With throats unslaked, with black One after one, by the star-dogged One after an lips baked, It seemeth him but the skeleton of a ship. And its ribs are scen as bars on the face of the setting Sun. The spectrewoman and her death-mate, and no other on board the skeleton-ship. Like vessel, like crew! The western wave was all a flame, Betwixt us and the Sun. Moon, Too quick for groan or sigh, pang, And cursed me with his eye. Four times fifty living men PART IV. "I FEAR thee, ancient Mariner! And straight the Sun was fleck'd I fear thy skinny hand! with bars, (Heaven's Mother send us grace!) As if through a dungeon-grate he peer'd With broad and burning face. other, And thou art long, and lank, and to him; brown, As is the ribb'd sea-sand.* "I fear thee and thy glittering eye, And thy skinny hand so brown.". Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding- But the ancient Did peer, as through a grate; And is that woman all her crew? Her lips were red, her looks were Her locks were yellow as gold: Who thicks man's blood with cold. Death, and Life- The naked hulk alongside came, The many men, so beautiful! Lived on; and so did I. I look'd upon the rotting sea, I look'd to Heaven, and tried to pray; I closed my lids, and kept them close, Lay like a load on my weary eye At one stride comes the Dark; We listen'd and look'd sideways up! night, From the sails the dew did drip- star Within the nether tip. The cold sweat melted from their Mariner assureth him of his bodily life, and proccedeth to relate his horrible penance. He despiseth the creatures of the calm. And envieth tha: they should live, and so many lie dead. [me But the curse liv eth for him in the eye of the dead men. Nor rot nor reek did they; An orphan's curse would drag to Hell For the two last lines of this stanza, I am indebted to Mr. Wordsworth. It was on a delightful walk from Nother Stowey to Dulverton, with him and his sister, in the Autumn of 1797 that this Poem was planned, and in part composed. The upper air burst into life! In his loneliness The moving Moon went up the sky, And a hundred fire-flags sheen, and fixedness he yearneth towards the journeying Moon, and the stars that still so And nowhere did abide : Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside 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. By the light of the Moon he becreatures of the boldeth God's great calm. Her beams bemock'd the sultry main, The charmed water burnt alway Beyond the shadow of the ship And when they rear'd, the elfish light Within the shadow of the ship Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, Was a flash of golden fire. Their beauty and O happy living things! no tongue their happiness. Their beauty might declare : He blesseth them in his heart. A spring of love gush'd from my And I bless'd them unaware: To and fro they were hurried about! And the coming wind did roar more And the sails did sigh like sedge; The Moon was at its edge. The thick black cloud was cleft, and The Moon was at its side: Like waters shot from some high crag, in the sky and the element. The loud wind never reach'd the The bodies of the ship, Yet now the ship moved on! They groan'd, they stirr'd, they all uprose, Nor spake, nor moved their eyes; The helmsman steer'd, the ship Yet never a breeze up blew; Sure my kind saint took pity on me, Where they were wont to do; The spell begins The self-same moment I could pray; to break. is refreshed with I dreamt that they were fill'd with And when I awoke, it rain'd. rain They raised their limbs like lifeless -We were a ghastly crew. The body of my brother's son ship's crew are inspired, and the ship moves on But not by the souls of the men, "I fear thee, ancient Mariner!" pain, Which to their corses came again, For when it dawn'd-they dropp'd their arms, My lips were wet, my throat was cold, And cluster'd round the mast; My garments all were dank; Sure I had drunken in my dreams, And still my body drank. Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, And from their bodies pass'd. I moved, and could not feel my Around, around, flew each sweet limbs : I was so light-almost I thought that I had died in sleep, sound, Then darted to the Sun; Slowly the sounds came back again, earth or middle air, but by a blessed troop of angelic spirits, sent down by the invocation of the guardian saint. The lonesome spirit from the south-pole carries on the ship as far as the line, in obedience to the angelic troop, but still requireth vengeance. Sometimes, a-drooping from the sky, With their sweet jargoning! 