WHO PRAYETH WELL?

 

                       WHO PRAYETH WELL?

In his long poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, the English romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) says towards the end of his poem:

            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.

This message of universal love is indeed the unforgettable moral of the  poem which is a blend of marvel and mystery.  The poet rightly makes it as our sacred  duty to love all objects of God’s creation.  Somewhere earlier in the poem he tells his only listener, the Wedding Guest :

           O happy living things ! no tongue

            Their beauty might declare:

            A spring of love gush’d from my heart ,

            And I bless’d them unaware:

            Sure my kind saint took pity on me,

            And I bless’d them unaware.

A little further, he also tells him:

            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 !

 

                                    ********

G.R.Kanwal

12^th July 2023