And the coming wind did roar more loud,
And the sails did sigh like sedge;

And the rain poured down from one black cloud
The Moon was at its edge.

The thick black cloud was cleft, and still

The Moon was at its side:

Like waters shot from some high crag,
The lightning fell with never a jag,
A river steep and wide.

The loud wind never reached the ship,
Yet how the ship moved on!
Beneath the lightning and the Moon
The dead men gave a groan.

They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes:
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To have seen those dead men rise.

The helmsman steered, the ship moved on;
Yet never a breeze up-blew;

The mariners all 'gan work the ropes,
Where they were wont to do;

They raised their limbs like lifeless tools-
We were a ghastly crew.

The body of my brother's son

Stood by me, knee to knee :
The body and I pulled at one rope,
But he said nought to me.

"I fear thee, ancient mariner!"
Be calm, thou wedding-guest!
'Twas not those souls that fled in pain,
Which to their corses came again,
But a troop of spirits blest:

For when it dawned-they dropped their arms,
And clustered round the mast;

Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, And from their bodies passed.

Around, around, flew each sweet sound,
Then darted to the Sun;
Slowly the sounds came back again,
Now mixed, now one by one.

Sometimes a-dropping from the sky,
I heard the sky-lark sing:
Sometimes all little birds that are,
How they seemed to fill the sea and air
With their sweet jargoning!

PART VI.
First Voice.

But tell me, tell me! speak again,
Thy soft response renewing—
What makes that ship drive on so fast!
What is the ocean doing?

Second Voice.

Still as a slave before his lord,
The ocean hath no blast;
His great bright eye most silently
Up to the Moon is cast.

If he may know which way to go;
For she guides him smooth or grim
See, brother see! how graciously
She looketh down on him.

First Voice.

But why drives on that ship so fast,
Without or wave or wind?

Second Voice.

The air is cut away before,
And closes from behind.

Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high !
Or we shall be belated:

For slow and slow that ship will go,

When the mariner's trance is abated.

I woke, and we were sailing on

As in a gentle weather:

'Twas night, calm 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 north, yet little saw
Of what had else been seen-

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 hear 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,

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 mariners

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!

66

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

66

Brown skeletons of leaves that lay
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)