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One after another,

His shipmates drop down dead.

But Life-inDeath begins her work on the ancient Mariner.

One after one, by the star-dogged Moon,
Too quick for groan or sigh,

Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,
And cursed me with his eye.

Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.

The souls did from their bodies fly,-
They fled to bliss or woe!

And every soul, it passed me by,
Like the whizz of my cross-bow!

The wedding guest feareth that a spirit is talking to him.

But the ancient Mariner assureth him of his bodily life, and proceedeth to relate his horrible

penance.

PART IV.

FEAR thee, ancient Mariner !

I fear thy skinny hand!

And thou art long, and lank, and brown,

As is the ribbed sea-sand.'

I fear thee and thy glittering eye,
And thy skinny hand, so brown."-
Fear not, fear not, thou wedding-guest!
This body dropt not down.

Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!

1 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.

And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.

The many men, so beautiful!

And they all dead did lie :

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

I looked upon the rotting sea,
And drew my eyes away;

I looked upon the rotting deck,
And there the dead men lay.

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,
Nor rot nor reek did they :

The look with which they looked on me
Had never passed away.

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

But oh! 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.

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.

V

In his loneliness and

fixedness he yearneth to

wards the journeying

Moon, and

The moving Moon went up the sky,

And no where did abide :

Softly she was going up,

And a star or two beside

the stars that still sojourn, yet still move onward; and everywhere 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 God's creatures of the great calm.

Their beauty and their happiness.

He blesseth them in his heart.

The spell begins to break

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.

The selfsame moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.

PART V.

H 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.

The silly buckets on the deck,
That had so long remained,

I dreamt that they were filled with dew;
And when I awoke, it rained.

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.

By grace of the holy Mother, the ancient Mariner is refreshed with rain.

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.

And soon I heard a roaring wind:
It did not come anear;

But with its sound it shook the sails,
That were so thin and sere.

The
air burst into life!
upper
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.

He heareth sounds and seeth strange sights and commotions in the sky and the element.

The bodies of the ship's

crew are

inspired, and the ship

moves on;

But not by the souls of the men, nor by demons of earth or middle air,

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:

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 up blew ;

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 nought to me.

"I fear thee, ancient Mariner!"
Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest !
'Twas not those souls that fled in pain,

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