[From The Ancient Mariner.]

  Sometimes, a-dropping from the sky,
    I heard the skylark sing;
  Sometimes all little birds that are,
    How they seemed to fill the sea and air
  With their sweet jargoning!

  And now ’twas like all instruments,
    And now like a lonely flute;
  And now it is an angel’s song
    That makes the heavens be mute.

  It ceased; yet still the sails made on
    A pleasant noise till noon,
  A noise like of a hidden brook
    In the leafy month of June,
  That to the sleeping woods all night
    Singeth a quiet tune.

THE LOVE OF ALL CREATURES.

[From the same.]

  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.

ESTRANGEMENT OF FRIENDS.

[From Christabel.]

  Alas! they had been friends in youth
  But whispering tongues can poison truth,
  And constancy lives in realms above,
    And life is thorny and youth is vain,
  And to be wroth with one we love
    Doth work like madness in the brain. 
  And thus it fared, as I divine,
  With Roland and Sir Leoline. 
  Each spake words of high disdain
  And insult to his heart’s best brother;
  But never either found another
    To free the hollow heart from paining. 
    They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
  Like cliffs that had been rent asunder: 
    A dreary sea now flows between,
  But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder
  Can wholly do away, I ween,
  The marks of that which once has been.

WALTER SCOTT.

NATIVE LAND.

[From The Lay of the Last Minstrel.]

  Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
  Who never to himself hath said. 
    This is my own, my native land? 
  Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
  As home his footsteps he hath turned,
    From wandering on a foreign strand? 
  If such there breathe, go mark him well;
  For him no minstrel raptures swell;
  High though his titles, proud his name,
  Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
  Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
  The wretch concentred all in self,
  Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
  And, doubly dying, shall go down
  To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
  Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.