The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out: 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 One after one, by the star-dogged Moon Each turned his face with a ghastly pang, Four times fifty living men, No twilight within the courts of the sun. At the rising of the Moon. One after another, His shipmates drop down dead; But LIFE-IN-The souls did from their bodies fly, DEATH work ginthernet They fled to bliss or woe! Mariner. 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.* 4 I fear thee and thy glittering eye, Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest! This body dropt not down. Alone, alone, all, all alone, 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 they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I. And envieth I looked upon the rotting sea, that they should live, And drew my eyes away; ind dead many I looked upon the rotting deck, lie And there the dead men lay. I looked to Heaven, and tried to pray; 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 in the eye of 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 But oh! more horrible than that Is a curse in a dead man's eye! Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, The moving Moon went up the sky, 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, Beyond the shadow of the ship, They moved in tracks of shining white, By the light of the Moon he beholdeth God's creatures of the great calm. |