The Rime of the Ancient Mariner | Page 6

night, the Moon was high;
The dead men stood together.
All stood together on the deck,
For a charnel-dungeon fitter:
All
fixed on me their stony eyes,
That in the Moon did glitter.
The pang, the curse, with which they died,
Had never passed away:

I could not draw my eyes from theirs,
Nor turn them up to pray.
And now this spell was snapt: once more
I viewed the ocean green.

And looked far forth, yet little saw
Of what had else been seen--
Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And
having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;

Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
But soon there breathed a wind on me,
Nor sound nor motion made:

Its path was not upon the sea,
In ripple or in shade.
It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek
Like a meadow-gale of spring--

It mingled strangely with my fears,
Yet it felt like a welcoming.
Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,
Yet she sailed softly too:
Sweetly,
sweetly blew the breeze--
On me alone it blew.
Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed
The light-house top I see?
Is this
the hill? is this the kirk?
Is this mine own countree!
We drifted o'er the harbour-bar,
And I with sobs did pray--
O let me
be awake, my God!
Or let me sleep alway.
The harbour-bay was clear as glass,
So smoothly it was strewn!

And on the bay the moonlight lay,
And the shadow of the moon.
The rock shone bright, the kirk no less,
That stands above the rock:


The moonlight steeped in silentness
The steady weathercock.
And the bay was white with silent light,
Till rising from the same,

Full many shapes, that shadows were,
In crimson colours came.
A little distance from the prow
Those crimson shadows were:
I
turned my eyes upon the deck--
Oh, Christ! what saw I there!
Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat,
And, by the holy rood!
A man
all light, a seraph-man,
On every corse there stood.
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 THE SEVENTH.
This Hermit good lives in that 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.
Stunned by that loud and dreadful 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 spun 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.
"O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!"
The Hermit crossed his brow.

"Say quick," quoth he, "I bid thee say--
What manner of man art
thou?"
Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched
With a woeful agony,

Which forced me to begin my tale;
And then it left me free.
Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns;
And