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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 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,
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 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—
He hath a cushion plump:

It is the moss that wholly hides

The rotted old oak-stump.

The skiff-boat neared: I heard them talk,
Why, this is strange, I trow!

Where are those lights so many and fair,
That signal made but now?'

'Strange, by my faith!' the hermit said-
'And they answered not our cheer!
The planks looked warped! 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)

I am a-feared.'- Push on, push on!'

Said the hermit cheerily.

The boat came closer to the ship,
But I nor spake nor stirred;

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 reached the ship, it split the bay;
The ship went down like lead.

approach-
eth the ship with
wonder.

The ship suddenly

sinketh.

The Ancient Ma- Stunned by that loud and dreadful

riner is saved in

the pilot's boat.

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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
Within the pilot's boat.

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

I moved my lips-the pilot shrieked
And fell down in a fit;

The holy hermit raised his eyes,
And prayed where he did sit.

I took the oars; the pilot's boy,

Who now doth crazy go,

Laughed loud and long; and all the while
His eyes went to and fro:

Ha ha!' quoth he, 'full plain I see,
The Devil knows how to row.'

And now, all in my own countree,

I stood on the firm land!

The hermit stepped forth from the boat,
And scarcely he could stand.

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.

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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-
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.

What loud uproar bursts from that door!

The wedding-guests are there;

But in the garden-bower the Bride
And bride-maids 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 't was, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.

O sweeter than the marriage-feast,

"T is 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 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—
Old men, and babes, and loving friends,
And youths and maidens gay!

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

The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,

Is gone. And now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the Bridegroom's door.

He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn;

A sadder and a wiser man

He rose the morrow morn.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

ULALUME.

THE skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crispèd and sere,
The leaves they were withering and sere;

It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;

It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir:

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