"I pass, like night, from land to land; I know the man that must hear me: 590 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 595 And hark the little vesper bell, "O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been Alone on a wide, wide sea: So lonely 't was, that God himself 600 Scarce seemed there to be. "Oh sweeter than the marriage-feast, "T is sweeter far to me, To walk together to the kirk 605 "To walk together to the kirk, And all together pray, While each to his great Father bends, Old men, and babes, and loving friends, 66 610 Farewell, farewell! but this I tell And to teach by his own example love and reverence to all things that God made and loveth. "He prayeth best, who loveth best 615 All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all." The Mariner, whose eye is bright, 620 Is gone and now the Wedding-Guest Turned from the bridegroom's door. He went like one that hath been stunned, A sadder and a wiser man, 625 He rose the morrow morn. 5 KUBLA KHAN; OR, A VISION IN A DREAM. A FRAGMENT. IN Xanadu did Kubla Khan Through caverns measureless to man So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round : But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted 15 As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seeth ing, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, 20 Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst 25 Five miles meandering with a mazy motion. Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far 30 Ancestral voices prophesying war! The shadow of the dome of pleasure Where was heard the mingled measure 35 It was a miracle of rare device, 40 45 50 In a vision once I saw : It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Sing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me, Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 't would win me, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! Weave a circle round him thrice, LORD BYRON. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. peerage, GEORGE GORDON, Lord Byron, was born in London January 22, 1788. He was not in the direct line of the and when his father died in 1791, he was a poor boy, left in the care of a mother who was incompetent to give him a judicious training. When, by a succession of deaths in the family, he came at ten years of age into possession of a title and of the family estate of Newstead Abbey, he was already warped in mind as he was somewhat deformed in body, being lame from a club-foot. He had his schooling at Harrow, where he was known as a shy, somewhat ungovernable, passionate boy, who formed ardent attachments and took a fierce delight in such sport as he could engage in. It was said that he chose the most ferocious animals for his pets, and he was violent in his expressions. He had, indeed, a large, rich nature, which seemed constantly to be coming under unhappy influences, and from an early day he had a way of hiding his best emotions under a show of indifference and swagger, so that what was at first a kind of mask became in the end almost his familiar countenance. He passed from Harrow to Trinity College, Cambridge. Both at school and in college he found an outlet for his moods in verse; this was called out by the attachments he formed and by special occasions, for he always seemed to be swayed by emotions which circumstance or adventure He published a collection of these brought to the surface. |