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 day-light of Geraldine, has always been considered a master-piece.
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,