Coleridge Lesson # 2

Greetings,

      Yesterday’s letter by Coleridge naturally led to re-reading The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the last portion of which ties in with the consideration of the last couple of days about true and lasting values.  As the poem comes to a close the ancient Mariner has been saved from the sinking ship, the penance of life has fallen on him, and he has undertaken his journey from land to land to teach by his own example his message:

                  Forthwith this frame of mine was wrench’d

                  With a woeful agony,

                  Which forced me to begin my tale;

                  And then it left me free.

                  Since then, at an uncertain hour,

                  That agony returns;

                  And till my gastly tale is told,

                  This heart within me burns.

     

                  I pass like night, from land to land;

                  I have strange power of speech;

                  That moment that his face I see,

                  I know the man that must hear me:

                  To him my tale I teach.

                  What loud uproar bursts from that door!

                  The wedding-guests are there:

                  But in the garden-bower the bride

                  And bride-maids singing are:

                  And hark, the little vesper bell,

                  Which biddeth me to prayer!

                  O Wedding-Guest!  this soul hath been

                  Alone on a wide, wide sea:

                  So lonely ‘twas, that God Himself

                  Scarce seemèd 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.”

                  The Mariner, 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.

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      What is our message?  Are we committed to sharing/teaching it?

Yours & His,

DED