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But Life-in-Death The souls did from their bodies fly,- Her beams bemock'd the sultry main,
begins her work
They fled to bliss or wo!

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the ancient

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Like April hoar-frost spread;

But where the ship's huge shadow lay,

The charmed water burnt alway
A still and awful red.

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[brown, They moved in tracks of shining tures of the great

And thou art long, and lank, and
As is the ribb'd sea-sand.*

"I fear thee and thy glittering eye,
And thy skinny hand so brown.'

But the ancient Fear not, fear not, thou wedding

mariner assureth

him of his bodily

guest!

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Alone, alone, all, all alone,

Alone on a wide, wide sea!

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

He despiseth the The many men, so beautiful!

creatures of the calm.

And envieth that they should live, and so many lie dead.

And they all dead did lie:

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Was a flash of golden fire.

O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare;

A spring of love gush'd from my
heart,

And a thousand thousand slimy things And I bless'd them unaware:

Lived on; and so did I.

I look'd upon the rotting sea,
And drew my eyes away;
I look'd upon the rotting deck,
And there the dead men lay.

I look'd to heaven, and tried to pray;
But or ever a prayer had gush'd,
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.

Bat the curse liv- The cold sweat melted from their
eth for him in the

eye of the dead

men.

In his loneliness

and fixedness he yearneth towards the journeying moon, and the

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calm.

Their beauty rod their happiness.

He blesseth them in bis heart.

The spell begin to break.

By grace of the holy mother, the ancient mariner

I dreamt that they were fill'd with is refreshed with

dew;

And when I awoke it rain'd.

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

Sure I had drunken in my dreams,

An orphan's curse would drag to hell And still my body drank.

A spirit from on high;

But O! more horrible than that

Is a 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

stars that still so-
journ, 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.

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;

rain.

He heareth

sounds and seeth strange sights and

But with its sound it shook the sails, commotions in
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.

For the last two lines of this stanza, I am indebted to Mr. Wordsworth. It was on a delightful walk from Nether And the coming wind did roar more Stowey to Dulverton, with him and his sister, in the autumn of 1797, that this poem was planned, and in part composed

loud,

And the sails did sigh like sedge;

the sky and the element.

And the rain pour'd down from one It ceased; yet still the sails made on

black cloud;

The moon was at its edge.

A pleasant noise till noon,

A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June,

The thick black cloud was cleft, and That to the sleeping woods all night

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Yet now the ship moved on!

Beneath the lightning and the moon The dead men gave a groan.

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.

Under the keel nine fathom deep,
From the land of mist and snow,
The spirit slid: and it was he
That made the ship to go.

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the line, in obedience to the

The sails at noon left off their tune, angelic troop, b still requireth vengeance.

They groan'd, they stirr'd, they all And the ship stood still also.

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The sun, right up above the mast,
Had fix'd her to the ocean:

But in a minute she 'gan to stir,
With a short uneasy motion-
Backwards and forwards half her
length

With a short uneasy motion.

Then like a pawing horse let go,
She made a sudden bound:
It flung the blood into my head,
And I fell down in a swound.

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Fly, brother, fly! more high, more The moonlight steep'd in silentness,

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And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

But soon there breathed a wind on me,
Nor sound nor motion made:
Its path was not upon the sea,
In ripple or in shade.

It raised my hair, it fann'd my cheek
Like a meadow gale of spring-
It mingled strangely with my fears
Yet it felt like a welcoming.
Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,
Yet she sail'd softly, too:
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze-
On me alone it blew.

And the ancient O! dream of joy! this, indeed,
The light-house top I see?

mariner beholdeth his native country.

Is this the hill? is this the kirk? Is this my own countrée ?

This seraph band, each waved his hand:

It was a heavenly sight!

They stood as signals to the land,
Each one a lovely light;

This seraph band, each waved his hand,

No voice did they impart-
No voice; but O! the silence sank
Like music on my heart.

But soon I heard the dash of oars,
I heard the pilot's cheer;
My head was turn'd perforce away,
And I saw a boat appear.

The pilot and the pilot's boy,

I heard them coming fast:

Dear Lord in heaven! it was a joy

The dead men could not blast.

I saw a third-I heard his voice:
It is the hermit good!

He singeth loud his godly hymns
That he makes in the wood.
He'll shrive my soul, he'll wash away
The albatross's blood.

PART VII.

THIS hermit good lives in that wood
Which slopes down to the sea.
How loudly his sweet voice he rears!
He loves to talk with mariners
That come from a far countrée.

And

appear in their own forms of light.

The hermit of the wood.

He kneels at morn, and noon, and "Ha! ha!" quoth he, "full plain I

eve

He hath a cushion plump:

It is the moss that wholly hides

The rotted old oak stump.

see,

The devil knows how to row."

And now, all in my own countrée, I stood on the firm land!

The skiff-boat near'd: I heard them The hermit stepp'd forth from the

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The ship sudden By sinketh.

said

"And they answer not our cheer! The planks look'd warp'd! and see those sails,

How thin they are and sere!
I never saw aught like to them,
Unless perchance it were

"Brown skeletons of leaves that lag My forest brook along;

When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow, And the owlet whoops to the wolf

below,

That eats the she-wolf's young."

"Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look(The pilot made reply,)

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What manner of man art thou ?"

Forthwith this frame of mine was wrench'd

With a woful agony,

Which forced me to begin my tale;
And then it left me free.

Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns:

And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.

I pass, like night, from land to land:
I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,

I know the man that must hear me : To him my tale I teach.

