Samuel Coleridge - The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Illustrated Edition)

And by the Holy rood

A man all light, a seraph-man,

On every corse there stood.

This seraph-band, each wav’d his hand:

It was a heavenly sight:

They stood as signals to the land,

Each one a lovely light:

This seraph-band, each wav’d his hand,

No voice did they impart —

No voice; but O! 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 turn’d 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 shrive my soul, he’ll wash away

The Albatross’s blood.

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 Mariners

That come from a far countrée.

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 ner’d: 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 answer’d not our cheer.

The planks look warp’d, and see those sails

How thin they are and sere!

I never saw aught like to them

Unless perchance it were”

”The 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 has a fiendish look—”

(The Pilot made reply)

”I am a-fear’d.”—”Push on, push on!”

”Said the Hermit cheerily.”

The Boat came closer to the Ship,

But I nor spake nor stirr’d!

The Boat came close beneath the Ship,

And strait a sound was heard!

Under the water it rumbled on,

Still louder and more dread:

It reach’d the Ship, it split the bay;

The Ship went down like lead.

Stunn’d by that loud and dreadful sound,

Which sky and ocean smote:

Like one that hath been seven days drown’d

My body lay afloat:

But, swift as dreams, myself I found

Within 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 mov’d my lips: the Pilot shriek’d

And fell down in a fit.

The Holy Hermit rais’d his eyes

And pray’d where he did sit.

I took the oars: the Pilot’s boy,

Who now doth crazy go,

Laugh’d 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 mine own Countrée

I stood on the firm land!

The Hermit stepp’d forth from the boat,

And scarcely he could stand.

”O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy Man!”

The Hermit cross’d his brow —

”Say quick,” quoth he, “I bid thee say

What manner man art thou?”

Forthwith this frame of mind was wrench’d

With a woeful agony,

Which forc’d me to begin my tale

And then it left me free.

Since then at an uncertain hour,

That agency returns;

And till my ghastly tale is told

This heart within me burns.

I pass, like night, from land to land;

I have strange power of speech;

The 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 seemed 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.

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

Turn’d from the bridegroom’s door.

He went, like one that hath been stunn’d

And is of sense forlorn:

A sadder and a wiser man

He rose the morrow morn,

Table of Contents

July 13, 1798.

Five years have passed; five summers, with the length

Of five long winters! and again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs

With a sweet inland murmur. — Once again

Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,

Which on a wild secluded scene impress

Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect

The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

The day is come when I again repose

Here, under this dark sycamore, and view

These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,

Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits,

Among the woods and copses lose themselves,

Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb

The wild green landscape. Once again I see

These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines

Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms

Green to the very door; and wreathes of smoke

Sent up, in silence, from among the trees,

With some uncertain notice, as might seem,

Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,

Or of some hermit’s cave, where by his fire

The hermit sits alone.

Though absent long.

These forms of beauty have not been to me,

As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:

But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,

In hours of wariness, sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,

And passing even into my purer mind,

With tranquil restoration: — feelings too

Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,

As may have had no trivial influence

On that best portion of a good man’s life;

His little, nameless, unremembered acts

Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,

To them I may have owed another gift,

Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,

In which the burthen of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world

Is lighten’d: — that serene and blessed mood;

In which the affections gently lead us on,

Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,

And even the motion of our human blood

Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul:

While with an eye made quiet by the power

Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

We see into the life of things.

If this

Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft,

In darkness, and amid the many shapes

Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir