THE ANCIENT MARINER.

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 from

The moon was at its edge.

one black cloud,

The thick black cloud was left, 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 .ɔpes,

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.

401

The bodies

of the ship's crew are in

spired, and the ship

moves on.

the souls of

THE ANCIENT MARINER.

"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

by the invo

cation of the guardian saint.

Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths,
And from their bodies passed.

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.

THE ANCIENT MARINER.

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.

The sails at noon left off their tune,
And the ship stood still alsò.

The sun, right up above the mast,
Had fixed 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.

How long in that same fit I lay
I have not to declare;

But ere my living life returned,
I heard, and in my soul discerned,

Two voices in the air.

"Is it he?" quoth one, "Is this the man?

By him who died on cross,

With his cruel bow he laid full low

The harmless albatross.

"The spirit who bideth by himself In the land of mist and snow,

He loved the bird that loved the man

Who shot hin with his bow."

The other was a softer voice,
As soft as honey-dew:

Quoth he, "The man hath penance done,
And penance more will do."

The lone. Bome spirit from the south pole

carries on the ship as far as the line, in obe. dience to the angelic troop, but still requir eth ven

geance.

The polar spirit's fellow-demons, the invisible inhabitants of the element, take part in his wrong, and two of them relate, one to the other, that penance long and heavy for the ancient mariiner hath been accorded to the po⚫ lat spirit, who returneth southward.

c 2

404

THE ANCIENT MARINER.

PART VI.

The mari

ner bath

FIRST VOICE.

BUT tell me, tell me! speak again,

Thy soft response renewing,

What makes that ship drive on so fast?
What is the ocean doing?

SECOND VOICE.

Stili as a slave before his lord,
The ocean hath no blast;

His great bright eye most silently
Up to the moon is cast,

If he may know which way to go,
For she guides him smooth or grim.
See, brother, see! how graciously
She looketh down on him!

FIRST VOICE.

But why drives on that ship so fast,

been cast in- Without or wave or wind?

to a trance;

for the angelic power causeth the

vessel to

SECOND VOICE.

drive north. The air is cut away before,

ward faster

than human And closes from behind.

life could

endure.

Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high!
Or we shall be belated!

For slow and slow that ship will go,
When the mariner's trance is abated.

The super- I woke, and we were sailing on,

natural motion is re

tarded; the mariner

awakes, and

As in a gentle weather;

"T was night, calm night, the moon was high;

his penance The dead men. stood together.

begins

anew.

THE ANCIENT MARINER.

All stood together on the deck,
For a charnel-dungeon fitter;
All fixed on me their stony eyes,
That in the moon did glitter.

The pang, the curse, with which they died,
Had never passed away;

I could not draw my eyes from theirs,
Nor turn them up to pray.

And now this spell was snapt; once more

I viewed the ocean green,

And looked far forth, yet little saw

Of what had else been seen;

Like one that on a lonesome road

Doth walk in fear and dread,

And, having once turned round, walks on,
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 fanned 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 sailed softly too;
Sweetly, sweetly, blew the breeze,-
On me alone it blew.

405

The curse is finally czpiated;