Coleridge, though so prolific a conversationalist, and so prone to speech, knew when there was a time to be silent. He attempted no defence or excuse. He simply went indoors, and sitting distastefully to an unprepossessing supper, let Sara say her say upon the subject of Lloyd: it was an extensive and a justifiable recrimination. Then--still in the same abstracted and monosyllabic state,--he helped to wash up, attended--better late than never--to the pigs and fowls, and sat before the fire, with a note-book in his hands and baby-clothes pinned to warm upon his knees, while Sara put the child to bed. He was working out with patient care those apparently unpremeditated effects which go to make up the haunting melody of _Christabel_. For, skilful and accomplished metrist as he was, it was only by dint of "repeated experiments and intense mental effort" that he achieved those results in which his art appears most artless. However, he was in no fit state, over-tired and distressed as he felt, for laborious efforts of this kind: and presently Nature took vengeance upon him in the form of intolerable toothache. A little while he bore it: then, moving tip-toe lest he should be heard in the upper room where Sara was soothing the little one to sleep, he stole to a corner cupboard and took out a bottle of laudanum. In this false friend and insidious comforter he had already found relief and repose from mental, as from physical troubles,--more and more frequently he had recourse to it. He knew its fatal tendency to undermine the will and debilitate the constitution, yet he could not deny himself an artificial peace which he described as "a spot of enchantment, a green spot of fountains and trees in the very heart of a waste of sand." And immediately he began to view things _couleur de rose_. The sharp tongue and angry face of Sara became transmogrified into the gentle semblance of her anagram, the imaginary _Asra_ of his poems,-- To be beloved is all I need, And whom I love I love indeed. * * * * * O ever--ever be thou blest! For dearly, Asra! love I thee! This brooding warmth across my breast, This depth of tranquil bliss--ah, me! Fount, tree and shed are gone, I know not whither, But in one quiet room we three are still together. The shadows dance upon the wall, By the still dancing fire-flames made; And now they slumber moveless all! And now they melt to one deep shade! But not from me shall this mild darkness steal thee: I dream thee with mine eyes, and at my heart I feel thee! The visions born of opium floated in vague, rich phantasmagoria across his slumbrous brain, And so, his senses gradually wrapt In a half-sleep, he dreams of better worlds,