While each to his great Father bends, Farewell, farewell! but this I tell He prayeth best, who loveth best And to teach The Mariner, whose eye is bright, Is gone; and now the Wedding-Guest He went like one that hath been stunned, 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! O my 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 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 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 With thistle-beards, and such small locks of wool 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 gather seeds of wild-flowers, and to plant them A Friar, who oft cull'd simples in the wood, The boy loved him-and, when the Friar taught him, So he became a very learned youth. But oh! poor wretch! he read, and read, and read, He had unlawful thoughts of many things: But yet his speech, it was so soft and sweet, And once, as by the north side of the chapel That the wall tottered, and had well nigh fallen |