When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow,

And the owlet whoops to the wolf below,

That eats the she-wolf's young."

The boat came closer to the ship,
But I nor spake nor stirr'd;

The boat came close beneath the ship,
And straight 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,

The ship

suddenly sinketh.

The ancient
Mariner is

saved in the

Like one that hath been seven days drown'd Pilot's boat.

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 moved my lips the Pilot shriek'd
And fell down in a fit;

The holy Hermit raised 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.

The ancient

Mariner

earnestly

entreateth the

Hermit to

shrieve him; and the

penance of life

falls on him.

And ever and anon throughout his future life an agony constraineth him to travel from land to land,

"Ha! ha!" quoth he, "full plain I see, The Devil knows how to row."

And now, all in my own countree,
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 of man art thou?"

Forthwith this frame of mine was wrench'd
With a woful agony,

Which forced me to begin my tale;

And then it left me free.

Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns :

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 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 Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,

Is gone and now the Wedding-Guest
Turn'd from the bridegroom's door.

And to teach by his own example, love and reverence to all things that God made and loveth.

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.

eft soons', at once; speedily.

kirk, the Scottish word for church.

ken, know.

char'nel, a charnel house is a place for

depositing dead bodies.

clomb, old form for climbed.

swound, an old form of the word swoon, neth'er, lower; under.

a faint.

star-dogged, followed by a star.

al'ba tross, the largest of sea birds, often be-mocked', the same as mocked. seen very far from land.

sheen, bright; shining.

Gra mer'cy, a word formerly used to ex- rood, the cross.

This extract is from a speech that Felix Holt is supposed to have delivered in 1833 to the working-men of Treby Magna in England.

"IN my opinion, that was a true word spoken by your friend when he said the great question was how to give every man a man's share in life. But I think he expects voting to do more toward it than I do. I want the working-men to have power. I'm a working-man myself, and I don't want to be anything else. power. There's a power to do mischief- to undo what has been done with great expense and labor, to waste and destroy, to be cruel to the weak, to lie and quarrel, and to talk poisonous nonsense.

But there are two sorts of

"That's the sort of power that ignorant numbers have. It never made a joint-stool or planted a potato. Do you think it's likely to do much toward governing a great coun

try, and making wise laws, and giving shelter, food, and clothes to millions of men? Ignorant power comes in the end to the same thing as wicked power; it makes misery. It's another sort of power that I want us working-men to have, and I can see plainly enough that our all having votes will do little toward it at present. I hope we, or the children that come after us, will get plenty of political power sometime. I tell everybody plainly, I hope there will be great changes, and that sometime, whether we live to see it or not, men will have come to be ashamed of things they are proud of now.

"But I should like to convince you that votes would never give you political power worth having while things are as they are now; and that if you go the right way to work, you may get power sooner without votes. Perhaps all you who hear me are sober men who try to learn as much of the nature of things as you can, and to be as little like fools as possible. A fool or idiot is one who expects things to happen that never can happen; he pours milk into a can without a bottom and expects the milk to stay there. The more of such vain expectations a man has, the more he is of a fool or idiot. And if any working-man expects a vote to do for him what it never can do, he's foolish to that amount, if no more.

"The way to get rid of folly is to get rid of vain expectations, and of thoughts that don't agree with the nature of things. The men who have had true thoughts about water, and what it will do when it is turned into steam, and under all sorts of circumstances, have made themselves a great power in the world: they are turning the wheels of engines that will help to change most things. But no engines would have done, if there had been false notions about the way water would act.