English Literature For Boys And Girls by H.E. Marshall

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"He holds him with his glittering eye--
The Wedding Guest stood still,
And listens like three years' child:
The Mariner hath his will."

He hath his will, and tells how the ship sailed forth gayly, and
how it met after a time with storms, and cold, and fog, until at
last it was all beset with ice. Then when to the sailors all
hope seemed lost, an albatross came sailing through the fog.
With joy they hailed it, the only living thing in that wilderness
of ice. They fed it with delight--

"It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew:
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!"

Then on they gladly sailed, the albatross following, until one
day the Ancient Mariner, in a mad moment, shot the beautiful
bird. In punishment for this deed terrible disasters fell upon
that ship and its crew. Under a blazing sun, in a hot and slimy
sea filled with creeping, crawling things, they were becalmed--

"Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean."

Then plague and death came, and every man died except the guilty
Mariner--

"Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea;
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.
. . . . .

"I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;
But or ever a prayer had gush'd,
A wicked whisper came, and made
My heart as dry as dust."

But one day as the Mariner watched the water snakes, the only
living things in all that dreadful waste, he blessed them
unaware, merely because they were alive. That self-same moment,
he found that he could pray, and the albatross, which his fellows
in their anger had hung about his neck, dropped from it, and fell
like lead into the sea. Then, relieved from his terrible agony
of soul, the Mariner slept, and when he woke he found that the
dreadful drought was over, and that it was raining. Oh, blessed
relief! But more terrors still he had to endure until at last
the ship drifted homeward--

"Oh, dream of joy! is this indeed
The lighthouse top I see?
Is this the hill? is this the kirk?
Is this mine own countree?

"We drifted o'er the Harbour-bar,
And I with sobs did pray--
'O let me be awake, my God!
Or let me sleep alway.'"

The shop had indeed reached home, but in the harbor it suddenly
sank like lead. Only the Mariner was saved.

When once more he came to land, he told his tale to a holy hermit
and was shriven, but ever and anon afterward an agony comes upon
him and forces him to tell the tale again, even as he has just
done to the wedding guest. And thus he ends his story--

"He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God, who loveth us,
He made and loveth all."

Then he goes, leaving the wondering wedding guest alone.

"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."

Among the poems which Wordsworth wrote for the book of Lyrical
Ballads, was one which every one knows, We are Seven. In
another, called Lines written in Early Spring, he gives as it
were the text of all his nature poems, and his creed, for here he
tells us that he believes that all things in Nature, bird and
flower alike, feel.

"I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

"In her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it griev'd my heart to think
What man has made of man.

"Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

"The birds around me hopp'd and play'd,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:--
But the least motion that they made,
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

"The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

"If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?"

The book was not a success. People did not understand The
Ancient Mariner, and they laughed at Wordsworth's simple lyrics,
although the last poem in the book, Tintern Abbey, has since
become famous, and is acknowledged as one of the treasures of our
literature.

And now, as this new book was not a success, and as he did not
seem able to make enough money as a poet, Coleridge seriously
began to think of becoming a Unitarian preacher altogether. But,
the Wedgwoods, the famous potters, wealthy men with cultured
minds and kindly hearts, offered him one hundred and fifty pounds
a year if he would give himself up to poetry and philosophy.
After some hesitation, Coleridge consented, and that winter he
set off for a visit to Germany with the Wordsworths.

It was on their return from this visit that Wordsworth again
changed his home and went to live at Dove Cottage, near Grasmere,
in the Lake District, which as a boy he had known and loved. And
here, among the hills, he made his home for the rest of his life.

The days at Grasmere flowed along peacefully and almost without
an event. Wordsworth published a second volume of lyrical
ballads, and then went on writing and working steadily at his
long poem The Prelude, in which he told the story of his early
life.

Coleridge soon followed his friend, and settled at Greta Hall,
Keswick, and there was much coming and going between Dove Cottage
and Greta Hall. At Greta Hall there were two houses under one
roof, and soon Southey took the second house and came to live
beside his brother-in-law, Coleridge. And so these three poets,
having thus drifted together, came to be called the Lake Poets,
although Southey's poetry had little in common with that of
either Wordsworth or Coleridge.

It seemed hardly to break the peaceful flow of life at Dove
Cottage, when, in 1802, Wordsworth married his old playmate and
schoolfellow, Mary Hutchinson. They had known each other all
their lives, and marriage was a natural and lovely ending to
their friendship. Of her Wordsworth wrote--

"She was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
to haunt, to startle, and waylay.

"I saw her upon nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin-liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A Creature not too bright and good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.

"And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A Traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light."

