"The Pilot and the Filot'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 shrieve my soul, he'll wash away
The Albatross's blood."

PART 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 marineres

That come from a far countree

"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 neared: I heard them talk,

'Why, this is strange, I trow !

Where are those lights so many and fair,

That signal made but now?'

The Hermit of the wood.

Approacheth the ship with wonder.

"Strange, by my faith!' the Hermit said'And they answered not our cheer.

The planks looked warped! and see those sails,

How thin they are and sere!

I never saw aught like to them,

Unless perchance it were

"Brown 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 hath a fiendish look(The Pilot made reply)

I am a-feared'-'Push on, push on!'

Said the Hermit cheerily.

"The boat came closer to the ship,
But I nor spake nor stirred;

The boat came close beneath the ship,
And straight a sound was heard.

"Under the water it rumbled on,

Still louder and more dread:

It reached the ship, it split the bay:
The ship went down like lead.

"Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound, Which sky and ocean smote,

Like one that hath been seven days drowned

My body lay afloat;

But swift as dreams, myself I found

Within the Pilot's boat.

G

The ship suddenly sinketh.

The ancient Mariner is saved in the Pilot's boat.