Although fiction made up so preponderant a part of variant writing in the nineteenth century, poetry also made a sizable contribution. In 1816, Coleridge, who with Wordsworth is generally thought of as initiating the Romantic Period in England, published two parts of a narrative poem, _Christabel_, which was never finished. All college students of literature know that eerie fragment of medieval romance with its occult overtones. Christabel, the innocent heroine whose betrothed is “far away” on a knightly quest, steals out from her father’s castle at midnight to pray for her lover beneath a giant oak hung with mistletoe—a test of maidenly courage in the face of both natural and occult darkness, for oak and mistletoe still retain pre-Christian connotations. In the moonlit wood she finds a distressed lady, Geraldine, who tells a story of kidnaping and violence designed to win her sympathy. As she helps the fainting lady into the castle certain signs forebode evil to a reader acquainted with demonic lore: Geraldine’s eyes gleam in the dark like an animal’s, she is so faint that she requires Christabel’s aid in crossing the sill, and once she is inside a mastiff moans in its sleep and embers on the hearth shoot out tongues of flame. In Christabel’s maiden chamber while the two are disrobing Geraldine (and she alone) sees the “spectre” of Christabel’s dead mother come to guard her child, and bids the hovering spirit be off. Though she has shown fear at sight of a carven angel in the room and has made poor work of feigning prayer, Geraldine still has power to prevent Christabel’s seeing the vision or being warned, and presently the two lie down together “in appropriate medieval nudity.”[41] With fascinated loathing Christabel notes that Geraldine’s “breast and side” are those of a withered hag; still she is powerless to resist the other’s spell, and in Geraldine’s arms she falls into a trance. With open eyes (ah woe is me!) Asleep and dreaming fearfully, Fearfully dreaming, yet, I wis, Dreaming that alone, which is— O sorrow and shame! Can this be she The lady [Christabel] who knelt at the old oak tree? Afterward “Her limbs relax, her countenance Grows sad and soft,” and in her sleep she both smiles and weeps, while Geraldine “Seems to slumber still and mild As a mother with her child.” In the morning Christabel wakes to find her guest already clothed, but “fairer yet and yet more fair!” for now her shriveled bosom has the fullness of a young woman’s, a subtle allusion to the widespread folk superstition that sexual contact with innocent youth heals sickness and restores old age. Christabel is troubled by “such perplexity of mind As dreams too lively leave behind,” and delivers her morning greeting in “low faltering tones.” “Sure I have sinned!” she feels, but is uncertain precisely how, and prays merely that “He who on the cross did groan Might wash away her sins unknown.”[42]