The years passed in quiet fashion, with friendly coming and
goings, with journeys here and there, now to Scotland, now to the
Continent.

Children were born, friends died, and once or twice the
Wordsworths changed their house until they finally settled at
Rydal Mount, and there the poet remained for the rest of his long
life. And all the time, for more than fifty years, Wordsworth
steadily wrote, but it is not too much to say that all his best
work was done in the twenty years between 1798 and 1818.

Besides The Prelude, of which we have already spoken,
Wordsworth's other long poems are The Excursion and The White Doe
of Rylstone. The White Doe is a story of the days of Queen
Elizabeth, of the days when England was still in the midst of
religious struggle. There was a rebellion in Yorkshire, in which
the old lord of Rylstone fought vainly if gallantly for the Old
Religion, and he and his sons died the death of rebels. Of all
the family only the gentle Emily remained "doomed to be the last
leaf on a blasted tree." About the country-side she wandered
alone accompanied only by a white doe. In time she, too, died,
then for many years the doe was seen alone. It was often to be
seen in the churchyard during service, and after service it would
go away with the rest of the congregation.

The Excursion, though a long poem, is only part of what
Wordsworth meant to write. He meant in three books to give his
opinions on Man, Nature, and Society, and the whole was to be
called The Recluse. To this great work The Prelude was to be the
introduction, hence its name. But Wordsworth never finished his
great design and The Excursion remains a fragment. Much of The
Excursion cannot be called poetry at all. Yet, as one of
Wordsworth's great admirers has said: "In deserts of preaching
we find delightful oases of poetry."* There is little action in
The Excursion, and much of it is merely dull descriptions and
conversations. So I would not advise you to read it for a long
time to come. But to try rather to understand some of
Wordworth's shorter poems, although at times their names may seem
less inviting.

*Morley.

One of the most beautiful of all his poems Wordsworth calls by
the cumbrous name of Intimations of Immorality from recollections
of Early Childhood. This is his way of saying that when we are
small we are nearer the wonder-world than when we grow up, and
that when we first open our eyes on this world they have not
quite forgotten the wonderful sights they saw in that eternity
whence we came, for the soul has no beginning, therefore no
ending. I will give you here one verse of this poem:--

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily further from the east
Must travel , still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day."

Wordsworth, for the times in which he lived, traveled a good
deal, and in his comings and goings he made many new friends and
met all the great literary men of his day. And by slow degrees
his poetry won its way, and the younger men looked up to him as
to a master. The great, too, came to see in him a power. Since
1813 Southey had been Laureate, and when in 1843 he died, the
honor was given to Wordsworth. He was now an old man of seventy-
three, and although he still wrote a few poems, he wrote nothing
as Laureate, except an ode in honor of the Prince Consort when he
became Chancellor of Cambridge University. Now, as he grew old,
one by one death bade his friends to leave him--

"Like clouds that rake the mountain summits,
Or waves that own no curbing hand,
How fast has brother followed brother,
From sunshine to the sunless land!

"Yet I whose lids from infant slumber
Were earlier raised, remain to hear
A timid voice, that asks in whispers
'Who next will drop and disappear?'"*

*Upon the Death of James Hogg.

At length in 1850, at the age of eighty, he too closed his eyes,
and went "From sunshine to the sunless land."

"But where will Europe's latter hour
Again find Wordsworth's healing power?
Others will teach us how to dare,
And against fear our breast to steel;
Others will strengthen us to bear--
But who, ah! who, will make us feel?"*

*Arnold.

BOOKS TO READ

Poems of Wordsworth, selected by C. L. Thomson. Selections, by
Matthew Arnold.

Chapter LXXVI COLERIDGE AND SOUTHEY--SUNSHINE AND SHADOW

LONG before Wordsworth closed his eyes on this world, Coleridge,
in some ways a greater poet than his friend, had gone to his last
rest. Wordsworth had a happy, loving understanding of the little
things of real life. He had an "exquisite regard for common
things," but his words have seldom the glamour, the something
which we cannot put into words which makes us see beyond things
seen. This Coleridge had. It is not only his magic of words, it
is this trembling touch upon the unknown, the unearthly beauty
and sadness of which he makes us conscious in his poems that
marks him as great.

And yet all that Coleridge has left us which reaches the very
highest is very little. But as has been said, "No English poet
can be put above Coleridge when only quality and not quantity is
demanded."* Of The Ancient Mariner I have already told you,
although perhaps it is too full of fearsomeness for you to read
yet. Next to it stands Christabel, which is unfinished. It is
too full of mysterious glamour to translate into mere prose, so I
will not try to tell the story, but here are a few lines which
are very often quoted--

*Stainsbury.

