Part 5 (2/2)
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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d who loveth us, He made and loveth all.
The Mariner, whose eye is bright, Whose beard with age is h.o.a.r, 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.
1797-1798.
[Footnote 1: For the last two lines of this stanza, I am indebted to Mr. Wordsworth. It was on a delightful walk from Nether Stowey to Dulverton, with him and his sister, in the autumn of 1797, that this poem was planned, and in part composed. [Note of S. T. C., first printed in _Sibylline Leaves_.]]
CHRISTABEL
PART THE FIRST
'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, And the owls have awakened the crowing c.o.c.k,”
Tu--whit!--Tu--whoo!
And hark, again! the crowing c.o.c.k, How drowsily it crew.
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; Ever and aye, by s.h.i.+ne 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.
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: 'Tis 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, 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.
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 misletoe: She kneels beneath the huge oak tree, And in silence prayeth she.
The lady sprang up suddenly, The lovely lady, Christabel!
It moaned as near, as near can be, But what it is she cannot tell.-- On the other side it seems to be, Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree.
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