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The other was a softer voice,

As soft as honey-dew:

Quoth he the man hath penance done, And penance more will do.

VI.

FIRST VOICE.

"But tell me, tell me! speak again,

"Thy soft response renewing

"What makes that ship drive on so fast? "What is the Ocean doing?

SECOND VOICE.

"Still as a Slave before his Lord, "The Ocean hath no blast:

"His great bright eye most silently

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"If he may know which way to go,
"For she guides him smooth or grim.
"See, brother, see! how graciously
"She looketh down on him.

FIRST VOICE.

"But why drives on that ship so fast

"Without or wave or wind?

SECOND VOICE.

"The air is cut away before,

"And closes from behind.

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Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high,

"Or we shall be belated:

"For slow and slow that ship will go,

"When the Mariner's trance is abated."

I woke, and we were sailing on

As in a gentle weather:

'Twas night, calm night, the moon was high; The dead men stood together.

All stood together on the deck,
For a charnel-dungeon fitter :
All fix'd on me their stony eyes
That in the moon did glitter,

The pang, the curse, with which they died,

Had never pass'd away;

I could not draw my eyes from theirs

Nor turn them up to pray.

And now this spell was snapt: once more

I view'd the ocean green,

And look'd far forth, yet little saw

Of what had else been seen.

Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,

And having once turn'd round, walks on
And turns no more his head:

Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

But soon there breath'd a wind on me,

Nor sound nor motion made:

Its path was not upon the sea

In ripple or in shade.

It rais'd my hair, it fann'd my cheek,
Like a meadow-gale of spring-

It mingled strangely with my fears,
Yet it felt like a welcoming.

M

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