"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 chanced, as I divine,
With Roland and Sir Leoline.
Each spake words of high disdain
And insult to his heart's best brother:
They parted--ne'er to meet again!
But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining;
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliff's which had been rent asunder;
A dreary sea now flows between;--
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once had been."

Coleridge's singing time was short. All his best poetry had been
written before he went to live at Keswick. There his health,
which had never been good, gave way. Unhappy in his home, and
racked with bodily pain, he at length began to use opium in order
to find relief. The habit to which he soon became a slave made
shipwreck of his life. He had always been unstable of purpose
and weak of will, never keeping to one course long. He had tried
journalism, he tried lecturing, he planned books which were never
written. His life was a record of beginnings. As each new plan
failed he yielded easily to the temptation of living on his
friends. He had always been restless in mind. He left his home,
and after wanderings now here now there, he at length found a
home in London with kind, understanding friends. Of him here we
have a pathetic picture drawn by another great man.* "The good
man--he was now getting old, towards sixty perhaps, and gave you
the idea of a life that had been full of sufferings; a life
heavy-laden, half-vanquished, still swimming painfully in seas of
manifold physical and other bewilderment. Brow and head were
round and of massive weight, but the face was flabby and
irresolute. The deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of
sorrow as of inspiration, confused pain looked mildly from them,
as in a kind of mild astonishment. The whole figure and air,
good and amiable otherwise, might be called flabby and
irresolute, expressive of weakness under possibility of
strength . . . a heavy-laden, high-aspiring, and surely much
suffering man."

*Carlyle.

And yet to this broken-down giant men crowded eagerly to hear him
talk. Never, perhaps, since the great Sam had held his court had
such a talker been heard. And although there was no Boswell near
to make these conversations live again, the poet's nephew, Henry
Nelson Coleridge, gathered some of his sayings together into a
book which he called Table Talk. With his good friends Coleridge
spent all his remaining life from 1816 till 1834, when he died.

Meanwhile his children and his home were left to the care of
others. And when Coleridge threw off his home ties and duties it
was upon Southey that the burden chiefly fell. And Southey,
kindly and generous, loving his own children fondly, loved and
cared for his nephews and nieces too. We cannot regard Southey
as one of our great poets, but when we read his letters, we must
love him as a man. He wrote several long poems, the two best
known perhaps are The Curse of Kehama and Thalaba, the one a
Hindoo, the other a Mahometan story, but he is better remembered
by his short poems, such as The Battle of Blenheim and The
Inchcape Rock.

For forty years Southey lived at Greta Hall, and from his letters
we get the pleasantest picture of the home-loving, nonsense-
loving "comical papa" who had kept the heart of a boy, even when
his hair grew gray--

"A man he is by nature merry,
Somewhat Tom-foolish, and comical very;
Who has gone through the world, not mindful of self,
Upon easy terms, thank Heaven, with himself."

He loved his books and he loved the little curly-headed children
that gathered about him with pattering feet and chattering
tongues, and never wished to be absent from them. "Oh dear, oh
dear," he says, "there is such a comfort in one's old coat and
old shoes, one's armchair and own fireside, one's own writing-
desk and own library--with a little girl climbing up my neck, and
saying, 'Don't go to London, papa--you must stay with Edith'; and
a little boy, whom I have taught to speak the language of cats,
dogs, cuckoos, and jackasses, etc., before he can articulate a
word of his own; there is such a comfort in all these things, the
transportation to London for four or five weeks seems a heavier
punishment than any sins of mine deserve."

And so we see him spending long hours, long years, among his
books, hoping for lasting fame from his poems, and meantime
earning with his prose food for hungry little mouths, shoes for
nimble little feet, with just a trifle over for books, and still
more books. For Southey loved books, and his big library was
lined with them. There were thousands there, many in beautiful
bindings, glowing in soft coloring, gleaming with pale gold, for
he loved to clothe his treasures in fitting garments. When a new
box of books comes he rejoices. "I shall be happier," he says,
"than if his Majesty King George IV were to give orders that I
should be clothed in purple, and sleep upon gold, and have a
chain about my neck, and sit next him because of my wisdom and be
called his cousin."

We think of Southey first as a poet, but it is perhaps as a prose
writer that his fame will last longest, and above all as a
biographer, that is a writer of people's lives. During the busy
years at Greta Hall he wrote about a hundred books, several of
them biographies--among them a life of Nelson, which is one of
the best short lives ever written. Some day I hope you will read
it, both for the sake of Southey's clear, simple style, and for
the sake of the brave man of whom he writes. You might also, I
think, like his lives of Bunyan and Cowper, both of whom you have
heard of in this book.

