One after another, His shipmates drop down dead. But Life-inDeath begins her work on the ancient Mariner. My life-blood seemed to sip! The stars were dim, and thick the night, The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white; Till clomb above the eastern bar The horned Moon, with one bright star One after one, by the star-dogged Moon, Each turned his face with a ghastly pang, Four times fifty living men, (And I heard nor sigh nor groan) The souls did from their bodies fly,- And every soul, it passed me by, The wedding guest feareth that a spirit is talking to him. FART IV. "I FEAR thee, ancient Mariner ! I fear thy skinny hand! And thou art long, and lank, and brown, As is the ribbed sea-sand.1 1 For the last two lines of this stanza, I am indebted to I fear thee and thy glittering eye, Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! And never a saint took pity on The many men, so beautiful! And a thousand thousand slimy things I looked upon the rotting sea, I looked upon the rotting deck, I looked to heaven, and tried to pray ; A wicked whisper came, and made I closed my lids, and kept them close, 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. But the ancient Mariner assureth him of his bodily life, and proceedeth to relate his horrible penance. He despiseth the creatures of the calm. And envieth that they should live, and so many lie dead. But the curse liveth for him in the eye of the dead men. In his loneliness and fixedness he yearneth towards the journeying Moon, and the stars that still sojourn, For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky The cold sweat melted from their limbs, The look with which they looked on me An orphan's curse would drag to hell But oh! 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, Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside yet still move onward; and every where the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed 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. By the light of the Moon he beholdeth Her beams bemocked the sultry main, But where the ship's huge shadow lay, Beyond the shadow of the ship, I watched the water-snakes: They moved in tracks of shining white, Within the shadow of the ship I watched their rich attire: Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, They coiled and swam; and every O happy living things! no tongue track A spring of love gushed from my heart, Sure kind saint took pity on me, And I blessed them unaware. The selfsame moment I could And from my neck so free God's crea tures of the great calm. Their beauty and their happiness. He blesseth them in his heart. The Albatross fell off, and sank Like lead into the sea. PART V. OH sleep! it is a gentle thing, To Mary Queen the praise be given! By grace of the holy Mother, the ancient Mariner is refreshed with rain. He heareth sounds and seeth strange sights and commotions in the sky and the element. The silly buckets on the deck, I dreamt that they were filled with dew; My lips were wet, my throat was cold, Sure I had drunken in my dreams, I moved, and could not feel my I was so light-almost limbs: I thought that I had died in sleep, And soon I heard a roaring wind : But with its sound it shook the sails, The upper air burst into life! The wan stars danced between. And the coming wind did roar more loud, And the sails did sigh like sedge; And the rain poured down from one black cloud; The Moon was at its edge. The thick black cloud was cleft, and still The Moon was at its side: |