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."[57-42]

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.

FOOTNOTES:

[29-*] NOTE.--In 1798 there was published in England a little volume of
poems known as _Lyrical Ballads_. This collection brought to its two
young authors, Wordsworth and Coleridge, little immediate fame, but not
long afterward people began to realize that much that was contained in
the little book was real poetry, and great poetry. The chief
contribution of Coleridge to this venture was _The Ancient Mariner_.

The poem as originally printed had a series of quaintly explanatory
notes in the margin, and an introductory argument which read as follows:

"How a ship having passed the Line, was driven by storms to the cold
Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course
to the tropical latitudes of the great Pacific Ocean, and of the strange
things that befell; and in what manner the Ancient Mariner came back to
his own country."

[30-1] _Eftsoons_ means _quickly_. The poem is written in ballad form,
and many quaint old words are introduced.

[30-2] Such rhymes as this--_Mariner_ with _hear_,--were common in the
old ballads which Coleridge so perfectly imitates.

[30-3] Does this line tell you anything about the direction in which
they were sailing?

[30-4] Where was the ship when the sun stood "over the mast at noon"?

[31-5] Two words are to be understood in this line--"As _one_ who _is_
pursued."

[31-6] Is not this an effective line? Can you think of any way in which
the closeness of the foe could be more effectively suggested?

[32-7] Coleridge's wonderful power of painting word-pictures is shown in
this and the succeeding stanzas. With the simplest language he makes us
realiz