Part IV

• The Wedding-Guest 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 !
• 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.
•  
• He despiseth the creatures of the calm,
• The many men, so beautiful !
• And they all dead did lie :
• And a thousand thousand slimy things
• Lived on; and so did I.

• And envieth that they should live, and so many lie dead.
• I look'd 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;
• 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.
• 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.

• 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.
  
• The moving Moon went up the sky,
• And no where did abide :
• Softly she was going up,
• And a star or two beside—
•  
• Her beams bemock'd 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.
•  
• 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 and their happiness.
• O happy living things ! no tongue
• Their beauty might declare :
• A spring of love gushed from my heart,
• He blesseth them in his heart.
• And I blessed them unaware :
• Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
• And I blessed them unaware.
•  
• The spell begins to break.
• The self-same moment I could pray;
• And from my neck so free
• The Albatross fell off, and sank
• Like lead into the sea.”

Notes

1. For the two last lines of this stanza, I am indebted to Mr. Wordsworth. It was on a delightful walk from Nether Stowey to Dulverton, with him and his sister, in the Autumn of 1797, that that [sic] this Poem was planned, and in part composed.