THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER.

PART THE FIFTH.

Oh SLEEP! it is a gentle thing,

Belov'd 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.

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.

By grace of the holy Mother, the

ancient Mari

ner is refreshed with rain.

He heareth

sounds, and seeth

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.

And soon I heard a roaring wind:

It did not come anear;

strange sights But with its sound it shook the sails,

and commo

tions in the

sky and the

element.

That were so thin and sere.

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 pour'd 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.

They groan'd, they stirr'd, 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.

The bodies of the ship's

crew are

inspirited, and the ship moves on;

But not by the souls of the men, nor

by dæmons of earth or middle air, but by a blessed troop of an. gelic spirits, sent down by the invocation

of the guar

dian saint.

"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:

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 seem'd 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.