1 And now 't was like all instruments, And now it is an angel's song, PART VI. FIRST VOICE. BUT tell me, tell me! speak again, What is the OCEAN doing? SECOND VOICE. Still as a slave before his lord, It ceased; yet still the sails made on Up to the Moon is cast— A pleasant noise till noon, A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, If he may know which way to go; That to the sleeping woods all night See, brother, see! how graciously Till noon we quietly sailed on, Slowly and smoothly went the ship, Moved onward from beneath. Under the keel nine fathom deep, The Sun, right up above the mast, With a short uneasy motion. Then like a pawing horse let go, other, that pen ance long and Two VOICES in the air. her "Is it he?" quoth one, "Is this the heavy for the an- By him who died on cross, cient Mariner hath been accorded to the Polar Spirit, who returneth southward. I view'd the ocean green, With his cruel bow he laid full low Of what had else been seen- The harbor-bay was clear as glass, And on the bay the moonlight lay, He singeth loud his godly hymns away The Albatross's blood. PART VII. THIS Hermit good lives in that wood The Hermit of How loudly his sweet voice he rears! He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve He hath a cushion plump: The skiff-boat near'd: I heard them 66 Why this is strange, I trow! Where are those lights so many and fair, The rock shone bright, the kirk no That signal made but now?" less That stands above the rock: The moonlight steep'd in silentness And the bay was white with silent The angelic spir- Till, rising from the same, its leave the dead bodies, And appear in their own forms of light. Strange, by my faith!" the Hermit Approacheth the "And they answer not our cheer! How thin they are and sere! Full many shapes that shadows were, Unless perchance it were A little distance from the prow Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat; A man all light, a seraph-man, "Brown skeletons of leaves that lag When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow, That eats the she-wolf's young." " Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look- I am a-fear'd"- This seraph band, each waved his Said the Hermit cheerily. hand: It was a heavenly sight! They stood as signals to the land This seraph band, each waved his The boat came closer to the ship, Under the water it rumbled on, No voice did they impart- The ship suddenly sinketh. Stunn'd by that loud and dreadful The ancient Mariner is saved in the Pilot's boat. My head was turn'd perforce away, Like one that hath been seven days And I saw a boat appear. The Pilot and the Pilot's boy, I saw a third-I heard his voice: drown'd My body lay afloat; But swift as dreams, myself I found Upon the whirl, where sank the ship, The ancient Ma His eyes went to and fro. But in the garden-bower the bride O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been So lonely 't was, that God himself Scarce seemed there to be. "Ha! ha!" quoth he, "full plain I see, O sweeter than the marriage-feast, And now, all in my own countrée, The Hermit stepp'd forth from the And scarcely he could stand. “O shrive me, shrive me, holy man!" Einer earnestly en- The Hermit cross'd his brow. reateth the Her mit to shrive him; and the penance of life falls on him. And ever and anon throughout his future life an agony constraineth him to travel from land to land, "Say quick," quoth he, “I bid thee say -What manner of man art thou?" Forthwith this frame of mine was With a woful agony, "Tis sweeter far to me, To walk together to the kirk, While each to his great Father bends, And youths and maidens gay! Farewell, farewell! but this I tell Both man and bird and beast. Which forced me to begin my tale; He prayeth best, who loveth best And then it left me free. 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 : All things both great and small; The Mariner, whose eye is bright, He went like one that hath been What loud uproar bursts from that And is of sense forlorn, And to teach, by his own example, love and reverence to all things that God made and loveth. Christabel. PREFACE.* 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 THE first part of the following poem was written in for this, I have only my own indolence to blame. the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety- The dates are mentioned for the exclusive purpose seven, at Stowey in the county of Somerset. The of precluding charges of plagiarism or servile imisecond part, after my return from Germany, in the tation from myself. For there is amongst us a set of year one thousand eight hundred, at Keswick, Cum- critics, who seem to hold, that every possible thought berland. Since the latter date, my poetic powers and image is traditional; who have no notion that there 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 To the edition of 1816. 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 perfora tion made in some other man's tank. I am confident, however, that as far as the present poem is concerned, the celebrated 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 |