Note 393:1 — PHANTOM[393:1]
Reading edition
These lines, without title or heading, are quoted ('vide . . . my lines') in an entry in one of Coleridge's Malta Notebooks, dated Feb. 8, 1805, to illustrate the idea that the love-sense can be abstracted from the accidents of form or person (see Anima Poetae, 1895, p. 120). It follows that they were written before that date. Phantom was first published in 1834, immediately following (ii. 71) Phantom or Fact. A dialogue in Verse, which was first published in 1828, and was probably written about that time. Both poems are 'fragments from the life of dreams'; but it was the reality which lay behind both 'phantom' and 'fact' of which the poet dreamt, having his eyes open. With lines 4, 5 compare the following stanza of one of the MS. versions of the Dark Ladié:—
Against a grey stone rudely carv'd The statue of an armed knight, She lean'd in melancholy mood To watch ['d] the lingering Light.