410

THE ANCIENT MARINER.

life, an ago.

ny constraineth him to trav el from land to land,

Which forced me to begin my tale;
And then it left me free.

And ever and anon,

throughout That agony returns :

Since then, at an uncertain hour,

And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.

I pass like night from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
That 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 bridemaids 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 't was, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.

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,
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 west who loveth best
All things both great and small;
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
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.

MIRABEAU. -- Sterling.

Nor oft has peopled Earth sent up

So deep and wide a groan before,
As when the word astounded France,
"The life of Mirabeau is o'er!"
From its one heart a nation wailed;

For well the startled sense divined
A greater power had fled away

Than aught that now remained behind.

And to teach, by his

own exam

ple, love

and reverence to all things that God made and loveth.

The scathed and haggard face of will,

And look so strong with weaponed thought,
Had been to many million hearts

The All between themselves and naught;

And so they stood aghast and pale,
As if to see the azure sky
Come shattering down, and show beyond
The black and bare Infinity.

For he, while all men trembling peered.
Upon the Future's empty space,
Had strength to bid above the void
The oracle unveil its face ร
And when his voice could rule no more,
A thicker weight of darkness fell,
And tombed in its sepulchral vault

The wearied master of the spell.

A myriad hands like shadows weak,

Or stiff and sharp as bestial claws,
Had sought to steer the fluctuant mass

That bore his country's life and laws;
The rudder felt his giant hand,

And quailed beneath the living grasp
That now must drop the helm of Fate,

Nor pleasure's cup can madly clasp.

France did not reck how fierce a storm
Of rending passion, blind and grim,
Had ceased its audible uproar

When death sank heavily on him ;
Nor heeded they the countless days

Of toiling smoke and blasting flame,
That now by this one final hour

Were summed for him as guilt and shame.

The wondrous life that flowed so long,
A stream of all commixtures vile,
Had seemed for them in morning light
With gold and crystal waves to smile.

It rolled with mighty breadth and sound
A new creation through the land,
Then sudden vanished into earth,

And left a barren waste of sand.

To them at first the world appeared

Aground, and lying shipwrecked there, And freedom's folded flag no more

With dazzling sun-burst filled the air; But 't is in after years for men

A sadder and a greater thing, To muse upon the inward heart

Of him who lived the People's King.

O wasted strength! O light and calm
And better hopes so vainly given!
Like rain upon the herbless sea,

Poured down by too benignant Heaven. We see not stars unfixed by winds,

Or lost in aimless thunder-peals;
But man's large soul, the star supreme,
In guideless whirl how oft it reels!

The mountain hears the torrent dash,
But rocks will not in billows run;
No eagle's talons rend away

Those eyes that joyous drink the sun:
Yet man, by choice and purpose weak,
Upon his own devoted head
Calls down the flash, as if its fires

A crown of peaceful glory shed.

Alas! Yet wherefore mourn? The law
Is holier than a sage's prayer;
The godlike power bestowed on men
Demands of them a godlike care;

And noblest gifts, if basely used,
Will sternliest avenge the wrong,
And grind with slavish pangs the slave
Whom once they made divinely strong,

The lamp, that, 'mid the sacred cell,

On heavenly forms its glory sheds,
Untended dies, and in the gloom

A poisonous vapor glimmering spreads
It shines and flares, and reeling ghosts

Enormous through the twilight swell, Till o'er the withered world and heart

Rings loud and slow the dooming knell.

No more I hear a nation's shout

Around the hero's tread prevailing,
No more I hear above his tomb

A nation's fierce, bewildered wailing;
I stand amid the silent night,

And think of man and all his woe
With fear and pity, grief and awe,
When I remember Mirabeau.