ADDRESS TO CERTAIN GOLD- RESTLESS forms of living light Fleet are ye as fleetest galley Or pirate rover sent from Sallee; Was the sun himself your sire ? Or of the shade of golden flowers, As gay, as gamesome, and as blithe, And yet, since on this hapless earth Your restless roving round and round, Your little lives are inly pining! SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. [Passages from The Rime of the Ancient | Sure I had drunken in my dreams, Mariner.] THE SHIP BECALMed. THE fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free; We were the first that ever burst Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 'Twas sad as sad could be; And we did speak only to break All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody sun, at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; Water, water everywhere, THE ANCIENT MARINER REFRESHED O SLEEP! it is a gentle thing, The silly buckets on the deck, And still my body drank. I moved, and could not feel my limbs: I was so light- almost I thought that I had died in sleep, THE VOICES OF THE ANGELS. AROUND, around, flew each sweet sound, Then darted to the sun; Slowly the sounds came back again, Sometimes a-dropping from the sky Sometimes all little birds that are, With their sweet jargoning! And now 'twas like all instruments, It ceased; yet still the sails made on A noise like of a hidden brook PENANCE OF THE ANCIENT MARINER, I dreamt that they were filled with Which forced me to begin my tale: dew; And when I awoke it rained. And then it left me free. Since then at an uncertain hour, My lips were wet, my throat was That agony returns: cold, My garments all were dank. And till my ghastly tale is told, I pass, like night, from land to land; What loud uproar bursts from that The wedding-guests are there: [From Christabel.] BROKEN Friendships. ALAS! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And to be wroth with one we love, O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath Each spake words of high disdain been Alone on a wide wide sea: So lonely 'twas, that God himself O sweeter than the marriage-feast, To walk together to the kirk, To walk together to the kirk, And youths and maidens gay! Farewell, farewell! but this I tell He prayeth best, who loveth best The Mariner, whose eye is bright, He went like one that hath been And is of sense forlorn: He rose the morrow morn. And insult to his heart's best brother: To free the hollow heart from pain And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, That give away their motion to the stars; Those stars, that glide behind them or between, Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen: Yon crescent moon as fixed as if it grew In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue; I see them all so excellently fair, My genial spirits fail; It were a vain endeavor, Though I should gaze forever On that green light that lingers in the west: I may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the life, whose fountains are within. There was a time when, though my path was rough, This joy within me dallied with distress, And all misfortunes were but as the stuff Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness: For hope grew round me, like the twining vine, And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine. But now afflictions bow me down to earth: Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth, But oh! each visitation Suspends what nature gave me at my birth, |