THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER AND OTHER POEMS
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Copyright

William Collins

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Life & Times section © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from Collins English Dictionary

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Cover illustration: I Shot the Albatross, Gustave Doré, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 1876 edition, duncan1890/iStock

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CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

History of William Collins

Life & Times

Part 1: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel and Kubla Khan

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Christabel

Kubla Khan

Part 2: Conversation Poems

The Eolian Harp

Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement

This Lime-tree Bower My Prison

Frost at Midnight

Fears in Solitude

The Nightingale

Dejection: An Ode

To William Wordsworth

Part 3: Other Poems 1787–1833

Easter Holidays

Sonnet to the Autumnal Moon

To the Muse

To the Evening Star

To Disappointment

The Rose

The Hour When We Shall Meet Again

The Raven

A Christmas Carol

Inscription for a Seat by the Road Side Half-way Up a Steep Hill Facing South

Ode to Tranquillity

An Ode to the Rain

The Pains of Sleep

Farewell to Love

The Visionary Hope

God’s Omnipresence: A Hymn

To Nature

Youth and Age

Work without Hope

Duty Surviving Self-Love

Epitaph

Classic Literature: Words and Phrases

About the Publisher

History of William Collins

In 1819, millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the ﬁrst dictionary William published in 1824, Greek and English Lexicon. Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.

Soon after, William published the ﬁrst Collins novel, Ready Reckoner; however, it was the time of the Long Depression, where harvests were poor, prices were high, potato crops had failed and violence was erupting in Europe. As a result, many factories across the country were forced to close down and William chose to retire in 1846, partly due to the hardships he was facing.

Aged 30, William’s son, William II, took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly ‘Victorian’ in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeare’s works and The Pilgrim’s Progress, making them available to the masses for the ﬁrst time. A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientiﬁc books, encyclopedias and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases, and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.

In the 1860s Collins began to expand and diversify and the idea of ‘books for the millions’ was developed. Affordable editions of classical literature were published, and in 1903 Collins introduced 10 titles in their Collins Handy Illustrated Pocket Novels. These proved so popular that a few years later this had increased to an output of 50 volumes, selling nearly half a million in their year of publication. In the same year, The Everyman’s Library was also instituted, with the idea of publishing an affordable library of the most important classical works, biographies, religious and philosophical treatments, plays, poems, travel and adventure. This series eclipsed all competition at the time, and the introduction of paperback books in the 1950s helped to open that market and marked a high point in the industry.

HarperCollins is and has always been a champion of the classics, and the current Collins Classics series follows in this tradition – publishing classical literature that is affordable and available to all. Beautifully packaged, highly collectible and intended to be reread and enjoyed at every opportunity.

Life & Times
About the Author

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, philosopher and critic. A great friend of William Wordsworth, he was a founder of the Romantic movement in English literature, and is regarded as one of the most important poets of the period. He died at the age of 61, having battled lifelong ill health and an opium addiction.

Early Years

Coleridge was born in 1772 in Devon, the youngest of thirteen children of the Reverend John Coleridge, a vicar and headmaster. The reverend died when Samuel was just eight, and he was dispatched to London to attend Christ’s Hospital. There, under the tutelage of a stern but inspirational schoolmaster, he was introduced to the Greek and Roman poets as well as Shakespeare and Milton.

Musing on his school days in 1817’s Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, Coleridge recalls how the Reverend James Bowyer drilled into him that ‘poetry, even that of the loftiest and, seemingly, that of the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex’. Bowyer’s approach to poetic composition was no-nonsense in the extreme, but it instilled in Coleridge a sensitivity to syntax and imagery, and sent him off to Cambridge University full of ‘good gifts’. He proved a more enthusiastic poet than student, however, accumulating large debts and a collection of juvenile poems but never completing his degree.

Idealists and Romantics

Coleridge’s education did at least serve to throw him into the company of young men who would later form his literary circle. At Christ’s Hospital he befriended Charles Lamb, and as a student he met Robert Southey, a fellow poet and idealist with whom he hatched a plan to found a commune in the wilds of America, where learning and liberty would reign supreme. In 1795 the two young men married sisters Edith and Sarah Fricker – Southey happily, Coleridge very unhappily – and plans for the commune eventually faded.

