But Life-in-Death The souls did from their bodies fly,- Her beams bemock'd the sultry main, the ancient Like April hoar-frost spread; But where the ship's huge shadow lay, The charmed water burnt alway [brown, They moved in tracks of shining tures of the great And thou art long, and lank, and "I fear thee and thy glittering eye, But the ancient Fear not, fear not, thou wedding mariner assureth him of his bodily guest! Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide, wide sea! And never a saint took pity on He despiseth the The many men, so beautiful! creatures of the calm. And envieth that they should live, and so many lie dead. And they all dead did lie: Was a flash of golden fire. O happy living things! no tongue A spring of love gush'd from my And a thousand thousand slimy things And I bless'd them unaware: 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 Bat the curse liv- The cold sweat melted from their eye of the dead men. In his loneliness and fixedness he yearneth towards the journeying moon, and the calm. Their beauty rod their happiness. He blesseth them in bis heart. The spell begin to break. By grace of the holy mother, the ancient mariner I dreamt that they were fill'd with is refreshed with dew; And when I awoke it rain'd. My lips were wet, my throat was cold, Sure I had drunken in my dreams, An orphan's curse would drag to hell And still my body drank. A spirit from on high; But O! 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, Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside stars that still so- I moved, and could not feel my limbs : I was so light-almost I thought that I had died in sleep, And soon I heard a roaring wind: rain. He heareth sounds and seeth strange sights and But with its sound it shook the sails, commotions in The upper air burst into life! To and fro they were hurried about! For the last two lines of this stanza, I am indebted to Mr. Wordsworth. It was on a delightful walk from Nether And the coming wind did roar more Stowey to Dulverton, with him and his sister, in the autumn of 1797, that this poem was planned, and in part composed loud, And the sails did sigh like sedge; the sky and the element. And the rain pour'd down from one It ceased; yet still the sails made on black cloud; The moon was at its edge. A pleasant noise till noon, A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, The thick black cloud was cleft, and That to the sleeping woods all night Yet now the ship moved on! Beneath the lightning and the moon The dead men gave a groan. Singeth a quiet tune. Till noon we quietly sailed on, Under the keel nine fathom deep, the line, in obedience to the The sails at noon left off their tune, angelic troop, b still requireth vengeance. They groan'd, they stirr'd, they all And the ship stood still also. The sun, right up above the mast, But in a minute she 'gan to stir, With a short uneasy motion. Then like a pawing horse let go, Fly, brother, fly! more high, more The moonlight steep'd in silentness, And turns no more his head; But soon there breathed a wind on me, It raised my hair, it fann'd my cheek And the ancient O! dream of joy! this, indeed, mariner beholdeth his native country. Is this the hill? is this the kirk? Is this my own countrée ? This seraph band, each waved his hand: It was a heavenly sight! They stood as signals to the land, This seraph band, each waved his hand, No voice did they impart- But soon I heard the dash of oars, 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: He singeth loud his godly hymns PART VII. THIS hermit good lives in that wood And appear in their own forms of light. The hermit of the wood. He kneels at morn, and noon, and "Ha! ha!" quoth he, "full plain I eve He hath a cushion plump: It is the moss that wholly hides The rotted old oak stump. see, The devil knows how to row." And now, all in my own countrée, I stood on the firm land! The skiff-boat near'd: I heard them The hermit stepp'd forth from the The ship sudden By sinketh. said "And they answer not our cheer! The planks look'd warp'd! and see those sails, How thin they are and sere! "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,) What manner of man art thou ?" Forthwith this frame of mine was wrench'd 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 : To him my tale I teach. I am a-fear'd.""Push on, push on!" What loud uproar bursts from that Said the hermit cheerily. The boat came closer to the ship, Under the water it rumbled on, It reach'd the ship, it split the bay; The ancient ma- Stunn'd 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 drown'd, My body lay afloat; But swift as dreams, myself I found Within the pilot's boat. Upon the whirl, where sank the ship, I moved my lips-the pilot shriek'd, I took the oars: the pilot's boy, Who now doth crazy go, door! The wedding-guests are there O wedding-guest! this soul hath been O sweeter than the marriage-feast, To walk together to the kirk, and the penance of life falls en bim. While each to his great Father bends, Farewell, farewell! but this I tell 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, Laugh'd loud and long, and all the Whose beard with age is hoar, while liis eyes went to and fro, Is gone and now the wedding-guest Turn'd from the bridegroom's door. And ever and anon throughout his future life an agony constraiaeth him to travel from land to land. And to teach, by his own example, love and reverence to all things that God made and loveth. 563 THE first part of the following poem was written in the year one thousand seven hundred and ninetyseven, at Stowey in the county of Somerset. The second part, after my return from Germany, in the year one thousand eight hundred, at Keswick, Cumberland. Since the latter date, my poetic powers 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 'Tis mine, and it is likewise yours; Let it be mine, good friend! for 1 I have only to add, that the metre of the Christadel is not, properly speaking, irregular, though it may seem so from its being founded on a new principle: namely, that of counting in each line the accents, not the syllables. Though the latter may vary from seven to twelve, yet in each line the accents will be found to be only four. Nevertheless, this occasional variation in number of syllables is not introduced wantonly, or for the mere ends of convenience, but in correspondence with some transition, in the nature of the imagery or passion. To the edition of 1816. PART I. "Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, And the owls have awaken'd the crowing cock: And hark, again! the crowing cock, Sir Leoline, the baron rich, Hath a toothless mastiff, which From her kennel beneath the rock Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; Is the night chilly and dark? The lovely lady, Christabel, Whom her father loves so well, And she in the midnight wood will pray She stole along, she nothing spoke, The night is chill; the forest bare; Hush, beating heart of Christabel ! There she sees a damsel bright, |