popular custom of the country, the old bard Bracy is introduced. Geraldine rises, puts on her silken vestments — tricks her hair, and not doubting her spell, she awakens Christabel,
”Sleep you, sweet lady Christabel?
I trust that you have rested well.”
And Christabel awoke and spied
The same who lay down by her side —
O rather say, the same whom she
Rais’d up beneath the old oak tree!
Nay fairer yet, and yet more fair!
For she belike hath drunken deep
Of all the blessedness of sleep!
And while she spake, her looks, her air
Such gentle thankfulness declare;
That (so it seem’d) her girded vests
Grew tight beneath her heaving breasts.
”Sure I have sinn’d!” said Christabel,
”Now heaven be prais’d if all be well!”
And in low faultering tones, yet sweet,
Did she the lofty lady greet;
With such perplexity of mind
As dreams too lively leave behind.
Christabel then leaves her couch, and having offered up her prayers, she leads fair Geraldine to meet the Baron. — They enter his presence room, when her father rises, and while pressing his daughter to his breast, he espies the lady Geraldine, to whom he gives such welcome as
“Might beseem so bright a dame!”
But when the Baron hears her tale, and her father’s name, the poet enquires feelingly:
Why wax’d Sir Leoline so pale,
Murmuring o’er the name again,
Lord Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine?
Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain.
And thus it chanc’d, as I divine,
With Roland and Sir Leoline.
Each spake words of high disdain
And insult to his heart’s best brother:
They parted — never to meet again!
But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining —
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
A dreary sea now flows between; —
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been.
Sir Leoline gazed for a moment on the face of Geraldine, and the youthful Lord of Tryermaine again came back upon his heart. He is then described as forgetting his age, and his noble heart swells with indignation.
He then affectionately takes Geraldine in his arms, who meets the embrace:
”Prolonging it with joyous look,
Which when she viewed, a vision fell
Upon the soul of Christabel,
The vision of fear, the touch and pain!
She shrunk and shudder’d and saw again
(Ah woe is me! Was it for thee,
Thou gentle maid! such sights to see?)
Geraldine then appears to her in her real character, (‘half’ human only,) the sight of which alarms Christabel. The Baron mistakes for jealousy this alarm in his daughter, which was induced by fear of Geraldine, and had been the sole cause of her unconsciously imitating the “hissing sound:”
Whereat the Knight turn’d wildly round,
And nothing saw, but his own sweet maid
With eyes uprais’d, as one that pray’d.
This touch, this sight passed away, and left in its stead the vision of her guardian angel (her mother) which had comforted her after rest, and having sought consolation in prayer, her