from land to

land,

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
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.

And to teach by his own example, love and reverence to

all things that God made and loveth.

1

1

THE FOSTER-MOTHER's TALE.

A Dramatic Fragment.

FOSTER-MOTHER.

I NEVER saw the man whom you describe.

MARIA.

'Tis strange, he spake of you familiarly,

As mine and Albert's common Foster-Mother.

FOSTER-MOTHER.

Now blessings on the man, whoe'er he be,

That joined your names with mine! O my sweet lady !

As often as I think of those dear times,

2

When you two little-ones would stand at eve

On each side of my chair, and make me learn
All you had learnt in the day, and how to talk
In gentle phrase, then bid me sing to you-
'Tis more like heaven to come than what has been.

MARIA.

O my dear Mother! this strange man has left me Troubled with wilder fancies, than the Moon Breeds in the love-sick maid who gazes at it, Till lost in inward vision, with wet eye She gazes idly-But that entrance, Mother!

FOSTER-MOTHER.

Can no one hear. It is a perilous tale!

No one?

MARIA.

FOSTER-MOTHER.

My husband's father told it me, Poor old Leoni: Angels, rest his soul ! He was a woodman, and could fell, and saw, With lusty arm. You know that huge round beam Which props the hanging-wall of the old chapel? Beneath that tree, while yet it was a tree, He found a baby, wrapt in mosses lined With thistle-beards, and such small locks of wool As hang on brambles. Well, he brought him home, And reared him at the then Lord Valez' cost; And so the babe grew up a pretty boy