HE PRAYETH BEST, WHO LOVETH BEST
O Wedding Guest ! this soul hath been
Alone
on a wide , wide sea;
So
lonely ‘twas, that God himself
Scarce
seemed 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.”
These poetic lines are extracted from
a long poem entitled The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner written by the British romantic poet Samuel Taylor
Coleridge (1772—1834).
The poem tells the story
of a sailor (the old mariner) who shoots
a friendly albatross , cursing himself and his crew. As punishment, he is
forced to wear the bird around his neck, making it a symbol of sinful burden and lifelong
repentance.
Coleridge makes this
story a universal issue of religious preferences . Is it not spiritually better
to attend a prayer meeting in a church with ‘”ld men, and babes, and loving
friends, and youths and maidens gay” than to join a wedding party with some other
guests for routine physical pleasure.
The mariner is the hero
of the poem. He has suffered from extreme agony and loneliness after the
shooting of the friendly albatross.
God’s perfect prayer demands
universal love for both man and bird and beast . His best prayer is not for some things but for all the things whether they are great
or small for they also are made by the
same God who has made human beings and loves them.
********
G.R.Kanwal
25th September 2023
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