"Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum universitate. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit, et gradus et cognationes et discrimina et singulorum munera ? Quid agunt? quæ loca habitant? Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit in genium humanum, nunquam attigit. Juvat, interea, non diffiteor, quandoque in animo, tanquam in tabulâ, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contemplari: ne mens assuefacta hodiernæ vitæ minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat in pusillas cogitationes. Sed veritati interea invigilandum est, modusque servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a nocte, distinguamus."-T. BURNET: Archæol. Phil. p. 68. *First printed in Lyrical Ballads, 1798, and after its rejection from Wordsworth's volumes, reprinted in 1817, along with Sibylline Leaves. The weddingguest is spellbound by the eye of the old seafaring man, and constrained to hear his tale. "The bridegroom's doors are open'd wide, And I am next of kin; The guests are met, the feast is set: He holds him with his skinny hand, "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!” He holds him with his glittering eye- And listens like a three years' child: The wedding-guest sat on a stone: And thus spake on that ancient man, "Mrs. Barbauld once told me that she admired The Ancient Mariner very much, but that there were two faults in it, it was improbable, and had no moral. As for the probability, I owned that that might admit some question; but as to the want of a moral, I told her that in my own judgment the poem had too much; and that the only, or chief fault, if I might say so, was the obtrusion of the moral sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle or cause of action in a work of such pure imagination."-C. Table Talk: May 31, 1830. 1 And listens, &c.] To Wordsworth Coleridge was indebted for these two lines, as well as for the two acknowledged in Part IV. Wordsworth also suggested the albatross, the crime, and the navigation of the ship by the dead sailors.-See "Introduction," § 3. 2 Mariner.] This word was uniformly printed Marinere in 1798, and the rhyme here, and elsewhere, requires it to be pronounced so. In the first verse of Part VII. the old spelling is retained. "The ship was cheer'd, the harbour clear'd, Merrily did we drop Below the kirk, below the hill, Below the lighthouse top. The sun came up upon the left, And he shone bright, and on the right The wedding-guest here beat his breast, The bride hath paced into the hall, Nodding their heads before her goes The wedding-guest he beat his breast, ; And thus spake on that ancient man, “And now the storm-blast came, and he He struck with his o'ertaking wings, With sloping masts and dipping prow, The Mariner tells how the ship sailed southward with a good wind and fair weather, till it reached the Line. he weddingguest heareth the bridal music; but the Mariner continueth his tale. The ship drawn by a storm toward the south pole. The land of ice, and of And forward bends his head, The ship drove fast, loud roar'd the blast, And now there came both mist and snow, And ice, mast-high, came floating by, And through the drifts the fearful sounds, Did send a dismal sheen: where no living thing was to be seen. Till a great sea-bird, called the Albatross, came through the snow-fog, and was received with great joy and hospitality. And lo! the proveth a bird and followeth the ship as it snowy clifts Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken- The ice was here, the ice was there, It crack'd and growl'd, and roar'd and Like noises in a swound! At length did cross an Albatross : As if it had been a Christian soul, It ate the food it ne'er had eat, And a good south wind sprung up behind; |