Within the shadow of the ship

I watched their rich attire:

Their beauty

and their happiness.

He blesseth them in his heart.

Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,

They coiled and swam; and every track

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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:

The spell be- The selfsame moment I could pray;

gins to break.

And from my neck so free

The albatross fell off, and sank

Like lead into the sea.

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By grace of the holy

Mother, the

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,

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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.

I moved, and could not feel my limbs :

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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.

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The bodies of the ship's crew are

inspired, and the ship

moves on.

But not by the souls of the men, not by demons

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.

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The helmsman steered, the ship moved on; 335

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;

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'Twas not those souls that fled in pain,

Which to their corses came again,

But a troop of spirits blest :

of earth or
middle air,
but by a
blessed troop
of angelic
spirits, sent
down by the
invocation of

For when it dawned-they dropped their arms, the guardian

And clustered round the mast;

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Sweet sounds rose slowly through their

mouths,

And from their bodies passed.

Around, around, flew each sweet sound,

Then darted to the sun;

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saint.

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;

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And now it is an angel's song,

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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,

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The Polar spirit's fellow demons, the invisible inhabitants of the

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,

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