Pagina-afbeeldingen
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"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.

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*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:
May'st hear the merry din."

He holds him with his skinny hand,
"There was a ship," quoth he.

"Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!”
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.

He holds him with his glittering eye-
The wedding-guest stood still,

And listens like a three years' child:
The Mariner hath his will.1

The wedding-guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;

And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.2

"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,
Out of the sea came he!

And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.

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The wedding-guest here beat his breast,
For he heard the loud bassoon.

The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;

Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.

The wedding-guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear

;

And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.

“And now the storm-blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:

He struck with his o'ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.

With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,

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 southward aye we fled.

And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold;

And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald;

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
Albatross

proveth a bird
of good omen,

and followeth the ship as it

snowy clifts

Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken-
The ice was all between.

The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:

It crack'd and growl'd, and roar'd and
howl'd,

Like noises in a swound!

At length did cross an Albatross :
Thorough the fog it came:

As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hail'd it in God's name.

It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit ;
The helmsman steer'd us through!

And a good south wind sprung up
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariners' hollo!

behind;

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