But the an- Fear not, fear not, thou wedding-guest!

nec asseth This body dropt not down.

bim of his bodily life, and procecdeth to relate hus horrible

penance.

He despis

eth the

Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.

The many men, so beautiful!

Creatures of And they all dead did lie !

the calm;

And envi

eth that

And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on and so did I.

I looked upon the rotting sea, they should And drew my eyes away; live, and so I looked upon the rotting deck, And there the dead men lay.

many lie dead.

But the

curse liveth

I looked to heaven and tried to pray;
But or ever a prayer had gusht,
A wicked whisper came and made
My heart as dry as dust.

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
Had never passed away.

An orphan's curse would drag to hell
A spirt from on high;

But, O, more horrible than that

Is the curse in a dead man's eye!

Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.

The moving moon went up the sky,

And nowhere did abide;

Softly she was going up,

And a star or two beside.

In his lone liness 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,
Like April hoar-frost spread;

But where the ship's huge shadow lay,
The charmed water burnt alway
A still and awful red.

Beyond the shadow of the ship,

I watched the water-snakes;

They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.

Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire ;

Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,

They coiled and swam, and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.

O happy living things', no tongue
Their beauty might declare:

A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure, my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.

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.

The spell begins to break.

The selfsame moment I could pray;

And from my neck so free

The albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.

the Holy

PART V.

O SLEEP! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!

To Mary Queen the praise be given !
She sent the gentle sleep from heaven,
That slid into my soul.

By grace of The silly buckets on the deck,
Mother, the That had so long remained,

ancient

refreshed

mariner is I dreamt that they were filled with dew, And when I woke it rained.

wili rain.

My lips were wet, my throat was cold,
My garments all were dank;

Sure, I had drunken in my dreams,
And still my body drank.

I moved, and could not feel my limbs,
I was so light, almost

I thought that I had died in sleep,
And was a blessed ghost.

He heareth And soon I heard a roaring wind;
It did not come a-near;

sounds and

seeth

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 to and fro, and in and out,
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 frorn one black cloud,
The moon was at its edge.

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,
A river steep and wide.

The loud wind never reached the ship,

Yet now the ship moved on!
Beneath the lightning and the moon
The dead men gave a groan.

They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;

It had been strange, even in a dream,
To have seen those dead men rise.

The helmsman steered, the ship moved on,
Yet never a breeze upblew,

The mariners all 'gan work the ropes,
Where they were wont to do;

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.

The bodies of the ship' crew are inspired, and the ship

moves on.

the souls of

"I fear thee, ancient mariner ! "
Be calm, thou wedding-guest!

But not by "T was not those souls that fled in pain
Which to their corses came again,

the men, nor by demous of

earth or

middle air, but by a blessed

But a troop of spirits blest.

For when it dawned, they dropped their arms, gelic spirits And clustered round the mast;

troop of an

Bent down

ca.ion of the

by the invo- Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, And from their bodies passed.

guardian

saint.

Around, around, flew each sweet sound,
Then darted to the sun;

Slowly the sounds came back again,

Now mixed, now one by one.

Sometimes a-dropping from the sky
I heard the sky-lark sing;

Sometimes all little birds that are,

How they seemed to fill the sea and air

With their sweet jargoning!

And now 't was like all instruments,

Now like a lonely flute,

And now it is an angel's song,

That makes the heavens be mute.

It ceased; yet still the sails made on
A pleasant noise till noon,

A noise like of a hidden brook,

In the leafy month of June,

That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.

Till noon we quietly sailed on,
Yet never a breeze did breathe:
Slowly and smoothly went the ship,
Moved onward from beneath.