The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Other Poems. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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СКАЧАТЬ ship went down like lead.

       The ship suddenly sinketh.

      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.

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

      Upon the whirl, where sank the ship,

      The boat spun round and round;

      And all was still, save that the hill

      Was telling of the sound.

      I moved my lips—the Pilot shrieked

      And fell down in a fit;

      The holy Hermit raised his eyes,

      And prayed where he did sit.

      I took the oars: the Pilot’s boy,

      Who now doth crazy go,

      Laughed loud and long, and all the while

      His eyes went to and fro.

      ‘Ha! ha!’ quoth he, ‘full plain I see.

      The Devil knows how to row.’

      And now, all in my own countree,

      I stood on the firm land!

      The Hermit stepped forth from the boat,

      And scarcely he could stand.

      ‘O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!’

      The Hermit crossed his brow.

      ‘Say quick,’ quoth he, ‘I bid thee say—

      What manner of man art thou?’

       The ancient Mariner earnestly entreateth the Hermit to shrieve him; and the penance of life falls on him.

      Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched

      With a woful agony,

      Which forced me to begin my tale;

      And then it left me free.

      Since then, at an uncertain hour,

      That agony returns:

      And till my ghastly tale is told,

      This heart within me burns.

       And ever and anon throughout his future life an agony constraineth him to travel from land to land;

      I pass, like night, from land to land;

      I have strange power of speech;

      That moment that his face I see,

      I know the man that must hear me:

      To him my tale I teach.

      What loud uproar bursts from that door!

      The wedding-guests are there:

      But in the garden-bower the bride

      And bride-maids singing are:

      And hark the little vesper bell,

      Which biddeth me to prayer!

      O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been

      Alone on a wide wide sea:

      So lonely ’twas, that God himself

      Scarce seeméd there to be.

      O sweeter than the marriage-feast,

      ’Tis sweeter far to me,

      To walk together to the kirk

      With a goodly company!—

      To walk together to the kirk,

      And all together pray,

      While each to his great Father bends,

      Old men, and babes, and loving friends

      And youths and maidens gay!

      Farewell, farewell! but this I tell

      To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!

      He prayeth well, who loveth well

      Both man and bird and beast.

       And to teach, by his own example, love and reverence to all things that God made and loveth.

      He prayeth best, who loveth best

      All things both great and small;

      For the dear God who loveth us,

      He made and loveth all.

      The Mariner, whose eye is bright,

      Whose beard with age is hoar,

      Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest

      Turned from the bridegroom’s door.

      He went like one that hath been stunned,

      And is of sense forlorn:

      A sadder and a wiser man,

      He rose the morrow morn.

      1797—1798.

       CHRISTABEL

      PART I

      ’Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,

      And the owls have awakened the crowing cock;

      Tu—whit!—Tu—whoo!

      And hark, again! the crowing cock,

      How drowsily it crew.

      Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,

      Hath a toothless mastiff СКАЧАТЬ