I am a-fear'd.""Push on, push on!" What loud uproar bursts from that Said the hermit cheerily.

The boat came closer to the ship,
But I nor spake nor stirr❜d;
The boat came close beneath the ship,
And straight a sound was heard.

Under the water it rumbled on,
Still louder and more dread:

It reach'd the ship, it split the bay;
The ship went down like lead.

The ancient ma- Stunn'd by that loud and dreadful

riner is saved in the pilot's boat.

sound,

Which sky and ocean smote,

Like one that hath been seven days drown'd,

My body lay afloat;

But swift as dreams, myself I found Within the pilot's boat.

Upon the whirl, where sank the ship,
The boat spun round and round;
And all was still, save that the hill
Was telling of the sound.

I moved my lips-the pilot shriek'd,
And fell down in a fit;
The holy hermit raised his eyes,
And pray'd where he did sit.

I took the oars: the pilot's boy,

Who now doth crazy go,

door!

The wedding-guests are there
But in the garden-bower the bride
And bridemaids singing are:
And hark! the little vesper-bell,
Which biddeth me to prayer.

O wedding-guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide, wide sea:
So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.

O sweeter than the marriage-feast,
'Tis sweeter far to me,
To walk together to the kirk,
With a goodly company!—

To walk together to the kirk,
And all together pray,

and the penance of life falls en bim.

While each to his great Father bends,
Old men and babes, and loving friends,
And youths and maidens gay!

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou wedding-guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man, and bird, and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best All things, both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.

The mariner, whose eye is bright,

Laugh'd loud and long, and all the Whose beard with age is hoar,

while

liis eyes went to and fro,

Is gone and now the wedding-guest Turn'd from the bridegroom's door.

And ever and anon throughout his future life an agony constraiaeth him to travel from land to land.

And to teach, by his own example, love and reverence to all things that God made and loveth.

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THE first part of the following poem was written in the year one thousand seven hundred and ninetyseven, at Stowey in the county of Somerset. The second part, after my return from Germany, in the year one thousand eight hundred, at Keswick, Cumberland. Since the latter date, my poetic powers have been, till very lately, in a state of suspended animation. But as, in my very first conception of the tale, I had the whole present to my mind, with the wholeness, no less than with the loveliness of a vision, I trust that I shall yet be able to embody in verse the three parts yet to come.

It is probable, that if the poem had been finished
at either of the former periods, or if even the first
and second part had been published in the year
1800, the impression of its originality would have
been much greater than I dare at present expect.
But for this, I have only my own indolence to
blame. The dates are mentioned for the exclusive
purpose of precluding charges of plagiarism or ser-
vile imitation from myself. For there is amongst
us a set of critics, who seem to hold, that every
possible thought and image is traditional; who
have no notion that there are such things as fountains
in the world, small as well as great; and who
would, therefore, charitably derive every rill they
behold flowing, from a perforation made in some
other man's tank. I am confident, however, that
as far as the present poem is concerned, the cele-
brated poets whose writings I might be suspected
of having imitated, either in particular passages, or
in the tone and the spirit of the whole, would be
among the first to vindicate me from the charge,
and who, on any striking coincidence, would per-
mit me to address them in this doggerel version of
two monkish Latin hexameters.

'Tis mine, and it is likewise yours;
But an' if this will not do,

Let it be mine, good friend! for 1
Am the poorer of the two.

I have only to add, that the metre of the Christadel is not, properly speaking, irregular, though it may seem so from its being founded on a new principle: namely, that of counting in each line the accents, not the syllables. Though the latter may vary from seven to twelve, yet in each line the accents will be found to be only four. Nevertheless, this occasional variation in number of syllables is not introduced wantonly, or for the mere ends of convenience, but in correspondence with some transition, in the nature of the imagery or passion.

To the edition of 1816.

PART I.

"Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,

And the owls have awaken'd the crowing cock:
Tu-whit!-Tu-whoo!

And hark, again! the crowing cock,
How drowsily it crew.

Sir Leoline, the baron rich,

Hath a toothless mastiff, which

From her kennel beneath the rock
Maketh answer to the clock,

Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour;
Ever and aye, by shine and shower,
Sixteen short howls, not over-loud;
Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.

Is the night chilly and dark?
The night is chilly, but not dark.
The thin gray cloud is spread on high,
It covers but not hides the sky.
The moon is behind, and at the full;
And yet she looks both small and dull.
The night is chill, the cloud is gray:
"Tis a month before the month of May,
And the spring comes slowly up this way.

The lovely lady, Christabel,

Whom her father loves so well,
What makes her in the wood so late,
A furlong from the castle gate?
She had dreams all yesternight
Of her own betrothed knight;

And she in the midnight wood will pray
For the weal of her lover that's far away.

She stole along, she nothing spoke,
The sighs she heaved were soft and low,
And naught was green upon the oak,
But moss and rarest misletoe:
She kneels beneath the huge oak tree,
And in silence prayeth she.
The lady sprang up suddenly,
The lovely lady, Christabel!
It moan'd as near as near could be,
But what it is she cannot tell.-
On the other side it seems to be,
Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree

The night is chill; the forest bare;
Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?
There is not wind enough in the air
To move away the ringlet curl
From the lovely lady's cheek-
There is not wind enough to twirl
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky

Hush, beating heart of Christabel !
Jesu, Maria, shield her well!
She folded her arms beneath her cloak,
And stole to the other side of the oak.
What sees she there?

There she sees a damsel bright,
Drest in a silken robe of white,

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