But these disappointments were soon eclipsed: that same year, Coleridge made the acquaintance of William Wordsworth, and they embarked on a poetic and philosophical collaboration that would define not only both of their careers but also the artistic legacy of their era.

In the late 1790s the two poets lived near each other in Somerset and would meet to discuss the purpose and potential of poetry. ‘Our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry,’ Coleridge wrote, ‘the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination.’ They determined to publish a joint collection of poems in which Coleridge would focus on ‘persons and characters supernatural’ while Wordsworth would celebrate ‘things of every day’. This project materialised in 1798 as Lyrical Ballads, an anthology that included some of the poems for which both men are now best known: Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’ and Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’.

Lyrical Ballads is credited with bringing Romanticism to Britain. This movement was already flourishing in Germany, and it would ultimately dominate European artistic output until the mid-nineteenth century. Romanticism favoured emotion and imagination over reason and intellect, and tended to celebrate nature, heroism and spiritual experiences. Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey and Lamb were soon joined by a younger generation of Romantics, including Keats, Byron and Shelley.

An Albatross Around His Neck

‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, a ballad in seven parts, is Coleridge’s longest poem. The mariner of the title detains a man who is on his way to a wedding, and insists on recounting an increasingly terrifying tale of disaster upon the high seas. Gradually the wedding guest is drawn into the frenzied narration of this ‘grey-beard loon’, for it transpires that the disaster is entirely self-inflicted. Having been driven south by inclement weather, the mariner’s vessel is caught in Antarctic ice. The sudden appearance of an albatross – a symbol of good fortune – helps them escape, but then the mariner does something inexplicably ungrateful: ‘With my cross-bow / I shot the Albatross.’

Before long this crime is roundly avenged. The ship finds itself trapped once again, this time on calm, windless waters near the equator, and supplies quite literally dry up: ‘Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink.’ The sailors rightly blame the mariner for his inauspicious murder of the albatross, and hang the bird about his neck as a sign of his disgrace. The arrival of another ship only compounds the horror, manned as it is by Death and Life-in-Death. They kill the crew but the mariner is forced to spend seven days and nights in a waking, raving nightmare. He eventually understands that it is his eternal curse and punishment to travel from ‘land to land’ recounting his ‘ghastly tale’.

The poem baffled many contemporary readers, and even Wordsworth later wrote that, for all its ‘delicate touches of passion’ and ‘felicity of language’, it nevertheless had ‘great defects’. For an 1817 reprint, in response to criticism that the poem was hard to follow, Coleridge added dozens of marginal notes explaining the plot: ‘The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen.’

Waking Dreams

Many of Coleridge’s poems display a visionary quality that borders on the hallucinogenic, and this is no coincidence. He had since his childhood suffered from health troubles whose symptoms were eased by opium, but by adulthood Coleridge had developed a powerful addiction to the drug that would plague the remainder of his life. He famously composed the vividly exotic ‘Kubla Khan’ in a fevered state after waking from an opium dream. This poem, like the supernatural ‘Christabel’, was never completed.

As he fell further into what he called his ‘accursed habit’ and its attendant depression, Coleridge’s life and work suffered considerably. In 1808, he finally separated from his long-suffering wife, leaving her and their three surviving children in the care of Robert Southey. By 1810 Wordsworth had become so frustrated by Coleridge’s addiction that the two poets fell out, remaining estranged for over a decade.

Coleridge spent the last eighteen years of his life at the London home of a physician friend, James Gilman, occasionally lecturing on Shakespeare and other poets and repeatedly attempting to give up his opium habit. He died in 1834.

PART I:

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

PART I

It is an ancient Mariner,

And he stoppeth one of three.

‘By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,

Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?

An ancient Mariner meeteth three Gallants bidden to a wedding-feast, and detaineth one.

The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide,

And I am next of kin;

The guests are met, the feast is set:

May’st hear the merry din.’

He holds him with his skinny hand,

‘There was a ship,’ quoth he.

‘Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!’

Eftsoons his hand dropt he.

The Wedding-Guest is spell-bound by the eye of the old seafaring man, and constrained to hear his tale.

He holds him with his glittering eye—

The Wedding-Guest stood still,

And listens like a three years’ child:

The Mariner hath his will.

The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:

He cannot choose but hear;

And thus spake on that ancient man,

The bright-eyed Mariner.

