Original subtitles

that on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread, and having once turned

round walks on and turns no more his head, because he knows a frightful

fiend doth close behind him tread.

Tis a strange place, this limbo.

Not a place yet, name it so.

Sam, it's me, Gilman.

Brought a little opium to steady your nerves.

Oh, I see you've had a little.

More than a little.

Well, you'll get no more today.

Perhaps you'd rather stay at home.

Let's not let William down.

That's the spirit.

William! William!

Mr. Wordsworth, sir!

Gentlemen, gentlemen, you are unfortunate.

The poet must prepare.

Mr. Webber, have you heard from the palace yet?

I hear Coleridge is expected.

Well, if he is expected, he won't show.

Disappointing expectations is his stock in trade.

I've got to talk to him.

Time, with branny hands, barren and soundless as the measuring

sands.

Girls, let him be.

He's going to make an important speech, not dance the mazurka.

Come, sir.

Not marked by flit of shades, unmeaning they, as

moonlight on the dial of the day.

Sir William is to be poet laureate.

Who could have predicted such a thing?

It is an honour he richly deserves.

Indeed it is. He has done all that a man needs to do to become laureate.

Namely, to produce vast acres of exquisite dullness.

Did my ears deceive me, or did he really say exquisite?

Yeoman? Yeoman?

Save me from the storm.

I'm here, sir.

I'm here.

Sir, allow me to kiss the hand that wrote the Mariner.

Who is it?

Lord Byron. What?

He's a poet, Sam.

An admirer.

Do you have any laudanum about you?

I have a touch of neuralgia.

There is a poem of yours never yet published but more talked about than

half the poems that are.

It describes the pleasure palace at Kubla Khan.

I would like to see it published.

I could run to £100.

£100?

For Kubla Khan?

Well, I couldn't.

It's impossible.

It's not finished.

I would have paid Wordsworth twice that sum for his last poem if only he'd left

it unfinished.

Kubla Khan was lost years ago.

I was told it never leaves your person.

Is it not in the little pocket here?

Sam.

William!

William, it's the most terrible thing.

The opium has cut me loose from time.

Sometimes moments seem to freeze and seconds melt as slow as glaciers.

Then suddenly I walk through a door and ten years of my life have gone.

My mind is shipwrecked, blown by storms of time.

William, please help me.

William, shipwreck, shipwreck!

Help me!

Send him away, he's incapable.

He has broken a few glasses, that's all.

What a bummer, a waste of clarity.

Friends,

this is Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

First mariner of the mines oceans midwife of my own genius Come sir

Did you say pounds

or guineas guineas Yeah, I've not been out of human's

house Call it a moment's work and such it seems

This tale's a fragment from the life of dreams.

But say that years matured to silent strife, And tis a record

from the dream of life.

A poet! And a tireless warrior in the cause of liberty!

Citizen Sam Coleridge!

William!

William! William!

Come, citizen.

The powder is ready.

Light the fuse.

This

is the hour.

I know the day.

I seem to know this day.

It's a day.

Drunk with hope, is it not?

The day when everything seems possible.

France is still at liberty, is she not?

Success to the French!

She is, in fact, the very home of liberty, is she not?

And so to make war on France is to make war on liberty itself.

of man this

government

is an enemy of liberty here and in France

and in the slave plantations of the new world

Because, look, over there is Mr Walsh. Mr Walsh, he's a government spy.

Yes, and he takes down everything that we say in his little notebook.

So, if you have any grievances you want to tell the state, you tell it to Mr

Walsh over there, and he will tell it to the Prime Minister tomorrow morning

under the breakfast kippers.

Sit his hands!

Soldiers, turn your arms on your fellow men!

Mutiny!

Sir!

Quick, follow me!

Come on, sir!

Well done, citizen.

An old trick I learnt in France.

Shh.

STC. Sim.

Here it is.

Our place of safety.

Citizen, who's this?

This is William.

Citizen William Wordsworth.

Hold the banner of coming insurrection.

Citizen, we have all taken great pains to keep the location of this press

secret.

And I've never heard of Citizen William.

He saved us from the troops.

He was in France during the revolution.

That means nothing. Queen Marie Antoinette was in France during the

revolution. Does that make her a Democrat?

No, but I am a Democrat.

And a poet.

And an admirer of the poems of Citizen Coleridge.

The Watchman.

Sam, that is, Citizen Coleridge. He chose the name.

Such a good name.

It's certainly Red Ragify the Slumberous.

Well, what?

Red Ragify.

Rouse up.

See, the injustices of masculine society have deprived me of vocabulary wealth by

limiting my education, so therefore I make up for it by inventing words of my

own.

Sam, I mean Citizen Coleridge, I can't fold this, all right?

No, that's right.

Like that.

Sam, these are ready.

William, come here.

Look at these.

10,000 copies printed.

10,000.

Will you sell them all, do you think?

Or might it not have been more prudent to start with a smaller number and build

up the circulation?

Perhaps, but... How much better to start with a large number and then build to a

colossal one?

The truth will fall and strike them like heaven's lightning.

Look.

What keeps it up?

Well, the gas is lighter than air, so if you remove the ballast and the

restraints, it will fly.

Gas, citizens, shall be the liberator of mankind.

