ONE THOUSAND FA11OUS THINGS 167

The Faery Voyager to the Dim Unknown

The bitter tragedy of Hartley Coleridge lay hidden^ in the future
when Wordsworth wrote these lines of his little friend aged six*

OTHOU whose fancies from afar are brought,
Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel,
And fittest to unutterable thought
The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol;
Thou faery voyager that dost float
In such clear water that thy boat
May rather seem

To brood on air than on an earthly stream,
Suspended in a stream, as clear as sky.
Where earth and heaven do make one imagery ;

0 blessed vision, happy child,
Thou art so exquisitely wild,

1 think of thee with many fears

For what may be thy lot in future years.

I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest9

Lord of thy house and hospitality ;

And Grief, uneasy lover, never rest

But when she sate within the touch of thee,

O, too industrious folly 1

O, vain and causeless melancholy !

Nature will either end thee quite,

Or, lengthening out thy season of delight,

Preserve for thee, by individual right,

A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks,

What hast thou to do with sorrow,

Or the injuries of tomorrow ?

Thou art a dewdrop which the morn brings forth*

111 fitted to sustain unkindly shocks,

Or to be trailed along the soiling earth j

A gem that glitters while it lives,

And no forewarning gives,

But at the touch of wrong, without a strife,

Slips in a moment out of life.

I

It is Better
T is better to suffer wrong than to do it.
Dr Johnson
The Fisherman's Prayer
T OKD, grant this day I catch a fish
JL/ So large that even I
In telling of it afterwards
Shall have no need to He.
Author unknown