‘The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,

Merrily did we drop

Below the kirk, below the hill,

Below the lighthouse top.

The Sun came up upon the left,

Out of the sea came he!

And he shone bright, and on the right

Went down into the sea.

The Mariner tells how the ship sailed southward with a good wind and fair weather, till it reached the line.

Higher and higher every day,

Till over the mast at noon—’

The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,

For he heard the loud bassoon.

The bride hath paced into the hall,

Red as a rose is she;

Nodding their heads before her goes

The merry minstrelsy.

The Wedding-Guest heareth the bridal music; but the Mariner continueth his tale.

The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,

Yet he cannot choose but hear;

And thus spake on that ancient man,

The bright-eyed Mariner.

‘And now the Storm-blast came, and he

Was tyrannous and strong:

He struck with his o’ertaking wings,

And chased us south along.

The ship driven by a storm toward the south pole.

With sloping masts and dipping prow,

As who pursued with yell and blow

Still treads the shadow of his foe,

And forward bends his head,

The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,

And southward aye we fled.

And now there came both mist and snow,

And it grew wondrous cold:

And ice, mast-high, came floating by,

As green as emerald.

And through the drifts the snowy clifts

Did send a dismal sheen:

Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken—

The ice was all between.

The land of ice, and of fearful sounds where no living thing was to be seen.

The ice was here, the ice was there,

The ice was all around:

It cracked and growled, and roared and

howled,

Like noises in a swound!

At length did cross an Albatross,

Thorough the fog it came;

As if it had been a Christian soul,

We hailed it in God’s name.

Till a great sea-bird, called the Albatross, came through the snow-fog, and was received with great joy and hospitality.

It ate the food it ne’er had eat,

And round and round it flew.

The ice did split with a thunder-fit;

The helmsman steered us through!

And a good south wind sprung up behind;

The Albatross did follow,

And every day, for food or play,

Came to the mariner’s hollo!

And lo! the Albatross proveth a bird of good omen, and followeth the ship as it returned northward through fog and floating ice.

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,

It perched for vespers nine;

Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,

Glimmered the white Moon-shine.’

‘God save thee, ancient Mariner!

From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—

Why look’st thou so?’— With my cross-bow

I shot the Albatross.

The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen.

PART II

‘The Sun now rose upon the right:

Out of the sea came he,

Still hid in mist, and on the left

Went down into the sea.

And the good south wind still blew behind,

But no sweet bird did follow,

Nor any day for food or play

Came to the mariners’ hollo!

And I had done a hellish thing,

And it would work ‘em woe:

For all averred, I had killed the bird

That made the breeze to blow.

Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay,

That made the breeze to blow!

His shipmates cry out against the ancient Mariner, for killing the bird of good luck.

Nor dim nor red, like God’s own head,

The glorious Sun uprist:

Then all averred, I had killed the bird

That brought the fog and mist.

’Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,

That bring the fog and mist.

But when the fog cleared off, they justify the same, and thus make themselves accomplices in the crime.

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,

The furrow followed free;

We were the first that ever burst

Into that silent sea.

The fair breeze continues; the ship enters the Pacific Ocean, and sails northward, even till it reaches the Line. The ship hath been suddenly becalmed.

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,

’Twas sad as sad could be;

And we did speak only to break

The silence of the sea!

All in a hot and copper sky,

The bloody Sun at noon,

Right up above the mast did stand,

No bigger than the Moon.

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

And the Albatross begins to be avenged.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!

That ever this should be!

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs

Upon the slimy sea.

About, about, in reel and rout

The death-fires danced at night;

The water, like a witch’s oils,

Burnt green, and blue and white.

And some in dreams assuréd were

Of the Spirit that plagued us so;

Nine fathom deep he had followed us

From the land of mist and snow.

A Spirit had followed them; one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels; concerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus, may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no climate or element without one or more.

And every tongue, through utter drought,

Was withered at the root;

We could not speak, no more than if

We had been choked with soot.

Ah! well a-day! what evil looks

Had I from old and young!

Instead of the cross, the Albatross

About my neck was hung.

The shipmates, in their sore distress, would fain throw the whole guilt on the ancient Mariner: in sign whereof they hang the dead sea-bird round his neck.

PART III

‘There passed a weary time. Each throat

Was parched, and glazed each eye.