Gas can be used to perform the menial and dangerous tasks now performed by

men. Gas to heat our houses, to power our carriages.

Imagine a system of pipes crisscrossing the country down which letters can be

sent propelled by gas.

A gas for every occasion.

Who will join me?

Sam, you're not going up in it, are you?

I've sent up a dog, a rabbit, and a foal with no ill effects.

Oh, Thelma, forbid him the great stuposity. He'll make a carnage of

himself. Are you ready, Sam?

Ready, Mr. Davy. Gentlemen!

Sam? The ropes, if you please.

Davy, no. Sam!

The truth shall set us free, citizens!

Sam, no! Sam!

Sam! Sam! Sam!

Sarah!

of a constitution is that it's like a monk preaching fornication.

Are you John Thelwar?

Aye. Then, sir, you are my prisoner.

STC. Sure he won't follow? Quite sure.

Well, one thing is clear. Walsh is frightened.

Frightened of what?

Why, of us.

Burning books and presses, desperate measures, death throes of a dying

regime. Why should Walsh be frightened of us?

His troops, guns, horses.

We have truth.

Eternal, invincible, undeniable truth.

They may have physical might to crush us, but we can invade and take

possession of the most precious territory of all, the hearts and minds

of men.

And women?

And women.

This would be by selling them the Watchmen?

This would be by lighting a beacon that would shine out to all the world.

I have in mind a scheme whereby we would shun the cities and the manufactories

and return to a simple, ideal, rural life.

We could live together, holding all things in common. We will have chickens

and goats and apple trees, and we will make poetry and... And babies.

Well, shan't we?

Well, I was describing a general spiritual political movement, not my own

personal preferences.

And where will it be, this New Eden?

where the climate is kind and warm.

Come on.

Come along.

Come on.

Come on.

Citizen, if we had have gone to America, would it not have been more sunny?

Possibly.

But if we had taken land in America, we would have been stealing it from its

rightful owners, the Indians, and that's unthinkable, citizen.

Oh, yes, unthinkable.

Although sunnier.

Ah, you try.

Don't put it down, you bitch, you possity.

We can't feed Citizen Pig on scraps because there are no scraps to eat.

We eat the scraps. There are only scraps.

I have a scheme.

If I could sell a series of articles to a right-thinking newspaper describing

our life here, that would bring in extra revenue and at the same time spread the

joyful news of our victory over greed and emptiness.

What? What is it?

What color am I mostly in this book?

You're a weak citizen, baby.

I see fingers painting on our window.

The

frost

performed its secret ministry, unhelped by any wind.

The owlet's cry came loud.

was reared in the great city, pent mid cloisters dim, and saw naught lovely but

the sky and stars.

But thou, my babe, shalt wander like a breeze, by lakes and

sandy shores, beneath the crags of ancient mountain, and beneath the

clouds. There's the moon.

That's who painted our windows.

He's painted your face.

There's Venus.

And over there, that's Mars.

Sam?

What are you doing out here?

Sarah? Hartley will freeze to death.

Come to bed. You look exasperated.

This is the most wonderful time of my life.

I wish it was always now and here.

Best so far, maybe.

But there should be better times to come. No, no, no.

This is the best.

one day we'll have a cottage with a fireplace that works.

Tis calm indeed, so calm that it

disturbs and vexes meditation with its strange and extreme silentness.

village sea and hill and wood with all the numberless goings-on of life

inaudible as dreams

Getting warmer?

Warmer?

Therefore,

all seasons shall be sweet to thee, whether the summer clothe the general

earth with greenness or the red breast sit.

and sing betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch, or if the secret

ministry of frost shall hang them up in silent icicles, quietly shining

to the quiet moon.

If we put him in his own little kingdom, then he can be the king.

Help me lift it up.

You put the newt inside.

And there, he's the king of his own little world.

Them! Strangers!

Strangers!

There's two strangers in Asholt this morning.

They're asking after you.

The right man.

You promised me you'd burn this.

Do their filthy job for them.

Oh,

I was told you were very fine-looking.

Indeed, you're quite plain.

Too pale.

Too scrawny.

Still, I will try to see beyond such things, for my brother's sake.

Your brother?

Oh, the cot!

Is this the very one from Frost at Midnight?

You know my poems?

My brother thinks them brilliant, prophetic even. I find them narrowly

domestic and lacking in ambition.

Do you? Sam!

Oh, it's good to see you. I came as soon as I could.

I read about this rural utopia of yours. It was a revelation to me.

You're the brother?

This is your sister?

Yes, indeed. This is Dorothy.

Dorothy. Dorothy.

Ah, yes. This is Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

So... Are the others here?

Davy, Thelwell, Southie?

Well, no, not yet.

Thelwell... as you know, is still in prison.

So far, it's Sarah, myself, and the baby.

But now you're here, and that's what matters.

Sarah.

Come with me.

Here is the garden, where flowers and food grow side by side.

Spiritual... and physical sustenance interpollinating.

It's full of weeds.

Well, yes, the weeds have taken the liberty to grow. Well, it would be

unfair to prejudice the soil towards roses and strawberries.

Even his gardening is ambitious.

He is building a second Eden.

