This seraph-band, each waved his hand: They stood as signals to the land, This seraph-band, each waved his hand, No voice did they impart No voice; but oh! 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 turned perforce away, The pilot and the pilot's boy, I heard them coming fast: 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 shrieve my soul, he 'll wash away The Albatross's blood. PART VII. The hermit of the "THIS hermit good lives in that wood wood Which slopes down to the sea. How loudly his sweet voice he rears! He loves to talk with marineres That come from a far countree. He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve— It is the moss that wholly hides The rotted old oak-stump. The skiff-boat neared: I heard them talk, Where are those lights so many and fair, 'Strange, by my faith!' the hermit said- 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, 'Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look (The pilot made reply) I am a-feared.'- Push on, push on!' Said the hermit cheerily. The boat came closer to the ship, The boat came close beneath the ship, Under the water it rumbled on, It reached the ship, it split the bay; approach- The ship suddenly sinketh. The Ancient Ma- Stunned 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 drowned My body lay afloat; But swift as dreams, myself I found Upon the whirl where sank the ship I moved my lips-the pilot shrieked The holy hermit raised his eyes, I took the oars; the pilot's boy, Who now doth crazy go, Laughed loud and long; and all the while Ha ha!' quoth he, 'full plain I see, And now, all in my own countree, I stood on the firm land! The hermit stepped forth from the boat, The Ancient Ma O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!' riner earnestly entreateth the hermit to shrieve The hermit crossed his brow: him and the penance of life falls on him. Say quick,' quoth he, 'I bid thee say— What manner of man art thou?' Forth with this frame of mine was wrenched With a woful agony, Which forced me to begin my tale- Since then, at an uncertain hour, And till my ghastly tale is told I pass, like night, from land to land; I know the man that must hear me- What loud uproar bursts from that door! The wedding-guests are there; But in the garden-bower the Bride And hark the little vesper bell, O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been So lonely 't was, that God himself O sweeter than the marriage-feast, "T is sweeter far to me, To walk together to the kirk, And ever and anon throughout his future life an agony constraineth him to travel from land to land; and to teach by his own example, love and rever that God made and loveth. While each to his great Father bends— Farewell! farewell! but this I tell ence to all things, To thee, thou Wedding-Guest! He prayeth well who loveth well. Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best who loveth best The Mariner, whose eye is bright, Is gone. And now the Wedding-Guest He went like one that hath been stunned, A sadder and a wiser man He rose the morrow morn. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. ULALUME. THE skies they were ashen and sober; It was night in the lonesome October It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, |