How loudly his sweet voice he rears!
He loves to talk with Marineres

That come from a far Contrée.

He kneels at morn and noon and eve-
He hath a cushion plump:
It is the moss, that wholly hides
The rotted old Oak-stump.

The Skiff-boat ne'rd: I heard them 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 afear'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.

NOTES.

PAGE 1.-THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER. THE following interesting notices concerning "The Ancient Mariner" are contained in a letter of the Rev. Alexander Dyce, the well-known admirable Editor of old Plays, to the late H. N. Coleridge:

"When my truly honoured friend Mr. Wordsworth was last in London, soon after the appearance of De Quincey's papers in Tait's Magazine,' he dined with me in Gray's Inn, and made the following statement, which, I am quite sure, I give you correctly: "The Ancient Mariner was founded on a strange dream, which a friend of Coleridge had, who fancied he saw a skeleton ship, with figures in it. We had both determined to write some poetry for a monthly magazine, the profits of which were to defray the expenses of a little excursion we were to make together. "The Ancient Mariner" was intended for this periodical, but was too long. I had very little share in the composition of it, for I soon found that the style of Coleridge and myself would not assimilate. Besides the lines (in the fourth part),

"And thou art long, and lank, and brown,

As is the ribbed sea-sand,"

I wrote the stanza (in the first part),—

"He holds him with his glittering eye-
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three-years' child:
The Mariner hath his will,"

I See

and four or five lines more in different parts of the poem, which I could not now point out. The idea of "shooting an albatross" was mine; for I had been reading Shelvocke's Voyages, which probably Coleridge never saw. also suggested the reanimation of the dead bodies, to work the ship. also "Memoirs of William Wordsworth," by Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, vol. i., chap. xi., p. 107-8.

M

PAGE 41.-FIRST ADVENT OF LOVE.

The early date assigned to these exquisite lines is derived from a memorandum of the author. "Relics of my School-boy Muse; ie., fragments of poems composed before my fifteenth year.

LOVE'S FIRST HOPE

'O fair is Love's first hope,' &c.

The concluding stanza of an Elegy on a Lady, who died in early youth :

O'er the raised earth the gales of evening sigh;
And see a Daisy peeps upon its slope!

I wipe the dimming waters from mine eye;

Even on the cold Grave lights the Cherub Hope!

AGE.-A stanza written forty years later than the preceding:

Dew-drops are the Gems of Morning,

But the Tears of dewy Eve!
Where no Hope is, Life's a warning,
That only serves to make us grieve,
When we are old.

S. T. C. Sept. 1827."

PAGE 42.-MONODY ON THE DEATH OF CHATTERTON. This monody was sketched at Christ's Hospital; but meagre indeed is the boyish schema, with scarce any of the fire and felicity of the finished composition. October, 1794, is the date affixed by the author. It appears from a passage in one of Mr. Southey's letters, that seven lines and a half, toward the end of the poem, were borrowed from a young friend and fellow-poet.

"Everything is in the fairest trim. Favell and Le Grice (a younger brother of Charles Lamb's Valentine Le Grice), "two young Pantisocrats of nineteen, join us. They possess great genius. You may perhaps like the sonnet on the subject of our emigration, by Favell :

"No more my visionary soul shall dwell

On joys that were: no more endure to weigh
The shame and anguish of the evil day,

Wisely forgetful! O'er the ocean swell
Sublime of Hope, I seek the cottaged dell,

Where Virtue calm with careless step may stray,
And dancing to the moonlight roundelay,

The wizard Passion wears (sic) a holy spell.
Eyes that have ached with anguish! ye shall weep
Tears of doubt-mingled joy, as those who start

From precipices of distempered sleep,

On which the fierce-eyed fiends their revels keep,
And see the rising sun, and find it dart

New rays of pleasure trembling to the heart."

Southey's Life and Correspondence, vol. i., p. 224.

At the end of the Preface to the edition of 1796, Mr. Coleridge acknowledges himself indebted to Mr. Favell for the "rough sketch" of Effusion XVI.,— "Sweet Mercy! how my weary heart has bled;"

and to the author of "Joan of Arc" for the first half of Effusion XV.,

"Pale Roamer through the night," &c.

It is remarkable that when these obligations were particularised, the passage borrowed from the Monody should not have been referred to its author. But this is but one of a thousand instances that could be given of Mr. Coleridge's partial and uncertain (though in some respects powerful) memory. In 1803 he published, without signature, among his own productions, Mr. Lamb's Sonnet to Mrs. Siddons, which had appeared in the edition of 1796, signed C. L., and in 1797 in Lamb's portion of the joint volume.

PAGE 46.-SONNET.

This and the following Sonnet, to "Stanhope," were among the pieces withdrawn from the second edition of 1797. They reappeared in the edition of 1803, and were again withdrawn in 1828, solely, it may be presumed, on account of their political vehemence. They will excite no angry feelings, and lead to no misapprehensions now; and as they are fully equal to their companions in poetical merit, the Editors have not scrupled to reproduce them. These Sonnets were originally entitled "Effusions."

PAGE 134.-THE PAINS OF SLEEP.

This poem was first published, with the "Kubla Khan," in 1816, with the following notice :-"As a contrast to this vision I have annexed a fragment of a very different character, describing with equal fidelity the dream of pain and disease." It has been recently ascertained to have been written in 1803.

PAGE 136.-YOUTH AND AGE.

With respect to the date of the admired composition "Youth and Age," memories and opinions differ. It is the impression of the writer of this note that the first stanza, from "Verse, a breeze," to "liv'd in't together," was produced as late as 1824, and that it was subsequently prefixed to the second stanza, "Flowers are lovely," which is said to have been composed many years before. It appears, from the Author's own statement, already quoted, that the last verse was not added till 1827, to which period the poem, considered as a whole, may very well be assigned.

PAGE 160.-TRANSLATED FROM SCHILLER.

DER EPISCHE HEXAMETER.

Schwindelnd trägt er dich fort auf rastlos strömenden Wogen;
Hinter dir siehst du, du siehst vor dir nur Himmel und Meer,

DAS DISTICHON.

Im Hexameter steigt des Spring-quells flüssige Saüle;
Im Pentameter drauf fällt sie melodisch herab.