We're up at five to work in the garden. Then I feed the pig and the hens. This

is not prophecy.

This is market gardening.

I am sorry, Sam.

She's so...

No, she's right.

What's through here?

She's extraordinary.

This is the home of my dearest friend.

Fellow poet?

Well, no, he's a tanner.

He makes leather.

But in his way, the greatest of men.

Tom, all's well?

Tom Poole, my neighbour and protector, Sarah, my wife, and little Hartley.

Never was a more joyous creature born.

Very pretty.

Oh, a library.

Oh, yes, it's Poole's library that makes it possible for me to stay here and work

in Stowey.

He bankrupted himself in the making of it.

Oh, no, no, these books are my wealth.

I'll not be accounted poor while I have them.

Look, Dorothy, here's Sam's volume.

Poems by S.T. Coleridge.

It's very handsome.

I like this colour.

I like the lettering.

I see you found Sam's volume.

Is it not a handsome and posterifying binding?

It is over-decorated. Even William thinks so.

Some have said there's too much spent on the cover, but wait and see.

Sam will prove our finest poet since Milton.

I was talking not about the cover, but about the verses within.

Some verse?

There is power there, but it is buried in frills and flounces.

These poems are about our life and our child and our little cottage.

Exactly. The new Milton should aspire to some more terrific theme, not

domesticity. We need epic.

We need an epic of nature in the language of liberty.

The language of liberty.

What is she talking about?

Why should not poetry be simple too, plain like the food we eat so that any

man, the simplest, might understand it?

Would not that be democratic?

We will create a new poetry, William.

Something that's never even been seen before.

By God, William and I will do some great work in this library of yours, Tom

Poole. No, not here.

You cannot find truth by looking it up in a book.

You must follow it up the hill track to the high and lonely places.

The high and lonely places. That is marvellous. We will make poetry out of

our sense of taste and smell and hearing and sight, not from our memory.

If I had the means to hand, I would pulp these volumes now.

Please, don't excite Sam. His mind is very volatile. No, poetry cannot be

written at a desk among the dead leaves of a library.

It should be warped into birth, to the rhythm of tramping feet and ringing

stones.

Goodbye, then.

I'll make a picnic.

Look, there's even soup, Dorothy.

This is wonderful, Sarah.

Smells good.

Mmm, it's a rich and wholesome smell.

We made this from something that was growing in the garden.

Thorn apple.

It has very interesting qualities.

Though the taste be somewhat bitter.

Doesn't taste bitter to me.

But then I have no sense of taste.

No, surely not.

What? You can't taste anything?

Mm-mm.

Sorry, not taking your soup.

Thank you, no. I've tried it once before.

Eggs.

I can taste eggs.

But that may just be the texture.

Well, it's not an egg.

I have no idea.

Milky, if you chew it.

Well, what does milk taste like?

Caterpillar, William.

What? Would you like to try a caterpillar?

Eyebrows. A pair of eyebrows.

Oh my god!

What's happening to me?

I think William is about to discover the properties of Thorna.

Nobody's with but one soul.

Together we shall turn the world the right way up.

Sam!

Sam!

I can't carry Hartley on the hamper.

I'm sure she would make the perfect wife for someone, only not for him.

He's like a marvellous bird tethered to a huge sea anchor.

right when he has to answer to her every call and yet he writes about a

wonderfully well the poem about the frost and the baby no one has written so

intimately before it's nothing beautifully expressed but really a baby

cries in the night the father comes down to comfort it anyone can experience such

things we never did the soul does not live by nursing babies

but surely it does

And Mrs Coleridge, does she not strike you as the poetic embodiment of the very

idea of woman?

Why? Because her breasts are dripping milk all day. Because that mewling

infant is always at her hip.

Must a woman be like a farmyard animal? Can she have no ambition, no

intelligence, no organic sensibility?

We will light a candle in this window.

which shall shine out to a far distance, sending its echoes back from the future.

How long are they staying?

Don't know.

I love your poem about the project, Sam.

I know you do.

You're not really going to pulp those volumes, are you?

No, of course not.

Is this it?

It was so clever of you and Mr Poole to find it.

Here we'll live in honest simplicity.

We could all live in honest simplicity if we had palaces to do with him.

Davy sent this to welcome you to your new home.

We should give it a fair trial.

I believe that you turn the tap and then breathe and inhale.

I'm not so sure, Sam. It could be something dangerous or unhealthy.

We must try everything.

No, Dorothy.

Let me first, for safety's sake.

I feel no change.

Perhaps you have to wait for it to reach the brain.

No, no different.

Of course it will.

William, do some poetry. Some Milton.

Do some Milton.

I will not.

Then I will.

Nor did he escape by all intentions, but was headlong sent with industrious crew

to build in hell at Pandemonium by capital of Satan and his peers.

Wordsworth, is it?

How do you do?

I'm Holland, the past to hear about. I'm glad to meet you.

It's a friendly enough place. The men here are stout and true and ready to

give their last breath should the damned French invade.

Do you hunt, Wordsworth?

Pity.

Oh, Coleridge, I... I didn't know you knew our new tenant.

William and Sam are old friends.

Is that so?

Well, I... I bid you farewell.

Goodbye. Very nice to meet you.

