third stanza, for instance, the original text has the two following:

But still he holds the wedding-guest-
"There was a Ship," quoth he-
"Nay, if thou'st got a laughsome tale,
Marinere! come with me.'

He holds him with his skinny hand,
Quoth he, "There was a Ship-"
"Now get thee hence, thou gray-beard Loon!
Or my Staff shall make thee skip."

For a full study of the different texts, see Prof. F. H. Sykes' Select Poems of Coleridge and Wordsworth, edited from Authors' Editions, Toronto, 1899. On the origin of the poem, see Biographia Literaria, Chap XIV, and Words worth's account of it, quoted and discussed in H. D. Traill's Life of Coleridge, pp. 47–50. 1 In the editions of 1798 and 1800 only.

2 An ancient Mariner meeteth three Gallants bidden to a wedding-feast, and detaineth one. [This and the following notes, except those in brackets, are Coleridge's running Summary of the story, first printed in Sybilline Leaves, 1817.]

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

And through the drifts the snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen:

Nor shapes of men nor beasts we kenThe ice was all between.

The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:

It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,

Like voices in a swound!

1 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.

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!

2 And a good south wind sprung up be hind;

The Albatross did follow,

And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner's hollo!

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
While all the night, through fog-smoke

white,

1 And I had done an 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!

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.

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,

The furrow followed free;

We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.

'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, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere
Nor any drop to drink.

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.

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

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

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.
And the Albatross begins to be avenged.

"There passed a weary time. Each throat

Was parched, and glazed each eye.
A weary time! a weary time!
How glazed each weary eye!—
3 When looking westward, I beheld
A something in the sky.

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.

4 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!

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked.

Agape they heard me call:

1 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.

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

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

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.

1 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.

2 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 horned Moon, with one bright star
Within the nether tip.

3 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.

4 Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.

5 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!”—

PART IV

6" 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."
8. Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-
Guest!

This body dropt not down.

No twilight within the courts of the Sun. At the rising of the Moon,

* One after another

• His shipmates drop down dead.

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

* The_Wedding-Guest feareth that a Spirit is talking to him.

For the last two lines of this stanza. I am in debted to Mr. Wordsworth It was on a delight fal walk from Nether Stowey to Pulverton, with him and his sister, in the autumn of 1797, that This poem was planned, and in part composed Note of Cae19, first printed in Sibyllin Leares, 1817

But the ancient Manner assureth him of hi boolly "fe, and proceedicta to relate his horribi perance.

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.

3 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 a curse in a dead man's eye!

Seven days, seven nights, I saw that

curse,

And yet I could not die.

Her beams bemocked 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.

1 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.

2 O happy livings things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare :

A spring of love gushed from my heart,
3 And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.

4 The selfsame moment I could pray ;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.

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.

5 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.

I moved, and could not feel my limbs:
I was so light-almost

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

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

2 Their beauty and their happiness.

3 He blesseth them in his heart. The spell begins to break.

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