Life and Existence

On that green light that lingers in the west: I may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

O lady! we receive but what we give And in our life alone does Nature live.

I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!

Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

That saints will aid if men will call: For the blue sky bends over all!

Her gentle limbs did she undress, And lay down in her loveliness.

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

A sadder and a wiser man He rose the morrow morn.

A sadder and a wiser man He rose the morrow morn.

He prayeth well who loveth well Both man and bird and beast.

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.

I fear thee, ancient Mariner! I fear thy skinny hand! And thou art long, and lank, and brown, As is the ribbed sea-sand. 1

Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was white as leprosy, The nightmare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man’s blood with cold.

About, about, in reel and rout The death fires danced at night.

The very deep did rot: O Christ! That ever this should be! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea.

Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.

The bride hath paced into the hall, Red as a rose is she.

And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold: And ice, mast-high, came floating by, As green as emerald.

The Wedding Guest here beat his breast, For he heard the loud bassoon.

The guests are met, the feast is set: May’st hear the merry din.

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

It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. “By thy long gray beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?”

Be but organic harps diversely fram’d, That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the Soul of each, and God of All?

O the one life within us and abroad, Which meets all motion and becomes its soul, A light in sound, a sound-like power in light, Rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere— Methinks, it should have been impossible Not to love all things in a world so filled.