Goodbye, Mrs Wordsworth.

Oh, it's Miss, not Mrs.

William and I are brother and sister.

You notice anything strange, Amelia?

Was it their voices, Father?

Their voices, exactly.

Unusual voices. Now, what do you think? Do you think they could be foreign?

French, even.

The Dark Lady was not wearing any shoes, Father.

No shoes, funny voices.

They must be French.

And, Sam, what about the beginning?

We'll follow the course of the river.

From the first mountain...

Springing over the barren moorland. Scared of the first shepherd's cut.

Leaping over cataracts and torrents. Down into fertile valleys. Winding

through the towns and farms.

And out to sea.

It's all right, William.

You go on.

You sure?

Yes, I'm sure.

Dorothy, come here and listen.

What is it?

It's an underground waterfall.

Not a hundred feet below us, yet no human eye has ever seen it.

I heard it first as a boy, and I imagined underground caverns and sunless

seas.

In fact, the stream emerges just below that bush down there.

Let's listen.

I see it.

What?

William's right.

A voice like honey.

The animation of your face like... Like cloud shadows chased

across bright fells.

Your skin is not too pale at all, but...

You've missed the way.

The source of the river is down there, just below that bush.

Come along, Dorothy.

We'll observe the river on its own terms.

Drink from it, listen to it, measure its speed.

12, 13,

13, 14.

Why do you cling to him so?

Cling to?

To our friend.

Because he is a great spirit.

Because I am. You're a great distraction.

As if you were not distracted enough.

We came here to write poetry.

To ignite a revolution of the mind, not to canoodle on a hillock.

Canoodle.

Now, look, I've lost count.

What are they at now?

Writing poetry.

He's measuring something.

They're compiling some sort of map to assist the enemy.

I shall write to the government.

They should send a man down here to keep an eye on them.

There's a gentleman outside who insists he knows you.

The handshaking day has ended in the tower.

You have grown such pleasing huge breasts, Sarah.

You ought not to say such things.

Well, it's nature.

We're all for nature, are we not?

It's the breastfeeding. Makes them swell up.

Toast, then, to breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding. Breastfeeding.

working on a book together.

Well, William and Sam are working on a book together.

Al, do you write one line and he the next, or what?

We've just begun to write yet.

We're still gathering material.

The poetry will be simple. It should appear almost not written at all, but

discovered.

Like Davy's gases.

And when we publish, it should be anonymously.

I wasn't aware.

I've only just thought of it.

They should walk away from the poet, out into the world an orphan, adopted by

every heart that hears it.

But surely Sam is famous. His name would bring in readers.

No, this is brilliant.

Anonymous. Like Homer. Like the hills and clouds themselves.

So none of Anonymous doesn't collect the fee?

Citizen, is it not craven to be sitting here in the second best dining room

whilst in our midst it's one of the great revolutionaries, a man who has

been kept in a tower with murderers and villains without books or light or

exercise and without reason. I propose that we invade the best dining room.

Jones, the keys.

I don't know, sir.

The keys or the guillotine, Jones.

Well, I'm not sure the terms of the lease are quite stringent.

Revolution, William.

Revolution in Al Foxton. Come along.

Follow me.

Serenade the planks. And the bottles.

Don't forget the bottles.

Storm the table in it.

Liberate the pottery.

Untrain the wine cellar. Free the oil paintings.

Welcome to the revolution, Senator Jones.

There shall be no servant and no master at Al Foxton.

Dorothy, I... I... You go first.

No, you. No, I will.

I have strong feelings for you.

The most strong and tender feelings.

ever be expressed in the realm of poetry.

I cannot do anything that would unsettle your great enterprise, your gift.

Our caresses must only be an imagination.

Dorothy. I care not that she has your body, your love,

your children, so that I have your secret soaring soul.

She may keep your... Walking, so that I have your flying.

Material for your... Material for your poems. I've thought of some.

A friend of Davy's.

Lives near here. Goes by the name of Cross.

Experiments with electricity.

There's got to be a poem in that.

What do you think?

Yes!

Brilliant.

Did you make this lightning, Mr. Cross?

The atmospheric power of the storm is conducted by these wires into the higher

sphere, where it is held and concentrated.

And then the lower sphere attracts that power and calls it forth as indoor

lightning. But this is the very image of ourselves.

Sam is the electricity, a force of nature waiting to be tapped.

And William is the sheet anchor.

grounding us to the earth. And Dorothy is like the spheres, bringing us both

together and then holding us in balance until that moment of inspiration.

What about me?

Well, you are the sturdy table on which we all rest.

I don't like it.

Speak more flatteringly, citizen.

Well, the table has good legs. So do you.

Over here, we have something truly, truly astonishing.

Have the answer to the mystery of life itself.

They lie in bed till noon almost.

That's a Frenchy way, isn't it, Mr. Walsh? Wordsworth was in France.

Reverend Holland did right to send for me, Jones.

There's Mrs. Coleridge now, look. Running out.

Sarah!

And good God.

That is Thelwall.

There's some scheme afoot, I'm sure.

I believe that electricity is the original power, the spark that lit

creation's flame. And I believe that I can now offer proof of this.

In there, we have a solution of flint and potassium carbonate, through which I

have been passing up a current over a period of time.