Another book which Southey wrote is called The Doctor. This is a
whimsical, rambling jumble, which can hardly be called a story; a
mixture of quotations and original work, of nonsense and earnest.
And in the middle of it what do you think you come upon? Why our
old nursery friend, The Three Bears. Southey trusts that this
book will suit every one, "that the lamb may wade in it, though
the elephant may swim, and also that it will be found 'very
entertaining to the ladies.'" Indeed he flatters himself that it
will be found profitable for "old and young, for men and for
women, the married and the single, the idle and the studious, the
merry and the sad; and that it may sometimes inspire the
thoughtless with thought, and sometimes beguile the careful of
their cares." But if it is to be quite perfect it must have a
chapter for children--

"Prick up your ears then,
My good little women and men;

And ye who are neither so little nor no good, favete linguis,*
for here follows the story of the Three Bears." So there it is.
"One of them was a Little, Small, Wee Bear; and one was a Middle-
sized Bear, and the other was a Great, Huge Bear"--and from the
way it is told, I think we may be sure that Uncle Robert or
comical papa often told stories with a circle of eager, bright
faces round him. For he says--

*Be silent.

"And 'twas in my vocation
For their recreation
That so I should sing;
Because I was Laureate
To them and the King."

As the years went on Southey received other honors besides the
Laureateship. He was offered a baronetcy which he refused. He
wall "ell-ell-deed" by Oxford, as he quaintly puts it in his
letters to his children. And when he tells them about it he
says, "Little girls, you know it might be proper for me now to
wear a large wig, and to be called Doctor Southey and to become
very severe, and leave off being a comical papa . . . . However,
I shall not come home in my wig, neither shall I wear my robes at
home."

It is sad to think that this kindly heard had to bear the
buffetings of ill fortune. Two of his dearly loved children
died, then he was parted from his wife by worse than death, for
she became insane and remained so until she died. Eight years
later Robert Southey was laid beside her in the churchyard under
the shadow of Skiddaw. "I hope his life will not be forgotten,"
says Macaulay, "for it is sublime in its simplicity, its energy,
its honour, its affection. . . . His letter are worth piles of
epics, and are sure to last among us, as long as kind hearts like
to sympathise with goodness and purity and love and upright
life."

BOOKS TO READ

Southey: Poems, chosen by E. Dowden. Life of Nelson (Everyman's
Library).
Coleridge: Lyrical Poems, Chosen by A. T. Quiller-Couch.

YEAR 10

Chapter LXXVII SCOTT--THE AWAKENING OF ROMANCE

THE 15th of August 1771 was a lucky day for all the boys and
girls and grown-up people too of the English-speaking race, for
on that day Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh. Literature had
already begun to shake off its fetters of art. Romance had begun
to stir in her long sleep, for six years before sturdy baby
Walter was born, Bishop Percy had published a book called
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. In this book he had gathered
together many old ballads and songs, such as those of Robin Hood
and Patrick Spens. They had almost been forgotten, and yet they
are poems which stir the heart with their plaintive notes,
telling as they do--

"Of old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago;
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again!"*

*Wordsworth.

Bishop Percy, like a knight of old, laid his lance in rest and
tilted against the prickly briar hedge that had grown up around
the Sleeping Beauty, Romance. But he could not win through and
wake the princess. And although Burns and Wordsworth, Coleridge
and Southey, all knowing it or not, fought on his side, it was
left for another knight to break through the hedge and make us
free of the Enchanted Land. And that knight's name was Walter--
Sir Walter, too--for, like a true knight, he won his title in the
service of his lady.

Little Walter's father was a kindly Scots lawyer, but he came of
a good old Border family, "A hardy race who never shrunk from
war."* Among his forbears had been wild moss-troopers and
cattle-reivers, lairds of their own lands, as powerful as kings
in their own countryside. There were stories enough of their
bold and daring deeds to fill many books, so that we feel that
Walter had been born into a heritage of Romance.

*Leyden.

Walter was a strong, healthy child, but when he was about
eighteen months old he had an illness which left him lame in his
right leg. Everything was done that could be done to restore the
lost power, and although it was partly regained, Scott walked
with a limp to the end of his days. Meanwhile he had a by no
means unhappy childhood. He spent a great deal of time at the
farm belonging to his grandfather. Little Wat was a winsome
laddie, and the whole household loved him. On fine days he was
carried out and laid down among the crags and rocks, beside an
old shepherd who tended his sheep and little Walter too, telling
him strange tales the while--