Completeness, the perfectly rounded wholeness and unity of the impression it leaves on the mind of a reader who fairly gives himself to it--that, too, is one of the characteristics of a really excellent work, in the poetic as in every other kind of art; and by this completeness, The Ancient Mariner certainly gains upon Christabel--a completeness, entire as that of Wordsworth's Leech-gatherer, or Keats's Saint Agnes' Eve, each typical in its way of such wholeness or entirety of effect on a careful reader. It is Coleridge's one great complete work, the one really finished thing, in a life of many beginnings. Christabel remained a fragment. In The Ancient Mariner [100] this unity is secured in part by the skill with which the incidents of the marriage-feast are made to break in dreamily from time to time upon the main story. And then, how pleasantly, how reassuringly, the whole nightmare story itself is made to end, among the clear fresh sounds and lights of the bay, where it began, with The moon-light steeped in silentness, The steady weather-cock. So different from The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner in regard to this completeness of effect, Christabel illustrates the same complexion of motives, a like intellectual situation. Here, too, the work is of a kind peculiar to one who touches the characteristic motives of the old romantic ballad, with a spirit made subtle and fine by modern reflection; as we feel, I think, in such passages as-- But though my slumber had gone by, This dream it would not pass away-- It seems to live upon mine eye; and-- For she, belike, hath drunken deep Of all the blessedness of sleep; and again-- With such perplexity of mind As dreams too lively leave behind. And that gift of handling the finer passages of human feeling, at once with power and delicacy, which was another result of his finer psychology, [101] of his exquisitely refined habit of self-reflection, is illustrated by a passage on Friendship in the Second Part-- Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love, Doth work like madness in the brain. And thus it chanced, as I divine, With Roland and Sir Leoline. Each spake words of high disdain And insult to his heart's best brother They parted--ne'er to meet again! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining-- They stood aloof the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; A dreary sea now flows between; But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that which once hath been.