I was hoping to find silicon crystals.

Instead, I found these.

I repeated the experiment.

with the same result.

It is a species of might.

It is not a species that has been previously recorded.

Are you saying it is a new creation?

There was no life. Then there was life.

This must be the most astounding discovery of all time.

I feel as though we've been present at the unveiling of a great mystery.

An unshakable bond must have been forged between all of us. It's only a cheese

mite. It's not as if he created a fully grown doctor of philosophy or a

strapping great plow boy.

It's beside the point. He's created life from nothing. He's taken the place of

God. There are very likely eggs in the solution.

Twice! The eggs may have fallen into the solution from across his hair. He's not

the cleanest man I've ever met. He may well have developed his own species of

parasite. You're deta... not to believe.

I've seen new life. I was there when our child was born. It's not a question of

nits in water.

You'll understand when your time comes, Dorothy.

I wish you hadn't said that, Sam.

Goodnight. You're

back earlier than expected.

Yes, I'm back.

Sam!

Look!

I found a phallus impudicus!

Wordsworth. He doesn't say very much, does he?

He'll surprise us all.

You'll see.

Sam.

He will have to go.

What? Why?

We are being spied upon.

Walsh is here. I've seen him.

Thelwell is the reason.

He will have to go.

Go?

Go where? He has nowhere to go. His presence compromises our project. How?

The world has changed, Sam.

We are making new poetry for a new world.

Thelwell's old politics cling like barnacles to our new ship.

I think it would be best if you were to ask him.

I ask him? Well, he's your guest.

then there is no point in my staying here any longer.

I wish you and William luck with your book.

I hope it's a great book.

Your presence was distracting to William.

Protecting from what?

William has done nothing.

Said nothing.

The gatepost would be more companion-ish and inspirationary. It helps me to think

his mind runs clear and deep.

William has said nothing.

Done nothing.

Neither have you.

Vera, William and I are to write our epic.

We've found our theme.

Another one?

This one will be finished.

Published within a week.

Sensation of London within a month.

The Wanderings of Cain.

We will tell the story of two brothers.

One who betrays the other. And it will be dark and splendid and terrifying.

And it will make our fortunes.

William is to write the first part.

myself the second, and together we shall write the third. And to make sure that

we do finish it, the whole thing will be done in one night.

Tonight.

You'll want tea, then.

I think I'm beginning a toothache.

Perhaps another night.

Here.

Take some laudanum.

That'll soon get rid of it.

Sam? Sam?

Have you drunk it all?

You're supposed to take a thimbleful.

Sam?

Sam?

Sam! Come on.

Sam!

I'll fetch some water.

Did we finish?

William, let me see.

One morn, we walked out on our dry walk, our quiet

house in full view, and held our intermitted

talk as we were wont to do.

Without him here to inspire me, it's all just so much geography.

Have you ever taken opium, Dorothy?

Only for toothache.

I never wrote a line.

When?

In Sam's house, that night.

It isn't true that we wrote Cain. He wrote it. I wrote nothing.

The page glared at me.

I no sooner picked up the pen than I was sweating.

Why could I not write, Dorothy? Why could I not write?

He has such velocity.

I'm afraid to write in front of him.

You are afraid to pick up the pen.

Very well, I will pick it up for you.

You need only to talk.

You're not afraid of talking.

I wandered lonely as a cow.

Perhaps a cloud would be better, William.

Good

evening.

Good evening, sir.

They live by what they can catch.

They have to walk out across the mudflats to place their nets, like

creatures from a primordial swamp.

We could make a poem about this, Sam.

About the hardships of England's estuary fishermen.

Brendan, I brought someone to see you.

They say the more you tell it, the more it'll go away.

Somehow, to me, it just sticks there.

I keep having it.

What is it?

I have this dream about a ship.

It comes in over the bar over there.

Only there's no crew aboard.

Only dead men.

A whole crowd of them.

Dead.

What does it mean? What do you think it means?

They say it tokens some great wrong I've done. I don't know.

I stole another man's halberd bucket once.

We're good with that.

That's all right, sir.

They're only Elvers.

That's what we're here for.

The fair breeze blew. The white foam flew.

The furrow followed free.

We were the first that ever burst into that silent sea.

Slimy things.

I saw the slimy things that were crawling up my legs.

Elvers. Yes.

They're sold to make elver cheese, but the whole eel fetches a better price.

The fishermen of the estuary have always to calculate the possibility of present

gain with that of long-term loss if too many elvers are taken.

Slimy things did crawl with legs upon the slimy sea.

And listen.

We had not the sight of one fish or bird except a disconsolate albatross,

hatly observing that the bird was always hovering near us.

imagined it was some ill omen and shot it.

Sam, albatrosses have nothing to do with eel fishing.

This is another distraction.

To shoot a bird of ill omen is nothing. To shoot a bird of good omen?

Imagine.

Because of the storm, the mariner murders the albatross. Straight away,

the ship is becalmed, but then the sun beats down relentlessly.

And all the crew die of thirst and fever. All except the one who willed the

bird.

And then what?

When is God?

Sam!

Little chap, it's not safe.

Sam!

Now the storm blast came, and he was tyrannous and strong.