A weary time! a weary time!

How glazed each weary eye,

When looking westward, I beheld

A something in the sky.

The ancient Mariner beholdeth a sign in the element afar off.

At first it seemed a little speck,

And then it seemed a mist;

It moved and moved, and took at last

A certain shape, I wist.

A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!

And still it neared and neared:

As if it dodged a water-sprite,

It plunged and tacked and veered.

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,

We could nor laugh nor wail;

Through utter drought all dumb we stood!

I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,

And cried, A sail! a sail!

At its nearer approach, it seemeth him to be a ship; and at a dear ransom he freeth his speech from the bonds of thirst.

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,

Agape they heard me call:

Gramercy! they for joy did grin,

And all at once their breath drew in,

As they were drinking all.

A flash of joy;

See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more!

Hither to work us weal;

Without a breeze, without a tide,

She steadies with upright keel!

And horror follows. For can it be a ship that comes onward without wind or tide?

The western wave was all a-flame.

The day was well nigh done!

Almost upon the western wave

Bested the broad bright Sun;

When that strange shape drove suddenly

Betwixt us and the Sun.

And straight the Sun was flecked with bars,

(Heaven’s Mother send us grace!)

As if through a dungeon-grate he peered

With broad and burning face.

It seemeth him but the skeleton of a ship.

Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud)

How fast she nears and nears!

Are those her sails that glance in the Sun,

Like restless gossameres?

Are those her ribs through which the Sun

Did peer, as through a grate?

And is that Woman all her crew?

Is that a Death? and are there two?

Is Death that woman’s mate?

And its ribs are seen as bars on the face of the setting Sun. The Spectre-Woman and her Death-mate, and no other on board the skeleton ship. Like vessel, like crew!

Her lips were red, her looks were free,

Her locks were yellow as gold:

Her skin was as white as leprosy,

The Night-mare Life-in-Death was she,

Who thicks man’s blood with cold.

The naked hulk alongside came,

And the twain were casting dice;

‘The game is done! I’ve won! I’ve won!’

Quoth she, and whistles thrice.

Death and Life-in-Death have diced for the ship’s crew, and she (the latter) winneth the ancient Mariner. No twilight within the courts of the Sun.

The Sun’s rim dips: the stars rush out:

At one stride comes the dark;

With far-heard whisper, o’er the sea,

Off shot the spectre-bark.

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 clomb above the eastern bar

The hornéd Moon, with one bright star

Within the nether tip.

At the rising of the Moon.

One after one, by the star-dogged Moon,

Too quick for groan or sigh,

Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,

And cursed me with his eye.

One after another,

Four times fifty living men,

(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)

With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,

They dropped down one by one.

His shipmates drop down dead.

The souls did from their bodies fly,—

They fled to bliss or woe!

And every soul, it passed me by,

Like the whizz of my cross-bow!

But Life-in-Death begins her work on the ancient Mariner.

PART IV

‘I fear thee, ancient Mariner!

I fear thy skinny hand!

And thou art long, and lank, and brown,

As is the ribbed sea-sand.

The Wedding-Guest feareth that a Spirit is talking to him;

I fear thee and thy glittering eye,

And thy skinny hand, so brown.’—

‘Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest!

This body dropt not down.

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

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.

He despiseth the creatures of the calm,

I looked upon the rotting sea,

And drew my eyes away;

I looked upon the rotting deck,

And there the dead men lay.

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

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;

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.

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.

But the curse liveth for him in the eye of the dead men.

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,

And no where did abide:

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 onward; 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,

The charméd water burnt alway

A still and awful red.

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.

By the light of the Moon he beholdeth God’s creatures of the great calm.

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.

O happy living things! no tongue

Their beauty might declare:

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.

Their beauty and their happiness.

He blesseth them in his heart.

The self-same moment I could pray;

And from my neck so free

The Albatross fell off, and sank

Like lead into the sea.

The spell begins to break.

PART V

‘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.

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

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.

I moved, and could not feel my limbs:

I was so light—almost

I thought that I had died in sleep,

And was a blesséd ghost.

And soon I heard a roaring wind:

It did not come anear;

But with its sound it shook the sails,

That were so thin and sere.

He heareth sounds and seeth strange sights and commotions in the sky and the element.

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.

The bodies of the ship’s crew are inspired and the ship moves on;

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:

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.

