A VOICE SINGS

Hear, sweet spirit, hear the spell,

Lest a blacker charm compel!

So shall the midnight breezes swell

With thy deep long-lingering knell.

And at evening evermore,

In a chapel on the shore,

Shall the chaunters, sad and saintly,

Yellow tapers burning faintly,

Doleful masses chaunt for thee,

Miserere Domine!

Hark, the cadence dies away

On the quiet moonlight sea:

The boatmen rest their oars; and say,

Miserere Domine!

Samuel Taylor Coleridge