And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.

We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.
The western wave was all aflame:
The day was well nigh done:
Almost upon the western wave
Rested the broad, bright sun;
When that strange shape drove suddenly
Betwixt us and the sun.

'Christabel' achieves what Coleridge himself described as the very
difficult task of creating witchery by daylight; and 'Kubla Khan,' worthy,
though a brief fragment, to rank with these two, is a marvelous glimpse of
fairyland.

In the second place, Coleridge is one of the greatest English masters of
exquisite verbal melody, with its tributary devices of alliteration and
haunting onomatopoeia. In this respect especially his influence on
subsequent English poetry has been incalculable. The details of his method
students should observe for themselves in their study of the poems, but one
particular matter should be mentioned. In 'Christabel' and to a somewhat
less degree in 'The Ancient Mariner' Coleridge departed as far as possible
from eighteenth century tradition by greatly varying the number of
syllables in the lines, while keeping a regular number of stresses. Though
this practice, as we have seen, was customary in Old English poetry and in
the popular ballads, it was supposed by Coleridge and his contemporaries to