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.

It ceased; yet still the sails made on

A pleasant noise till noon,

A noise like of a hidden brook

In the leafy month of June,

That to the sleeping woods all night

Singeth a quiet tune.

Till noon we quietly sailed on,

Yet never a breeze did breathe:

Slowly and smoothly went the ship,

Moved onward from beneath.

Under the keel nine fathom deep,

From the land of mist and snow,

The spirit slid: and it was he

That made the ship to go.

The sails at noon left off their tune,

And the ship stood still also.

The lonesome Spirit from the south-pole carries on the ship as far as the Line, in obedience to the angelic troop, but still requireth vengeance.

The Sun, right up above the mast,

Had fixed her to the ocean:

But in a minute she ’gan stir,

With a short uneasy motion—

Backwards and forwards half her length

With a short uneasy motion.

Then like a pawing horse let go,

She made a sudden bound:

It flung the blood into my head,

And I fell down in a swound.

How long in that same fit I lay,

I have not to declare;

But ere my living life returned,

I heard and in my soul discerned

Two voices in the air.

The Polar Spirit’s fellow-dæmons, the invisible inhabitants of the element, take part in his wrong; and two of them relate, one to the other, that penance long and heavy for the ancient Mariner hath been accorded to the Polar Spirit, who returneth southward.

‘Is it he?’ quoth one, ‘Is this the man?

By him who died on cross,

With his cruel bow he laid full low

The harmless Albatross.

The spirit who bideth by himself

In the land of mist and snow,

He loved the bird that loved the man

Who shot him with his bow.’

The other was a softer voice,

As soft as honey-dew:

Quoth he, ‘The man hath penance done,

And penance more will do.’

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?’

The Mariner hath been cast into a trance; for the angelic power causeth the vessel to drive northward faster than human life could endure.

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.

The supernatural motion is retarded; the Mariner awakes, and his penance begins anew.

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—

The curse is finally expiated.

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?

And the ancient Mariner beholdeth his native country.

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.

The angelic spirits leave the dead bodies,

A little distance from the prow

Those crimson shadows were:

I turned my eyes upon the deck—

Oh, Christ! what saw I there!

And appear in their own forms of light.

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 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 marineres

That come from a far countree.

The Hermit of the Wood,

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

Approacheth the ship with wonder.

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.

The ship suddenly sinketh.

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.

The ancient Mariner is saved in 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?’

The ancient Mariner earnestly entreateth the Hermit to shrieve him; and the penance of life falls on him.

Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched

With a woful agony,

Which forced me to begin my tale;

And then it left me free.

Since then, at an uncertain hour,

That agony returns:

And till my ghastly tale is told,

This heart within me burns.

And ever and anon throughout his future life an agony constraineth him to travel from land to land;

I pass, like night, from land to land;

I have strange power of speech;

That moment that his face I see,

I know the man that must hear me:

To him my tale I teach.

What loud uproar bursts from that door!

The wedding-guests are there:

But in the garden-bower the bride

And bride-maids singing are:

And hark the little vesper bell,

Which biddeth me to prayer!

O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been

Alone on a wide wide sea:

So lonely ’twas, that God himself

Scarce seeméd there to be.

O sweeter than the marriage-feast,

’Tis sweeter far to me,

To walk together to the kirk

With a goodly company!—

To walk together to the kirk,

And all together pray,

While each to his great Father bends,

Old men, and babes, and loving friends

And youths and maidens gay!

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell

To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!

He prayeth well, who loveth well

Both man and bird and beast.

And to teach, by his own example, love and reverence to all things that God made and loveth.

He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.

The Mariner, whose eye is bright,

Whose beard with age is hoar,

Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest

Turned from the bridegroom’s door.

He went like one that hath been stunned,

And is of sense forlorn:

A sadder and a wiser man,

He rose the morrow morn.

1797—1798.

CHRISTABEL

PART I

’Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,

And the owls have awakened the crowing cock;

Tu—whit!—Tu—whoo!

And hark, again! the crowing cock,

How drowsily it crew.

Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,

Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;

From her kennel beneath the rock

She maketh answer to the clock,

Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour;

Ever and aye, by shine and shower,

Sixteen short howls, not over loud;

Some say, she sees my lady’s shroud.

Is the night chilly and dark?

