The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poems, Plays, Essays, Lectures, Autobiography & Personal Letters (Illustrated). Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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       Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree.

       · · · · · · There she sees a damsel bright,

       Drest in a silken robe of white,

       That shadowy in the moonlight shone:

       The neck that made that white robe wan,

       Her stately neck, and arms were bare;

       Her blue-veined feet unsandal'd were,

       And wildly glittered here and there

       The gems entangled in her hair.

       I guess, 'twas frightful there to see

       A lady so richly clad as she—

       Beautiful exceedingly!

      And a chilly basis, these solemnly-propounded theories, for the gorgeous fabric of The Ancient Mariner. Originally founded, as regards its main outlines, upon a dream which occurred to Cruikshank,—a dream of a skeleton ship with figures in it,—who could have anticipated such results as that unforgettable scene where "The Ancient Mariner beholdeth a sign in the element afar off"?—

      The western wave was all a-flame;

       The day was well nigh done;

       Almost upon the western wave

       Rested the broad bright Sun;

       When that strange shape drove suddenly

       Betwixt us and the Sun.

       And straight the Sun was flecked with bars

       (Heaven's Mother send us grace!)

       As if through a dungeon-grate he peered

       With broad and burning face.

      Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud)

       How fast she nears and nears!

       Are those her sails that glance in the Sun, Like restless gossameres!

      Are those her ribs through which the Sun Did peer, as through a grate? And is that Woman all her crew? Is that a Death? and are there two? Is Death that woman's mate?

      Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was as white as leprosy, The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold.

      The naked hulk alongside came,

       And the twain were casting dice;

       'The game is done! I've won! I've won!'

       Quoth she, and whistles thrice.

      The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out:

       At one stride comes the dark;

       With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea,

       Off shot the spectre-bark.

      We listened, and looked sideways up!

       Fear at my heart, as at a cup,

       My life-blood seemed to sip!

       The stars were dim, and thick the night,

       The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white;

      From the sails the dew did drip—

       Till clomb above the eastern bar

       The hornéd Moon, with one bright star

       Within the nether tip.

      Or who could have supposed that Wordsworth's subsequent suggestion for the plot of the poem, "Suppose you represent the Mariner as having killed an Albatross on entering the South Sea, and that the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon themselves to avenge the crime," should develop into that magnificent defence of the animal right to live, which, in Coleridge's opinion, obtruded a moral sentiment too openly in a work of such pure imagination? The curse of remorse, throughout the whole story, hangs as heavy on the seaman's soul as does the dead weight of the Albatross around his neck: until that mystical moment when he blesses the beauty of the "happy living things" in the water, "God's creatures of the great calm,"

      The moving Moon went up the sky,

       And no where did abide:

       Softly she was going up,

       And a star or two beside.

       Her beams bemocked the sultry main,

       Like April hoar-frost spread;

       But where the ship's huge shadow lay,

       The charmed water burnt alway

       A still and awful red.

      Beyond the shadow of the ship,

       I watched the water-snakes:

       They moved in tracks of shining white,

       And when they reared, the elfish light

       Fell off in hoary flakes.

      Within the shadow of the ship

       I watched their rich attire:

       Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,

       They coiled and swam; and every track

       Was a flash of golden fire.

      O happy living things! no tongue

       Their beauty might declare:

       A spring of love gushed from my heart,

       And I blessed them unaware:

       Sure my kind saint took pity on me,

       And I blessed them unaware.

      The self-same moment I could pray;

       And from my neck so free

       The Albatross fell off, and sank

       Like lead into the sea.

      THE MARINER RECEIVES COMFORT IN PRAYER.

      "The self-same moment I could pray:

       And from my neck so free

       The Albatross fell off, and sank

       Like lead into the sea."

       (The Ancient Mariner).

      ... Side by side the three friends wandered over the May-sweet hillsides,—dipping into wooded combes, musical with СКАЧАТЬ