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"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,
620 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, 625 He rose the morrow morn.

7

KUBLA KHAN; OR, A VISION IN A DREAM.

A FRAGMENT.

IN Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; 10 And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted

15 As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seeth.

ing,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;

20 Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.

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
Floated midway on the waves;

Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.

35 It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer

40

50

In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me,

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 't would win me,
That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

LORD BYRON.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

GEORGE GORDON, Lord Byron, was born in London January 22, 1788. He was not in the direct line of the peerage, 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 & 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 brought to the surface. He published a collection of these

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