244. _Coleridge's Christabel._--Can any one familiar with the _Coleridge
Papers_ inform me whether the following is a veritable fragment of the
poet's own continuation of _Christabel_, or perhaps of one of those
conclusions (some serious, some jocose) which we owe to Tupper, Moir,
and Maginn?
"This was the lovely lady's cry--
'Holy One! who camest to die,
Camest, yea, to die for me
Who have despite done to Thee--
And didst feel the proud man's scorn,
And the woe of one forlorn--
Whose heavenly eyes were brimmed with tears
For the sorrows of human years;
Whose holy hands were pierced through,
Whose feet long toil and travel knew,
Who felt all grief, all wild despair,
That the race of man may ever bear.
O look down from thy placid sky,
Upon a maiden worn with woe,
Who in snowy chastity,
Has passed the years of life below!
O let no spirit of affright,
Visit me this ghastly night!'
"So she prayed: and listening,
Stood beside the magic spring,
But only heard the brookless plash,
And the berries fall from the mountain ash,
And the cry of birds in the woods away,
And the step of the roe over lichens gray."