RESTLESS forms of living light Fleet are ye as fleetest galley Was the sun himself your sire? Or of the shade of golden flowers, ers, To mock this murky clime of ours? As gay, as gamesome, and as blithe, And yet, since on this hapless carth 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.] 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, Now mixed, now one by one. Sometimes a-dropping from the sky I heard the sky-lark sing; Sometimes all little birds that are, How they seemed to fill the sea and air 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, Which forced me to begin my tale: Since then at an uncertain hour, was That agony returns: And till my ghastly tale is told, [From Christabel.] BROKEN FRIENDSHIPS. I pass, like night, from land to land; What loud uproar bursts from that The wedding-guests are there: 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, While each to his great Father bends, 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: 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, On that green light that lingers in the west: I may not hope from outward forms to win O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me What this strong music in the soul may be! What, and wherein it doth exist, This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist, This beautiful and beauty-making power. Joy, virtuous lady, joy that ne'er was given, Save to the pure, and in their purest hour, Life, and life's effluence, cloud at once and shower Joy, lady, is the spirit and the power, Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower, A new earth and new heaven, Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud — We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, All melodies the echoes of that voice, All colors a suffusion from that light. The passion and the life, whose | There was a time when, though my fountains are within. O Lady! we receive but what we give, And in our life alone does nature live: Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud! And would we aught behold, of higher worth, Than that inanimate cold world allowed To the poor loveless, ever-anxious crowd, Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth, A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud Enveloping the earth And from the soul itself must there be sent 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, |