Poet’s Corner: Coleridge–Christabel 2

29 April 2026

(16 January 2015) Last time we began Coleridge’s unfinished poem, “Christabel,” and saw the young lady, by this name, alone in the woods at midnight to pray for her man who is away. We continue with more of the beginning, further setting the scene and giving more details about what is going on with this lady:

She stole along, she nothing spoke,
The sighs she heaved were soft and low,
And naught was green upon the oak,
But moss and rarest mistletoe:
She kneels beneath the huge oak tree,
And in silence prayeth she.

The lady sprang up suddenly,
The lovely lady, Christabel!
It moaned as near, as near can be,
But what it is she cannot tell.-
On the other side it seems to be,
Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree.
The night is chill; the forest bare;
Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?
There is not wind enough in the air
To move away the ringlet curl
From the lovely lady’s cheek-
There is not wind enough to twirl
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

Christabel moves through the forest, sighing (of course!) and stopping beneath an oak tree. The poet reminds us again that spring has started, for the oak tree is bare (recall that oaks do not lose their leaves until the new leaves begin to grow), but for the moss and mistletoe. Now, to Coleridge’s audience, these details–of the oak tree, the mistletoe, and midnight–cause a shudder of fear, for these are all pagan symbols associated with druidic worship, and what we should recognize is that, although she is a Christian, following the beliefs and practices of this religion, we find her in the woods (bad), during the witching hour (worse), praying under an oak tree covered with moss and mistletoe (worst!), acting more the pagan than the Christian–there is, we now see, something strange going on here! Suddenly, our heroine jumps to her feet (she was kneeling), hearing something–a moaning sound–that frightens her; could it be the wind? she asks herself, and realizes there is no light, the poet focusing on the last leaf, noting that there is not enough breeze to stir this last leaf, which means a dead calm. What, then, made the moaning sound? Come back Friday for the answer and more from this supernatural poem of Coleridge! Good reading!