The WeddingGuest feareth that a spirit is talking to him.

"I FEAR thee, ancient Mariner !

I fear thy skinny hand!

And thou art long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribbed sea-sand.

"I fear thee and thy glittering eye, And thy skinny hand, so brown."

“Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest! But the ancient

This body dropt not down.

“Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.

"The many men, so beautiful !
And they all dead did lie:

And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.

"I looked upon the rotting sea,

And drew my eyes away;
I looked upon the rotting deck,
And there the dead men lay.

"I looked to heaven, and tried to pray; But or ever a prayer had gusht,

A wicked whisper came, and made

My heart as dry as dust.

"I closed my lids, and kept them close,

And the balls like pulses beat;

Mariner assureth him of his bodily life, and proceedeth to relate his horrible penance.

He despiseth the creatures of the calm.

And envieth that they should live, and so many lie dead.

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 liveth for him in the eye of the dead men.

In his loneliness

and fixedness he

"The cold sweat melted from their limbs,
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
A spirit from on high;

But oh more horrible than that

Is the 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,

yearneth towards And nowhere did abide:

the journeying

Moon, and the stars that still

sojourn, yet still move onward;

and everywhere

Softly she was going up,

And a star or two beside

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,
The charmed water burnt alway
A still and awful red.

By the light of

the Moon he beholdeth God's creatures of the great calm.

"Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes:

They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.