He struck with his o'ertaking wings and chased us south along.

And now there came both mist and snow, and it grew wondrous cold.

And ice, mast high, came floating by, as green as emerald.

The ice was here, the ice was there, the ice was all around. It cracked and

growled and roared and howled like noises in a swan.

At length did cross an albatross, and through the fog it came.

God save thee, ancient mariner, from the fiends that plague thee thus. Why

look'st thou so?

With my crossbow I shot the albatross.

And I had done hellish thing, and it would work and woe.

For all averred, I had killed the bird. If the ancient mariner has simply killed

a bird, why is he punished so severely?

Why do all the other crew members have to die?

It's just a bird, after all.

He's broken his bond with nature.

It's a kind of parable.

Man is tied to nature. If he cuts that tie, then the result is chaos.

In my darkness and my dreams, I'm drawn to the power of these images.

But they seem to shrink in the daylight of my reason and my faith.

Then extinguish that light.

Just for a time.

Day after day, day after day, we stop, no breath,

no motion, as idle as a painted ship

upon a painted ocean.

The very deep did rot.

O Christ, that this should come to be!

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs upon the slimy sea.

Instead of the cross, the albatross about my neck was hung.

Sarah,

please.

Please help me.

You're not to see him.

He's taken bad.

Must be left alone.

Please.

Ah, Sarah!

Sam!

Sam, your boat!

Sam, your... Dorothy!

Sam!

The mariner... The mariner's lost upon the ocean. I don't know how to bring

him back.

He killed the bird. All of nature conspires against him. I can see him. I

can see him. I can see him on the ship with the dead men in the dead water.

Beyond the shadow of the ship, I watched the water snakes, blue, glossy green,

and velvet black. They coiled and swam, and every track was a flash of golden

fire. A spring of love gushed from my heart, and I blessed them unaware.

Astonishing. That was my suggestion.

The selfsame moment I could pray, and from my neck so free, the albatross fell

off and sank like lead.

Into the sea.

William?

He said we would work together.

I've written nothing of him like this.

It's huge.

It's a book in itself.

Where is my...

William?

William?

You can feed him with ideas and images but I go hungry.

I have felt a presence that uplifts me with the joy of elevated thoughts.

A sense sublime of something far more wonderful.

William, with regard to what happened yesterday... Uplift is wrong. Something

less certain.

Disturbed. Disturbed, precisely.

With regard to what happened between us... I have felt a presence that

disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts.

No, not thoughts. Thought.

Thoughts are too philosophical.

Thoughts is more personal.

Good, Dorothy, very good. I have something that I wish to say. A sense

sublime of something far more... Far deeper.

Deeper.

Deeper, deeply interfused.

Yes, this is better.

A sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the

setting of the suns and the round ocean and the living air.

For thou art with me.

Here upon the banks of this fair river.

Thou? Who? There wasn't a thou in the poem before, was there? Thou, my dearest

friend. Son.

My dear, dear friend.

And in thy voice I catch the language of my former heart and read my former

pleasures in the shooting lights of thy wild eyes.

Oh, yet a little while may I behold in thee what I was once.

My dear, dear sister.

Of course.

Turn.

The sounding cataract haunted me like a passion.

The tall rock.

the mountain and the deep and gloomy wood. Their colours and their forms were

then to me an appetite, a feeling and a love that had no need of a

remoter charm.

Sam.

Sam, don't. It's destroying you.

For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth,

but hearing, oftentimes,

The still sad music of humanity.

It's here.

What? Your book, Sam.

The local ballads.

No, no, I haven't finished it yet.

It is.

Oh, William, I nearly forgot.

It's a letter. I just see it in print.

William, has it come?

Has it come?

The Mariner.

Takes pride of place in the front there, look.

We must celebrate.

To publish anonymously was... was a masterstroke.

Everyone is speculating as to who authored these poems.

Some have even gone so far as to wager money on the question.

I wonder if they do think it's us.

So many. William, you have written so many.

I am pleased to be proved right like this. Sarah, look, your silent gate post

has spoken and spoken and spoken.

We've done it.

William, we've done it.

What do people say?

The whole of London is talking about it.

There have been requests already for a second volume.

A second volume?

Well, I have a notion for another ballad in five acts. Five acts?

It will be tremendous.

Better than the Mariner. Nothing could be better than the Mariner.

The lyrical ballads.

To you, Sam. The lyrical ballads.

one from Salvi.

Some observations he made for me.

Well, perhaps Sam's next poem will be better even than the Mariner. Perhaps

the second volume should be written entirely by Sam. You're being silly.

We have benefited a great deal from Sam.

Yes, William. But it may be that we have learned all he has to teach us.

We should go, Dorothy.

We should return to the happy land of our childhood.

And leave him behind.

Yes, of course leave him behind. What of it?

He is married.

He has his wife.

His child.

His baby.

My big brother used to read me this.

Your Uncle Frank.

When I could not sleep, he went away to India.

Maybe he saw these great cities.

Lost cities.

Ancient ruins.

Look.

Xanadu.

Than I do.

Mr. Coleridge.

What's happened to him?

Whatever it is, I'm sure it's his own doing.

Come. But, Father, we must help him.

Are you all right?

I'm all right.

