Within the shadow of the ship

I watched their rich attire:

Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.

Their beauty O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:

and their happiness.

He blesseth

them in his heart.

A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware?

Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.

The spell be- The self same moment I could pray;

gins to break.

And from my neck so free

The Albatross fell off, and sank

Like lead into the sea.

THE RIME

OF

THE ANCIENT MARINER.

PART THE FIFTH.

OH SLEEP! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!

To Mary Queen the praise be given!

She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,
That slid into my soul.

The silly buckets on the deck,
That had so long remained,

I dreamt that they were filled with dew;
And when I awoke, it rained.

My lips were wet, my throat was cold,
My garments all were dank;

Sure I had drunken in my dreams,
And still my body drank.

By grace of the holy Mother, the ancient Mariner is refreshed with rain.

He heareth sounds, and

I moved, and could not feel my

I was so light-almost

limbs:

I thought that I had died in sleep,
And was a blessed ghost.

And soon I heard a roaring wind:

seeth strange It did not come anear;

sights and

commotions in But with its sound it shook the sails,

the sky and

the element. That were so thin and sere.

The

upper air burst into life!
And a hundred fire-flags sheen,
To and fro they were hurried about!
And to and fro, and in and out,

The wan stars danced between.

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 now 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 bodies of
the ship's
crew are in-
spired, and
the ship moves

on;

24

But not by the souls of the men, nor by dæmons of earth or middle air, but by a blessed troop of angelic spirits, sent down by the invocation of the guardian saint.

"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!

And now 'twas like all instruments,

Now like a lonely flute;

And now it is an angel's song,

That makes the Heavens be mute.