“O
sweeter than the marriage-feast,
’Tis
sweeter far to me,
To walk
together to the kirk
With a
goodly company!”
The two
youngest and I have been reading Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
aloud together since last week, one section per day. We read the final section
this morning, where the passage quoted occurs. How appropriate, and how
fitting, even though I had only vague memories of the poem when we decided to
read it after finishing Spenser’s Shepherd’s
Calendar.
When I
asked my kids what they wanted to read next, my 17-year-old said, with a
knowing smile, “The Wasteland.” Her older brother was looking through his
poetry book to see if it was in there so he could go ahead an mark the place
for tomorrow.
“What’s the first line of that?” he said.
“What’s the first line of that?” he said.
“‘April
is the cruelest month,’” she said, and we all laughed.
