And in the eye of noon my love Shall lead me from my mother's door, 50 Sweet boys and girls all clothed in white Strewing flowers before: But first the nodding minstrels go With music meet for lordly bowers, The children next in snow-white vests, 55 Strewing buds and flowers! And then my love and I shall pace. My jet black hair in pearly braids, Between our comely bachelors And blushing bridal maids. 60 * * * * * 1798. FOOTNOTES: [293:1] First published in 1834. 'In a manuscript list (undated) of the poems drawn up by Coleridge appear these items together: _Love_ 96 lines . . . _The Black Ladié_ 190 lines.' _Note_ to _P. W._, 1893, p. 614. A MS. of the three last stanzas is extant. In Chapter XIV of the _Biographia Literaria_, 1817, ii. 3 Coleridge synchronizes the _Dark Ladié_ (a poem which he was 'preparing' with the _Christabel_). It would seem probable that it belongs to the spring or early summer of 1798, and that it was anterior to _Love_, which was first published in the _Morning Post_, December 21, 1799, under the heading 'Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladié'. If the MS. List of Poems is the record of poems actually written, two-thirds of the _Dark Ladié_ must have perished long before 1817, when _Sibylline Leaves_ was passing through the press, and it was found necessary to swell the Contents with 'two School-boy Poems' and 'with a song modernized with some additions from one of our elder poets'. LINENOTES: [53-6] And first the nodding Minstrels go With music fit for lovely Bowers, The children then in snowy robes, Strewing Buds and Flowers. MS. S. T. C. [57] pace] go MS. S. T. C. KUBLA KHAN[295:1]: OR, A VISION IN A DREAM. A FRAGMENT. The following fragment is here published at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity [Lord Byron], and, as far as the Author's own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the ground of any supposed _poetic_ merits. 5