From the sails the dew did drip; One after one, by the star-dogged moon, Each turned his face, with a ghastly pang, Four times fifty living men The souls did from their bodies fly,- And every soul it passed me by, Like the whizz of my crossbow ! One after another, His shipmates drop down dead; But Life-inDeath begins her. work on the ancient mariner. PART IV. “I FEAR thee, ancient mariner! I fear thy skinny hand! And thou art long, and lank, and brown, “I fear thee and thy glittering eye, * For the last two lines of this stanza, I am indebted to Mr. Wordsworth. It was on a delightful walk from Nether Stowey to Dulverton, with him and his sister, in the autumn of 1797, that this poem was planned, and in part composed. The wedding-guest feareth that a spirit is talking to him; But the an- Fear not, fear not, thou wedding-guest! cient mari ner assureth This body dropt not down. him of his bodily life, and pro ceedeth to Alone, alone, all, all alone, relate his horrible penance. He despis Alone on a wide, wide sea! And never a saint took pity on The many men, so beautiful! eth the the calm; And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on and so did I. But the curse liveth I looked upon the rotting sea, I looked to heaven and tried to pray; I closed my lids, and kept them close, And the balls like pulses beat; For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky. Lay like a load on my weary eye, And the dead were at my feet. The cold sweat melted from their limbs, for him in Nor rot nor reek did they ; the eye of the dead men. The look with which they looked on me An orphan's curse would drag to hell But, Q, more horrible than that Is the curse in a dead man's eye! Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, The moving moon went up the sky, And nowhere did abide ; In his loneliness and fixedness, he yearneth towards the Journeying moon, and the stars that still so journ yet still move onward, and everywhere the blue sky belongs to them, and is their ap. pointed rest, and their native country, and their own natural homes, which they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected, and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival. Her beams bemocked the sultry main, But where the ship's huge shadow lay, Beyond the shadow of the ship, They moved in tracks of shining white, Within the shadow of the ship Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, Was a flash of golden fire. every track O happy living things! no tongue A spring of love gushed from my heart, Sure, my kind saint took pity on me, By the light of the moon he beholdeth God's creatures of the great calm. Their beau ty and their happiness. He blesseth them in his heart. And I blessed them unaware. The spell begins to break. The selfsame moment I could pray; The albatross fell off, and sank PART V. O SLEEP! it is a gentle thing, To Mary Queen the praise be given ! By grace of The silly buckets on the deck, the Holy Mother, the That had so long remained, ancient mariner is I dreamt that they were filled with dew, refreshed with rain. And when I woke it rained. My lips were wet, my throat was cold, Sure, I had drunken in my dreams, I moved, and could not feel my limbs, I thought that I had died in sleep, He heareth And soon I heard a roaring wind; sounds and Beeth strange sights and But with its sound it shook the sails, commotions in the sky and the element. That were so thin and sere. The upper air burst into life, And a hundred fire-flags sheen ; To and fro they were hurried about, And the coming wind did roar more loud, And the rain poured down from one black cloud, The thick black cloud was cleft, and still The moon was at its side; Like waters shot from some high crag, The lightning fell with never a jag, The loud wind never reached the ship, Yet now the ship moved on! They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, It had been strange, even in a dream, The helmsman steered, the ship moved on, The mariners all 'gan work the ropes, They raised their limbs like lifeless tools: We were a ghastly crew. The body of my brother's son Stood by me knee to knee : The body and I pulled at one rope, But he said naught to me. 155 The bodies of the ship's crew are in spired, and the ship moves on. |