Christabel

“Christabel” is a long, Gothic Romantic narrative poem written in two parts. It has 679 lines of varying lengths. Coleridge argues in his preface to the poem that he uses accentual verse: in “each line the accents will be found to be only four” while the syllables “vary from seven to twelve” (Preface to “Christabel”). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics has a separate entry for this meter. “Christabel” was once considered a strong example of accentual verse; however, as the editors note, Coleridge is actually using accentual-syllabic verse, which means that most of the lines are octosyllabic and iambic. Octosyllabic means lines that have eight syllables, and iambic means a pattern of unstressed, stressed syllables. In other words, in most of Coleridge’s lines, stresses fall on the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth syllables. Using the final line of “Christabel” as an example: “So talks | as it's | most used | to do” (Line 679).

Coleridge uses rhyme throughout “Christabel.” Often, he uses couplets, which are two lines with end words that rhyme. For example, Lines 71-72 are a couplet: “The lady strange made answer meet, / And her