O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been Alone on a wide, wide sea: So lonely 't was, that God himself Scarce seemed there to be. 600
O sweeter than the marriage-feast, 'T is sweeter far to me, To walk together to the kirk With a goodly company!--
To walk together to the kirk, 605 And all together pray, While each to his great Father bends, Old men, and babes, and loving friends And youths and maidens gay!
[Sidenote: And to teach, by his own example, love and reverence to all things that God made and loveth.]
Farewell, farewell! but this I tell 610 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; 615 For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all."
The Mariner, whose eye is bright, Whose beard with age is hoar, Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest 620 Turned from the bridegroom's door.
He went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man, He rose the morrow morn. 625
'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, And the owls have awakened the crowing cock. Tu--whit!----Tu--whoo! And hark, again! the crowing cock, How drowsily it crew. 5
Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, Hath a toothless mastiff, which From her kennel beneath the rock Maketh answer to the clock, Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; 10 Ever and aye, by shine and shower, Sixteen short howls, not over loud; Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.
Is the night chilly and dark? The night is chilly, but not dark. 15 The thin gray cloud is spread on high, It covers but not hides the sky. The moon is behind, and at the full; And yet she looks both small and dull. The night is chill, the cloud is gray: 20 'T is a month before the month of May, And the Spring comes slowly up this way.
The lovely lady, Christabel, Whom her father loves so well, What makes her in the wood so late, 25 A furlong from the castle gate? She had dreams all yesternight Of her own betrothed knight; And she in the midnight wood will pray For the weal of her lover that's far away. 30
She stole along, she nothing spoke, The sighs she heaved were soft and low, And naught was green upon the oak But moss and rarest mistletoe: She kneels beneath the huge oak tree, 35 And in silence prayeth she.