primitive in its ceremonies, unequalled in its liturgical England, in a tolerating age, has shown herself emi forms; that our Church, which has kindled and dis- nently tolerant, and far more so, both in Spirit and in played more bright and burning lights of Genius and fact, that many of her most bitter opponents, who Learning, than all other Protestant churches since profess to deem toleration itself an insult on the the Reformation, was (with the single exception of rights of mankind! As to myself, who not only know the times of Laud and Sheldon) least intolerant, the Church-Establishment to be tolerant, but who when all Christians unhappily deemed a species of see in it the greatest, if not the sole safe bulwark of intolerance their religious duty; that Bishops of our Toleration, I feel no necessity of defending or palchurch were among the first that contended against liating oppressions under the two Charleses, in order this error; and finally, that since the Reformation, to exclaim with a full and fervent heart, ESTO PER when tolerance became a fashion, the Church of PETUA! The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. IN SEVEN PARTS. Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum universitate. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit? et gradus et cognationes et discrimina et singulorum munera? Quid agunt? quæ loca habitant? Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit ingenium humanum, nunquam attigit. Juvat, interea, non diffiteor, quandoque in animo, tanquam in tabulâ, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contemplari: ne mens assuefacta hodiernæ vitæ minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat in pusillas cogitationes. Sed veritati interea invigilandum est, modusque servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a nocte, distinguamus.-T. BURNET: Archeol. Phil. p. 68. The Mariner tells how the ship sailed southward with a good wind The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone, And thus spake on that ancient man, Yet he cannot choose but hear; tinueth his tale. And now the STORM-BLAST came, and The ship drawn Was tyrannous and strong: He struck with his o'ertaking wings, With sloping masts and dripping prow, And southward aye we fled. And now there came both mist and Aud it grew wondrous cold; The ship was cheer'd, the harbor And through the drifts the snowy clifts The land of ice, clear'd, Merrily did we drop Below the kirk, below the hill, The Sun came up upon the left, Did send a dismal sheen: The ice was all between. The ice was here, the ice was there, And he shone bright, and on the right It crack'd and growl'd, and roar'd and and fair weather, Went down into the sea. till it reached the line Higher and higher every day, Till over the mast at noon breast, howl'd, Like noises in a swound! At length did cross an Albatross : The Wedding-Guest here beat his Therough the fog it came ; For he heard the loud bassoon. As if it had been a Christian soul, 70 and of fearful sounds, where no living thing was to be seen. Till a great seabird, called the Albatross, came through the snowfog, and was roceived with great joy and hospital And lo the Al- It ate the food it ne'er had eat, Day after day, day after day, And a good south-wind sprung up Water, water, everywhere, behind; The Albatross did follow, eth the ship as it And every day, for food or play, Came to the mariner's hollo! returned northward through fog and floating ice. The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen. His shipmates cry out against the ancient Mariner, for killing the bird of good-luck. But when the fog cleared off, they justify the same, and thus make themselves ac In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, It perch'd for vespers nine; And all the boards did shrink: The very deep did rot: O Christ! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Whiles all the night, through fog- Upon the slimy sea. Glimmer'd the white moon-shine. "God save thee, ancient Mariner! About, about, in reel and rout Why look'st thou so?"-With my And some in dreams assured were cross-bow I shot the ALBATROSS. PART II. Of the spirit that plagued us so; And the Albatross begins to be avenged. A spirit had followed them: one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet,-neither departed souls nor angels; con THE Sun now rose upon the right: cerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Still hid in mist, and on the left Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus, may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no climate or element without one or more. And the good south-wind still blew And every tongue, through utter Nor dim nor red, like God's own THERE pass'd a weary time. Each head, Then all averr'd, I had kill'd the bird complices in the That brought the fog and mist. "T was right, said they, such birds to slay crime. The fair breeze continues; the ship enters the Pacific Ocean and That bring the fog and mist. throat Was parch'd, and glazed each eye. At first it seem'd a little speck, The fair breeze blew, the white foam And then it seem'd a mist; flew, The furrow follow'd free; We were the first that ever burst sails northward. Into that silent sea. even till it reaches the Line. The ship hath been suddenly becalmed. It moved and moved, and took at last A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist! Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt As if it dodged a water-sprite, down, "T was sad as sad could be; And we did speak only to break All in a hot and copper sky, Right up above the mast did stand, It plunged and tack'd and veer'd. The shipmates, in their sore distress would fain throw the whole guilt on the ancient Mariner :-in sign whereof they hang the dead sea-bird round his neck. The ancient Mariner beholdeth a sign in the element afar off A flash of joy. With throats unslaked, with black One after one, by the star-dogged One after anlips baked, Agape they heard me call; Gramercy! they for joy did grin, And all at once their breath drew in, And horror fol- See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more! onward without wind or tide ? It seemeth him but the skeleton of a ship. And its ribs are seen as bars on the face of the setting Sun. The spectrewoman and her death-mate, and no other on board the skeleton-ship. Like vessel, like crew! The western wave was all a flame, Betwixt us and the Sun. Moon, Too quick for groan or sigh, pang, And cursed me with his eye. Four times fifty living men PART IV. "I FEAR thee, ancient Mariner! And straight the Sun was fleck'd I fear thy skinny hand! with bars, other, His shipmates drop down dead But Life-in Death begins her work on the ancient Mariner. The weddingguest feareth that a spirit is talking And thou art long, and lank, and to him; brown, As is the ribb'd sea-sand.* "I fear thee and thy glittering eye, And thy skinny hand so brown." Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding- But the ancient This body dropt not down. Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! Are those her ribs through which the My soul in agony. Sun Did peer, as through a grate; And is that woman all her crew? Her lips were red, her looks were Her locks were yellow as gold: Who thicks man's blood with cold. Death, and Life- The naked hulk alongside came, And the twain were casting dice; “The game is done! I've won, I've The many men, so beautiful! Lived on; and so did I. I look'd upon the rotting sea, I look'd to Heaven, and tried to pray ; I closed my lids, and kept them close, Lay like a load on my weary eye Mariner assureth him of his bodily life, and proceedeth to relate bis 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. For the two last 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. In his loneliness and fixedness he The upper air burst into life! The moving Moon went up the sky, And a hundred fire-flags sheen, yearneth towards And nowhere did abide : the journeying Moon, and the stars that still so Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside By the light of the Moon he beboldeth God's creatures of the great calm. Their beauty and their happiness. He blesseth them in his beart. Her beams bemock'd the sultry main, But where the ship's huge shadow The charmed water burnt alway Beyond the shadow of the ship And when they rear'd, the elfish light Within the shadow of the ship Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, Was a flash of golden fire. O happy living things! no tongue A spring of love gush'd from my And I bless'd them unaware: To and fro they were hurried about! And the coming wind did roar more And the sails did sigh like sedge; The thick black cloud was cleft, and The Moon was at its side: Like waters shot from some high crag, in the sky and the element. The loud wind never reach'd the The bodies of the Yet now the ship moved on! They groan'd, they stirr'd, they all uprose, Nor spake, nor moved their eyes; The helmsman steer'd, the ship Yet never a breeze up blew; Sure my kind saint took pity on me, Where they were wont to do; The spell begins The self-same moment I could pray; to break. I moved, and could not feel my Around, around, flew each sweet limbs : I was so light-almost I thought that I had died in sleep, And was a blessed ghost. sound, Then darted to the Sun; Slowly the sounds came back again, ship's crew are inspired, and the ship moves on; But not by the souls of the men, nor by dæmons of earth or middle air, but by a blessed troop of angelic spirits, sent down by the invocation of the guardian saint. The lonesome spirit from the south-pole carries on the ship as far as the line, in obedience to the angelic troop, but still requireth vengeance. Sometimes, a-drooping from the sky, I heard the sky-lark sing; With their sweet jargoning! PART VI. FIRST VOICE. BUT tell me, tell me! speak again, And now 't was like all instruments, What is the OCEAN doing? Now like a lonely flute; And now it is an angel's song, That makes the Heavens be mute. SECOND VOICE. Still as a slave before his lord, His great bright eye most silently It ceased; yet still the sails made on Up to the Moon is cast A pleasant noise till noon, A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, If he may know which way to go; That to the sleeping woods all night See, brother, see! how graciously Singeth a quiet tune. Till noon we quietly sailed on, Slowly and smoothly went the ship, Moved onward from beneath. Under the keel nine fathom deep, The sails at noon left off their tune, The Sun, right up above the mast, With a short uneasy motion. Then like a pawing horse let go, in his wrong; and two of them relate, one to the other, that penance long and heavy for the an cient Mariner hath been accord ed to the Polar Spirit, who returneth southward. Two VOICES in the air. her "Is it he?" quoth one, "Is this the By him who died on cross, She looketh down on him. FIRST VOICE. But why drives on that ship so fast, SECOND VOICE. The air is cut away before, Fly, brother, fly! more high, more Or we shall be belated: I woke, and we were sailing on The dead men stood together. All stood together on the deck, The pang, the curse, with which they Had never pass'd away: I could not draw my eyes from theirs, The Mariner bath been cast into a trance; for the angelic power causeth the vessel to drive north ward faster than human life could endure The supernatural motion is retard ed; the Mariner awakes, and his penance begins anew. I view'd the ocean green, With his cruel bow he laid full low Of what had else been seen- |