The night is chilly, but not dark.

The thin gray cloud is spread on high,

It covers but not hides the sky.

The moon is behind, and at the full;

And yet she looks both small and dull.

The night is chill, the cloud is gray:

’Tis a month before the month of May,

And the Spring comes slowly up this way.

The lovely lady, Christabel,

Whom her father loves so well,

What makes her in the wood so late,

A furlong from the castle gate?

She had dreams all yesternight

Of her own betrothéd knight;

And she in the midnight wood will pray

For the weal of her lover that’s far away.

She stole along, she nothing spoke,

The sighs she heaved were soft and low,

And naught was green upon the oak

But moss and rarest misletoe:

She kneels beneath the huge oak tree,

And in silence prayeth she.

The lady sprang up suddenly,

The lovely lady, Christabel!

It moaned as near, as near can be,

But what it is she cannot tell.—

On the other side it seems to be,

Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree.

The night is chill; the forest bare;

Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?

There is not wind enough in the air

To move away the ringlet curl

From the lovely lady’s cheek—

There is not wind enough to twirl

The one red leaf, the last of its clan,

That dances as often as dance it can,

Hanging so light, and hanging so high,

On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

Hush, beating heart of Christabel!

Jesu, Maria, shield her well!

She folded her arms beneath her cloak,

And stole to the other side of the oak.

What sees she there?

There she sees a damsel bright,

Drest in a silken robe of white,

That shadowy in the moonlight shone:

The neck that made that white robe wan,

Her stately neck, and arms were bare;

Her blue-veined feet unsandal’d were,

And wildly glittered here and there

The gems entangled in her hair.

I guess, ’twas frightful there to see

A lady so richly clad as she—

Beautiful exceedingly!

Mary mother, save me now!

(Said Christabel,) And who art thou?

The lady strange made answer meet,

And her voice was faint and sweet:—

Have pity on my sore distress,

I scarce can speak for weariness:

Stretch forth thy hand, and have no fear!

Said Christabel, How camest thou here?

And the lady, whose voice was faint and sweet,

Did thus pursue her answer meet:—

My sire is of a noble line,

And my name is Geraldine:

Five warriors seized me yestermorn,

Me, even me, a maid forlorn:

They choked my cries with force and fright,

And tied me on a palfrey white.

The palfrey was as fleet as wind,

And they rode furiously behind.

They spurred amain, their steeds were white:

And once we crossed the shade of night.

As sure as Heaven shall rescue me,

I have no thought what men they be;

Nor do I know how long it is

(For I have lain entranced I wis)

Since one, the tallest of the five,

Took me from the palfrey’s back,

A weary woman, scarce alive.

Some muttered words his comrades spoke:

Ha placed me underneath this oak;

He swore they would return with haste;

Whither they went I cannot tell—

I thought I heard, some minutes past,

Sounds as of a castle bell.

Stretch forth thy hand (thus ended she),

And help a wretched maid to flee.

Then Christabel stretched forth her hand,

And comforted fair Geraldine:

O well, bright dame! may you command

The service of Sir Leoline;

And gladly our stout chivalry

Will he send forth and friends withal

To guide and guard you safe and free

Home to your noble father’s hall.

She rose: and forth with steps they passed

That strove to be, and were not, fast.

Her gracious stars the lady blest,

And thus spake on sweet Christabel:

All our household are at rest,

The hall as silent as the cell;

Sir Leoline is weak in health,

And may not well awakened be,

But we will move as if in stealth,

And I beseech your courtesy,

This night, to share your couch with me.

They crossed the moat, and Christabel

Took the key that fitted well;

A little door she opened straight,

All in the middle of the gate;

The gate that was ironed within and without,

Where an army in battle array had marched out.

The lady sank, belike through pain,

And Christabel with might and main

Lifted her up, a weary weight,

Over the threshold of the gate:

Then the lady rose again,

And moved, as she were not in pain.

So free from danger, free from fear,

They crossed the court: right glad they were.

And Christabel devoutly cried

To the lady by her side,

‘Praise we the Virgin all divine

Who hath rescued thee from thy distress!’

‘Alas, alas!’ said Geraldine,

‘I cannot speak for weariness.’

So free from danger, free from fear,

They crossed the court: right glad they were.

Outside her kennel, the mastiff old

Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold.

