The Marinere, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone; and now the wedding-guest
Turn'd from the bridegroom's door.

He went, like one that hath been stunn'd And is of sense forlorn:

A sadder and a wiser man

He rose the morrow morn.

'Tis strange! he spake of you familiarly

As mine and Albert's common Foster-mother.

FOSTER-MOTHER.

Now blessings on the man, whoe'er he be,

That joined your names with mine! Omy sweet lady,
As often as I think of those dear times

When you two little ones would stand at eve
On each side of my chair, and make me learn
All you had learnt in the day; and how to talk

In gentle phrase, then bid me sing to you

'Tis more like heaven to come than what has been.

MARIA.

O my dear Mother! this strange man has left me
Troubled with wilder fancies, than the moon
Breeds in the love-sick maid who gazes at it,
Till lost in inward vision, with wet eye

She gazes idly!--But that entrance, Mother!

FOSTER-MOTHER.

Can no one hear? It is a perilous tale!

No one.

MARIA.

FOSTER-MOTHER.

My husband's father told it me,

Poor old Leoni!-Angels rest his soul!

He was a woodman, and could fell and saw

With lusty arm. You know that huge round beam Which props the hanging wall of the old chapel? Beneath that tree, while yet it was a tree

He found a baby wrapt in mosses, lined

With thistle-beards, and such small locks of wool As hang on brambles. Well, he brought him home,

And reared him at the then Lord Velez' cost.

And so the babe grew up a pretty boy,

A pretty boy, but most unteachable-

And never learnt a prayer, nor told a bead,

But knew the names of birds, and mocked their notes, And whistled, as he were a bird himself:

And all the autumn 'twas his only play

To get the seeds of wild flowers, and to plant them
With earth and water, on the stumps of trees.
A Friar, who gathered simples in the wood,
A grey-haired man-he loved this little boy,
The boy loved him—and, when the Friar taught
him,

He soon could write with the pen: and from that time,
Lived chiefly at the Convent or the Castle.

So he became a very learned youth.

But Oh! poor wretch!—he read, and read, and read,

'Till his brain turned—and ere his twentieth year,