Poet’s Corner: Coleridge–Christabel 26

8 July 2026

(17 July 2015) We return to our strange tale of Coleridge, the Baron having just finished his instructions to his bard, who now responds by recounting a dream:

And Bracy replied, with faltering voice, . . .
Yet might I gain a boon of thee,
This day my journey should not be,
So strange a dream hath come to me, . . .
For in my sleep I saw that dove,
That gentle bird, whom thou dost love,
And call’st by thy own daughter’s name—
Sir Leoline! I saw the same
Fluttering, and uttering fearful moan,
Among the green herbs in the forest alone.
Which when I saw and when I heard,
I wonder’d what might ail the bird;
For nothing near it could I see
Save the grass and green herbs underneath the old tree.

‘And in my dream methought I went
To search out what might there be found;
And what the sweet bird’s trouble meant,
That thus lay fluttering on the ground.
I went and peered, and could descry
No cause for her distressful cry;
But yet for her dear lady’s sake
I stooped, methought, the dove to take,
When lo! I saw a bright green snake
Coiled around its wings and neck.
Green as the herbs on which it couched,
Close by the dove’s its head it crouched;
And with the dove it heaves and stirs,
Swelling its neck as she swelled hers!
I woke; it was the midnight hour,
The clock was echoing in the tower;
But though my slumber was gone by,
This dream it would not pass away—
It seems to live upon my eye!

The dream is a warning, and Bracy takes it as such, vowing to enter the forest and destroy this threat to Christabel–as if we did not know already! Here, the bard sees a dove, which he says represents Christabel in the forest, a bird in some distress. When Bracy tries to help her, he discovers a bright green snake wrapped around her (the dove), the two breathing in sync. And just to make sure we do not miss it, the bard tells us that this dream came to him during the midnight hour, and he could not shake it off, so vivid was the dream, with the final, clinching addition, that he can see the vision right now! More Friday in the next edition of the Poet’s Corner. Good reading!