I will be all right. I must have some ink.

On the desk. I must write it down. I've seen it. I've seen it.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan.

A stately pleasure-dome decree.

Where Alf, the sacred river, ran, through caverns measureless to man, down

to a sunless sea.

Sarah was concerned when you didn't come home.

I met the Hollands on my way from Porlock.

What are you writing?

A dream.

Remembered in a dream of Kubla Khan.

May I see?

No, it's... No, it's not that.

I see.

You will be ready soon Ready for you to see that is I value your opinion

always

It's gone!

William! I can't see it anymore!

William!

William!

William!

It's all there in front of me. Did I say anything to you? I know the phrase,

anything.

William!

And so I dare to hope.

Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first I came among these hills,

when like a roe I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides of the deep

rivers and the lonely streams, wherever nature led, more like a man flying from

something that he dreads than one who sought the thing he loved.

We should stock up on firewood.

It's sure to be freezing when we get to the house.

Ah, there will be someone there already.

I have engaged someone.

It's pretty and modest.

We'll be well hidden here.

Dorothy, this is Mary. Mary, this is my sister, Dorothy.

Fire's blazing prettily.

You've done very well.

Our bags are just there.

Bring them in, then, if you're to stay.

Is she to stay?

Yes, yes.

Indeed, yes.

But perhaps I have not made myself clear enough.

Mary and I are engaged.

To be married.

Thanks.

Cumberland?

He steadies me. If I'm left on my own, my thoughts, they just crowd each other

to death.

You were a great poet before you ever even heard of William.

No, Sam.

No.

No. No, no, no, no, no.

Here it is.

The Palace of the Four Winds.

Look, Hartley.

Look. A baby giant is...

Right outside our house.

There's so much space.

There's so little rent.

How are we going to eat it?

It'll be fine. Now that you're safe in here, I should go and tell William.

I walked here as a boy.

This whole vale swarms with sensation.

William!

William! Is that him? Dorothy!

Dorothy, you were right! This place is... Madam, I'm sorry.

I mistook you. I was sure you... Sam, this is Mary.

My future bride.

Good heavens.

I had no idea.

We must press on or we shall miss the best of the day.

My next poem will be in the manner of your piece about the frost.

Quiet and domestic, but far greater in scope.

The whole story of the formation of my poetic spirit.

Mary is to help me.

Look, William! Look, he's here!

Who is?

Walsh!

Look, William, look!

I see no one.

What?

Trigger the light.

You never saw it?

Wait, so...

Where have you been?

Three days without work.

Sarah's at Hogwarts Inn.

Sally?

Edith and I have come to live with you.

Remember all that communion of like minds, Palawa? Well, this is it.

Sarah asked us. I hope you've no objection.

What? Here? In this house?

Well, I'm here.

I'm here to help you conquer your addictions.

Yes, Sam, you really must forswear the opium.

Its long-term effects are unknown.

Sit you down.

There we are.

You might try this.

Davy gave it to me.

It's nitrous oxide.

I take a lungful every morning.

It's enough to give you a taste of exaltation, but it does not create

dependency.

The laughter itself is therapeutic, of course, but it does not. It exercises

the lungs.

It's not the opium, Sam.

It's my mind.

I spend each day trying not to think.

Your friend, Sam.

Is it wise to make public his involvement in the ballads?

What do you mean?

He's deranged.

Might it not bring our work into some disrepute?

For the second edition?

Lyrical ballads by William Wordsworth.

There's a nice ring to it.

Sounds very well, Mary.

We are making a classroom here.

Sarah is to teach your children, and mine.

And by way of wages, I shall pay the rent.

So you have no worries about that.

Get yourself better.

Salvi, did you write this?

Well, yes, I did.

It is for children. It is sublime. It will live forever.

When all our names are forgotten, these few pages will be remembered. They will

always be remembered. When I am dead, when all my words are dust...

What

is it, Robert?

What have you written?

A story.

Just a story for the children.

It's called The Three Bears.

Where's William?

He's inside. He's writing with Mary.

They've asked not to be disturbed.

You're soaked.

Come by the fire.

Take your jacket off.

I ran.

I ran all the way.

No, Dorothy, no. No, please. This is trouble. I can't. This is... This is

wonderful. Well, Sam, we can send this to the publisher. No, no, no.

It's not finished yet.

Well, what does that matter?

The Iliad isn't finished. Are the ruins of Tintin Abbey any less lovely for

their lack of completion?

Is creation ever finished? Well, no, but... Oh, Sam.

I thought you were lost.

I'm back.

But, oh, that deep romantic...

A chasm which slanted down the green hill, a thwart, a seed and cover, a

savage place, as holy and enchanted as air beneath. A

waning moon was haunted by a woman wailing for her demon

lover.

And... Is something wrong?

No. Wrong, no. It's just so...

Beautiful. There are lines here.

Observations I made myself.

His garden, it's still either the underground waterfall

or touched by his alchemy.

Sorry. Sorry, William. It's just... It's very hard

to think that...

This archangel is blazing yet somewhere inside our friend.

Very different from your work, William.

Yes.

I prefer yours, William.

Thank you, Mary.

What about you, Dorothy?

Do you prefer his method or mine?

The method?

