Lyrical Ballads, With a Few Other Poems | Page 6

Wordsworth and Coleridge
talk,
"Why, this is strange, I trow!

"Where are those lights so many and fair
"That signal made but
now?
"Strange, by my faith!" the Hermit said--
"And they answer'd not our
cheer.
"The planks look warp'd, and see those sails
"How thin they
are and sere!
"I never saw aught like to them
"Unless perchance it
were
"The skeletons of leaves that lag
"My forest brook along:
"When
the Ivy-tod is heavy with snow,
"And the Owlet whoops to the wolf
below
"That eats the she-wolf's young.
"Dear Lord! it has a fiendish look"--
(The Pilot made reply)
"I am
a-fear'd.--"Push on, push on!"
Said the Hermit cheerily.
The Boat came closer to the Ship,
But I ne spake ne stirr'd!
The
Boat came close beneath the Ship,
And strait a sound was heard!
Under the water it rumbled on,
Still louder and more dread:
It
reach'd the Ship, it split the bay;
The Ship went down like lead.
Stunn'd by that loud and dreadful sound,
Which sky and ocean smote:

Like one that hath been seven days drown'd
My body lay afloat:

But, swift as dreams, myself I found
Within the Pilot's boat.
Upon the whirl, where sank the Ship,
The boat spun round and round:

And all was still, save that the hill
Was telling of the sound.
I mov'd my lips: the Pilot shriek'd
And fell down in a fit.
The Holy

Hermit rais'd his eyes
And pray'd where he did sit.
I took the oars: the Pilot's boy,
Who now doth crazy go,
Laugh'd
loud and long, and all the while
His eyes went to and fro,
"Ha! ha!"
quoth he--"full plain I see,
"The devil knows how to row."
And now all in mine own Countrée
I stood on the firm land!
The
Hermit stepp'd forth from the boat,
And scarcely he could stand.
"O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy Man!"
The Hermit cross'd his brow--

"Say quick," quoth he, "I bid thee say
"What manner man art
thou?"
Forthwith this frame of mine was wrench'd
With a woeful agony,

Which forc'd me to begin my tale
And then it left me free.
Since then at an uncertain hour,
Now oftimes and now fewer,
That
anguish comes and makes me tell
My ghastly aventure.
I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;

The moment that his face I see
I know the man that must hear me;

To him my tale I teach.
What loud uproar bursts from that door!
The Wedding-guests are
there;
But in the Garden-bower the Bride
And Bride-maids singing
are:
And hark the little Vesper-bell
Which biddeth me to prayer.
O Wedding-guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide wide sea:
So
lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.
O sweeter than the Marriage-feast,
'Tis sweeter far to me
To walk
together to the Kirk
With a goodly company.
To walk together to the Kirk
And all together pray,
While each to
his great father bends,
Old men, and babes, and loving friends,
And

Youths, and Maidens gay.
Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou wedding-guest!
He
prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best who loveth best,
All things both great and small:

For the dear God, who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
The Marinere, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is
gone; and now the wedding-guest
Turn'd from the bridegroom's door.
He went, like one that hath been stunn'd
And is of sense forlorn:
A
sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.
THE FOSTER-MOTHER'S TALE, A DRAMATIC FRAGMENT.
FOSTER-MOTHER.
I never saw the man whom you describe.
MARIA.
'Tis strange! he spake of you familiarly
As mine and
Albert's common Foster-mother.
FOSTER-MOTHER.
Now blessings on the man, whoe'er he be,

That joined your names with mine! O my sweet lady,
As often as I
think of those dear times
When you two little ones would stand at eve

On each side of my chair, and make me learn
All you had learnt in
the day; and how to talk
In gentle phrase, then bid me sing to you--

'Tis more like heaven to come than what has been.
MARIA.
O my dear Mother! this strange man has left me
Troubled
with wilder fancies, than the moon
Breeds in the love-sick maid who
gazes at it,
Till lost in inward vision, with wet eye
She gazes
idly!--But that entrance, Mother!
FOSTER-MOTHER.
Can no one hear? It is a perilous tale!
MARIA.
No one.

FOSTER-MOTHER
My husband's father told it me,
Poor old Leoni!--Angels rest his soul!

He was a woodman, and could fell and saw
With lusty arm. You
know that huge round beam
Which props the hanging wall of the old
chapel?
Beneath that tree, while yet it was a tree
He found a baby
wrapt in mosses, lined
With thistle-beards, and such small locks of
wool
As hang on brambles. Well, he brought him home,
And reared
him at the then Lord Velez' cost.
And so the babe grew up a pretty
boy,
A pretty boy, but most unteachable--
And never learnt a prayer,
nor told a bead,
But knew the names of birds, and mocked their notes,

And whistled, as he were a bird himself:
And all the autumn 'twas
his only play
To get the seeds of wild flowers, and to plant them

With earth and
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