The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out:
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea,
Off shot the spectre-bark.

We listened and looked sideways up!
Fear at my heart, as at a cup,

My life-blood seemed to sip!

The stars were dim, and thick the night,
The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed

white;

From the sails the dew did drip

Till clombe above the eastern bar

The horned Moon, with one bright star
Within the nether tip.

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

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

No twilight within the courts of the sun.

At the rising of the Moon.

One after another,

Four times fifty living men,

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

His shipmates drop down dead;

But LIFE-IN- The souls did from their bodies fly,

DEATH be

gins her work

on the ancient Mariner.

They fled to bliss or woe!

And every soul, it passed me by,
Like the whizz of my CROSS-BOW!

THE RIME

OF

THE ANCIENT MARINER.

PART THE FOURTH.

"I 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!

And never a saint took pity on

My soul in agony.

The weddingguest 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.

*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.

VOL. II.

C

He despiseth The many men, so beautiful!

the creatures

of the calm.

And envieth that they should live,

and so many lie dead.

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.

But the curse The cold sweat melted from their limbs,

liveth for him eye of

in the

the dead men.

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 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 no where did abide :

Softly she was going up,

And a star or two beside

In his loneliness and fixedness he yearneth towards the journeying Moon, and the stars that still

sojourn, yet still move on

ward; and every where 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.

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.

By the light of the Moon he beholdeth

God's creatures of the great calm.