The mastiff old did not awake,

Yet she an angry moan did make!

And what can ail the mastiff bitch?

Never till now she uttered yell

Beneath the eye of Christabel.

Perhaps it is the owlet’s scritch:

For what can ail the mastiff bitch?

They passed the hall, that echoes still,

Pass as lightly as you will!

The brands were flat, the brands were dying,

Amid their own white ashes lying;

But when the lady passed, there came

A tongue of light, a fit of flame;

And Christabel saw the lady’s eye,

And nothing else saw she thereby,

Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall,

Which hung in a murky old niche in the wall.

O softly tread, said Christabel,

My father seldom sleepeth well.

Sweet Christabel her feet doth bare,

And jealous of the listening air

They steal their way from stair to stair,

Now in glimmer, and now in gloom,

And now they pass the Baron’s room,

As still as death, with stifled breath!

And now have reached her chamber door;

And now doth Geraldine press down

The rushes of the chamber floor.

The moon shines dim in the open air,

And not a moonbeam enters here.

But they without its light can see

The chamber carved so curiously,

Carved with figures strange and sweet,

All made out of the carver’s brain,

For a lady’s chamber meet:

The lamp with twofold silver chain

Is fastened to an angel’s feet.

The silver lamp burns dead and dim;

But Christabel the lamp will trim.

She trimmed the lamp, and made it bright,

And left it swinging to and fro,

While Geraldine, in wretched plight,

Sank down upon the floor below.

‘O weary lady, Geraldine,

I pray you, drink this cordial wine!

It is a wine of virtuous powers;

My mother made it of wild flowers.’

‘And will your mother pity me,

Who am a maiden most forlorn?’

Christabel answered—‘Woe is me!

She died the hour that I was born.

I have heard the grey-haired friar tell

How on her death-bed she did say,

That she should hear the castle-bell

Strike twelve upon my wedding-day.

O mother dear! that thou wert here!’

‘I would,’ said Geraldine, ‘she were!’

But soon with altered voice, said she—

‘Off, wandering mother! Peak and pine!

I have power to bid thee flee.’

Alas! what ails poor Geraldine?

Why stares she with unsettled eye?

Can she the bodiless dead espy?

And why with hollow voice cries she,

‘Off, woman, off! this hour is mine—

Though thou her guardian spirit be,

Off, woman, off! ’tis given to me.’

Then Christabel knelt by the lady’s side,

And raised to heaven her eyes so blue—

‘Alas!’ said she, ‘this ghastly ride—

Dear lady! it hath wildered you!’

The lady wiped her moist cold brow,

And faintly said, ‘’tis over now!’

Again the wild-flower wine she drank:

Her fair large eyes ’gan glitter bright,

And from the floor whereon she sank,

The lofty lady stood upright:

She was most beautiful to see,

Like a lady of a far countrèe.

And thus the lofty lady spake—

‘All they who live in the upper sky,

Do love you, holy Christabel!

And you love them, and for their sake

And for the good which me befel,

Even I in my degree will try,

Fair maiden, to requite you well.

But now unrobe yourself; for I

Must pray, ere yet in bed I lie.’

Quoth Christabel, ‘So let it be!’

And as the lady bade, did she.

Her gentle limbs did she undress,

And lay down in her loveliness.

But through her brain of weal and woe

So many thoughts moved to and fro,

That vain it were her lids to close;

So half-way from the bed she rose,

And on her elbow did recline

To look at the lady Geraldine.

Beneath the lamp the lady bowed,

And slowly rolled her eyes around;

Then drawing in her breath aloud,

Like one that shuddered, she unbound

The cincture from beneath her breast:

Her silken robe, and inner vest,

Dropt to her feet, and full in view,

Behold! her bosom and half her side—

A sight to dream of, not to tell!

O shield her! shield sweet Christabel!

Yet Geraldine nor speaks nor stirs;

Ah! what a stricken look was hers!

Deep from within she seems half-way

To lift some weight with sick assay,

And eyes the maid and seeks delay;

Then suddenly, as one defied,

Collects herself in scorn and pride,

And lay down by the Maiden’s side!—

And in her arms the maid she took,

Ah wel-a-day!

And with low voice and doleful look

These words did say:

‘In the touch of this bosom there worketh a spell,

Which is lord of thy utterance, Christabel!

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