No.

The method is self-destruction. It's too high a price.

Our methods are in opposition.

It is impossible to approve of both.

It is not even finished.

We must reject it.

Reject it?

How can we reject it?

He has worked so hard, he's...

He's all but destroyed himself. I think it would be best if you were to tell

him.

I intend to work late and to sleep late.

But, William... Not now, Dorothy.

The poet must work.

Once upon a time there were three bears who lived together in a house of their

own in a wood.

One of them was a little small wee bear and one was a middle-sized bear and the

other was a great huge bear.

They had each a pot for their porridge.

They had each a pot for their porridge.

A little pot for the little small wee bear and a middle-sized pot for the

middle bear.

And a great pot for the great huge bag.

It has been decided that the tone of Kubla Khan is at odds with the rest of

the volume.

Its presence would be an intercalation of heterogeneous matter.

You are requested, therefore, to remove it.

I will myself bear the expense involved in resetting the type.

Dr. Gilman has made a great study of the effect of it.

Sam Opium is not your worst addiction Your worst addiction is to Wordsworth

You will not recover until you put some distance between yourself and that

vampire

What sin have I not committed for the one filthy trick of opium?

Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen. I was just making an experiment in Newton's

theories on gravity.

For God's sake, Sam.

Byron would pay a hundred pounds for Kublai Khan.

If I could get that, it would make up for a great deal.

And I should like to put things right with Sarah.

A hundred pounds.

It is a very small price at which to sell your reputation, surely.

You are still regarded as a great critic.

The first to explain my own poetry.

If you were to publish this.

Ridicule, Sam.

Ridicule.

Are you sure?

Perhaps the poem is... not as bad as you think.

Dorothy spoke very highly of it.

Dorothy. Shall we ask Dorothy what she thinks, then?

Dorothy.

Is she here?

Dorothy.

Here is Sam, come to ask your opinion about a poem of his.

Dorothy.

Would you like to show her your manuscript?

How did this happen?

Opium, Sam.

This is the end of the road to which Kubla Khan is the gateway.

This is your pleasure

dome.

If you were to truly end your addiction, then the destruction of its fruits might

be a worthy gesture.

My lords, ladies and gentlemen, the king's messenger.

The poet is over here.

Mr. Southey. Mr. Robert Southey.

Oh, indeed, no, but he is here.

Here?

I'm here.

laureate. I'm to be made poet laureate.

you are.

is it southey or southey?

it's southey. I'm sorry this is so unexpected.

I really can't think of anything to say.

the moment is so beautiful.

You promised me.

You swore. A government post, I said.

I never mentioned the laureate.

What do you want that for, anyway?

There's no money in it.

This one pays handsome... What are you talking about?

Distributor of postage stamps for the county of Westmoreland.

Stamps!

William, I have ruined your day of days. 30 guineas per annum. You'll never have

to write poetry again. Don't believe it, Sam. This is a private matter.

You.

Sam, go away.

You and him.

For how long?

Mr. Wordsworth and I go way back.

Okay.

You have been our destruction.

Opium has been your destruction, Sam.

You took my best work from me and put your name to it.

You did the same to Dorothy, and then you abandoned her.

As you abandoned me, you left us with nothing!

You are the mistake of a lifetime!

It is my intention, with the help of Lord Byron, to publish

Kublai Khan.

The poem was destroyed, Sam.

I tried to stop him, but... You were afraid of it. That's why you made me

burn it.

And William, you stood by while he did so.

I despised it and everything it stood for.

Wordsworth, not content with spoiling virgin pages with his feet on them,

has connived in the destruction of one of the lost treasures of English verse.

Go on, William.

Do the daffodils.

I wandered lonely as a... as a... What was it? Shh.

Enough.

The language of liberty, Sam.

In Sanadu, in Sanadu... ...get goopla can... ...a stately

pleasure-dom degree.

The sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless

sea. And so twice five miles of fertile ground with walls and towers were

girdled round.

And here were gardens bright with sinuous thrills

where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree.

And here were forests.

ancient as the hills enfolding sunny spots

of greenery but oh that deep

romantic chasm that slanted down the green hill a thwart

of seed and cover a savage place as holy

and enchanted as ah beneath a waning moon was haunted by

woman wailing for her demon lover and from this chasm with ceaseless

turmoil seething as if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing a mighty

fountain momently was forced amid whose swift half-intermitted burst huge

fragments vaulted like rebounding hail or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's

flail and mid these dancing rocks at once and ever it flung up momently the

sacred river five miles meandering with a

mazy motion through wood and dale the sacred river ran then reached

the caverns measureless to man, and sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean.

And mid this tumult Kubla heard from far ancestral voices prophesying

war.

The shadow of the dome of pleasure floated midway on the waves, where was

heard the mingled measure from the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device.

a sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice a

damsel with a dulcimer in a vision once i saw it was an abyssinian

maid and on her dulcimer she played singing of mount

could i revive within me her symphony and song to such a deep delight would

win me that with music loud and long i would build that dome in air that sunny

dome in those caves of ice and all who heard should see them there and all

should cry beware beware his flashing eyes his floating hair weave a circle

round him thrice and close your eyes with holy dread For he on honeydew hath

fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.