Poet’s Corner: Coleridge–Christabel 14

8 June 2026

(17 April 2015) Welcome back to all our readers! This week we begin the second part of Coleridge’s “Christabel,” and we meet for the first time, Christabel’s father, Sir Leoline, in a rather macabre way–with the words her father says each morning as the bells ring:

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!

And hence the custom and law began
That still at dawn the sacristan,
Who duly pulls the heavy bell,
Five and forty beads must tell
Between each stroke—a warning knell,
Which not a soul can choose but hear
From Bratha Head to Wyndermere.

“Each matin bell . . . knells us back to a world of death,” words the Baron says each and every morning, ever since he awoke to find his wife (and Christabel’s supernatural mother) dead, a moment that must leave an indelible mark on anyone! In it, we learn something of the Baron’s view of life, that each day waking places and replaces him into a world of death, or a realm in which death holds sway; we would call this a fatalistic view, and one popularized in the last century by the absurdist school of theater. We also note that each sound of the bell is ‘doubled’ by a counterstroke, struck in between, which the poet calls “a warning knell,” (the sounding of the bell) that all in his lands “must” hear; this is the ‘custom and law’ of his land, to remember his dead wife each and every day, with forty-five rings/strokes of the matin (the first bell at sunrise that calls all to rise and pray). These forty-five rings of the bell seem to represent the age of Christabel’s mother when she died, each ring re-emphasized by the warning ring in between, for a total of 89 tolls of the bell (recall that the warning stroke is struck in between the others). At least the ‘sacristan,’ or priest, will get plenty of exercise each morning! Come back Wednesday for more of this unfinished poem. Good reading!