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Only along the shore of the mournful and misty

Atlantic

Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fathers from

exile

Wandered back to their native land to die in its

bosom.

In the fisherman's cot the wheel and the loom are still 1395

busy ;

Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their

kirtles of homespun,

And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story, While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced neighboring ocean

Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

NOTES.

NOTES.

COLERIDGE.

THE ANCIENT MARINER.

Circumstances of composition and publication.-In November, 1796, Coleridge had taken up his residence in Somersetshire in the village of Nether Stowey. Thither in July of the following year came Wordsworth to settle in Alfoxden, three miles distant, to be within reach of Coleridge's society. There the Ancient Mariner (A. M.) was planned and composed. The story of its origin is told in most detail by Wordsworth in a note to We are Seven, dictated to Miss Fenwick :

"In the autumn of 1797 (spring of 1798, Knight) he [Coleridge], my sister, and myself started from Alfoxden pretty late in the afternoon, with a view to visiting Linton (Lenton, Knight) and the Valley of Stones near to it; and, as our united funds were very small, we agreed to pay the expense of the tour by writing a poem, to be sent to the "New Monthly Magazine," set up by Phillips, the bookseller, and edited by Dr. Aikin. Accordingly we set off, and proceeded along the Quantock Hills [near Nether Stowey], towards Watchet; and in the course of this walk was planned the poem of the Ancient Mariner, founded on a dream, as Mr. Coleridge said, of his friend Mr. Cruikshank [a neighbour of the poet's]. Much the greater part of the

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