“The selfsame moment I could pray;

And from my neck so free

The Albatross fell off, and sank

Like lead into the sea."

The spell begins to break.

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.

"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.

66

“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.

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

He heareth

sounds and seeth strange sights and commotions in the sky and the elements.

"And soon I heard a roaring wind:
It did not come anear;

But with its sound it shook the sails,

That were so thin and sere.

The bodies of the ship's crew are

"And the coming wind did roar more loud,

And the sails did sigh like sedge;

And the rain poured 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,

inspired, and the Yet now the ship moved on!

ship moves on;

Beneath the lightning and the Moon

The dead men gave a groan.

"They groaned, they stirred, 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."

"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,

But not by the souls of the men, nor by demons of earth or middle air, but by a blessed troop of angelic spirits, sent down by the invocation of the guardian saint.

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 seemed to fill the sea and air
With their sweet jargoning!