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(Excerpt from Part Three: Lines 119-194)
The fog so thick the droplets fall
Like footsteps all outside the Hall, 120
And Christabel may come and go
At will. No one will hear or know.
Inside her breast at every breath
The vapors curl and form a wreath
As thorny as Lord Jésu's crown
That Satan wove that Friday morn
He thought to throw his Master down.
At every bloody drop was born
A servant for the evil lord,
And gushed a cohort when the sword 130
Entered the ribs that dreadful eve.
But angels--nay, you must believe--
Were got at every holy word
Our Saviour spoke, though no one heard
Who understood. God bless the Rood!
And Christabel cannot reveal
The vision dark of Geraldine
She saw last night, the robe undone--
The flank and breast--for Satan has
Her under spell, her tongue in a vice. 140
But though her voice may not rebel
And though with words she may not tell,
Yet she can enter the forest deeps
And search while every other sleeps
Till she discovers, once again,
The old oak tree where Geraldine
Was prisoned--and mayhap the men
Who penned her there will come again.
The owl a-wing, the fox a-foot
Companion Christabel tonight, 150
And mist that gathers on the ferns
And cools the brow that Satan burns.
The drops that fall so musical
Cheer Christabel and make the pall
Around her like the Comforter
Who harks to every fitful prayer.
Though Leoline in blindness dine,
His daughter will not tread alone.
She stoops to pluck a muddy stone
Out of her sandal. 'Tis then she hears 160
Another's steps. Another nears.
Our maiden with her silent tread
Hides next a fir and drapes her head.
The wolf's keen scent, the falcon's eyes
Might find her where she quiet lies,
But not the human--
Can it be?
Is Geraldine outside the wall,
Sir Leoline in trancery
Within? And does the lady call
In woe again, again to snare 170
A tender heart all unaware?
But no! The answer sounds ahead,
Not words but as a dove that cooed.
The darkness forms, the fog takes shape,
Our maiden feels her heart lose hope:
The shadows show Sir Leoline
In sleeping habit, full confused;
His forearms hold his severed head.
Then shudders run his body through,
The draping falls, and flesh as blue 180
As leaping waves or plunging bird
Stands naked, waiting the demon's word.
Sir Leoline is whole, abed,
Asleep in body and in mind.
The evil Christabel divined
Is deeper and more full of dread.
But still she may not speak aloud
The horror that the darkness showed.
The fog encloses Geraldine,
And silence settles once again. 190
Maria! Jésu, guard the lord
Enchanted by the demon's word.
Let Christabel your succor know
And bid the cursed demon go!
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Notes:
119-120: Either Coleridge or Polidori, after a few months in sunny Malta, might actually have missed the dank fogs and chill breezes of the homeland. Here the fog is not sensuous but almost militaristic--the sound of footsteps outside the hall evoking the armed guards of a besieged medieval castle. More importantly, the fog serves to cloak Christabel's outing. In Part One she wandered freely, her elderly father taking early to his bed. But now he is up and about, revivified, entertaining Geraldine, and Christabel must be more circumspect.
123 ff.: The intricate nature of these lines--the complicated syntax and enjambments--might recall Coleridge's ornate prose, but the imagery is, I think, far more likely to be Polidori's (or the Maltese translator's). As if her name was not signal enough of her purity and the danger she faces, now Christabel wears a crown of thorns--the painful intake of breath in the sodden air. The concentration on the quite physical aspects of the crucifixion reflects such imagery as the Bleeding Heart, and the folklore of the birth of demons and angels is an apt, if otherwise unattested, exploration of the superstitions of the almost entirely uneducated medieval Christians. This sharp distinction between even the Saviour's body and spirit is remarkably dualistic. Why should the Saviour's blood drops form demons? Because that blood falls in response to Satan's temporary hold on the Lord. But even so, His words--utterly misunderstood by the crowds at the crucifixion--beget angelic spirits to counter the demonic. For a Protestant such as Coleridge to pen such lines, he would necessarily have to enter a "foreign" mindset, one which furthermore he considered essentially anti-Christian (or Antichrist-ian). This does not render Coleridge's authorship impossible--after all, he is the formulator of the willing suspension of disbelief, which he could certainly enact within himself--but tends to point away from him.
136 ff.: Christabel's intent is quite explicitly described here: she hopes to locate once again the oak where Geraldine was confined so that, if the good spirits be with her, she can encounter the men who had abducted her.
149 ff.: Here the natural order--represented by owl, fox and mist--sides with Christabel. Where the fog's presence was arguably neutral, disguising reality but also allowing for Christabel's escape from the castle--the mist is positively beneficent, cooling Christabel's fever of the spirit and providing a comforting music to her endeavour. Again these are lines which virtually pant with a longing for England and its climate. Though modern tourists flock to the dry and sun-blessed shores of Malta, both Polidori and Coleridge may have found the climate almost inimical to their psychological well-being: Coleridge a denizen of night and nightmare, a furtive addict; Polidori loving the darkness "because his deeds [at least fictively] were evil." As the earlier "Son of Lykos" reveals, the Maltese climate, the bright air, the open unforested fields, made it finally impossible for Coleridge to see his fictional antagonists as evil creatures. But "Son of Lykos" was set in Malta. Here the English humidity can almost be wrung from the pages. Parts one and two demand the continuation of this setting, to be sure, but Polidori in any event cannot have been eager to surrender the sinister shadows of "The Vampyre" and the incipient notoriety they proffered.
167 ff.: When Christabel hears steps and fears that Geraldine has followed her into the woods, leaving Sir Leoline bewitched inside the castle, she hides, only to learn something perhaps worse: that Geraldine's power is stronger than Christabel had heretofore imagined. A dumb-show takes place before her as the shadowy fog shapes itself into a representation of Sir Leoline, decapitated, carrying his head in his arms. The vision alters to that of a blue-skinned spirit, submissively awaiting Geraldine's command. And here the action of part three stops, leaving the reader hanging.
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