iFiitEiattctttSittauuiuuu . "*| BRIDGE W&*> p R E-ANC ENT^MMIHE k\ 111 hail iiiyllifeMk ? STANDARD 4*4* ' ENGUSHKILASSO imlUlitllli !i MM 1 Bill lii iiiiiit iifMfflrtr i i iii ii l i i lrrnfr i ii rrii W^^ ; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. — ■ Chap Copyright No Shell.. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THE ANCIENT MARINER C^trc^r-^^ ' (After a painting by PHILLIPS) COLERIDGE'S THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER Edited, with Introduction and Notes by LINCOLN R. GIBBS, M.A. BOSTON, U.S.A. GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS ©be 8tl)en£ttm JJresa 1898 7/) 4 Copyright, 1898 By LINCOLN R. GIBBS A I.I. RIGHTS KF.SEKVED 2n 1398, TWO "EIVED. PREFACE. This edition of The Ancient Mariner aims to include the information and critical comment necessary to an intelligent appreciation of the poem. As a help to that end, it has been thought desirable to print the original version (1798), since the differences between that and the final version afford an especially valuable opportunity for training in discrimination and taste. The interest which attaches to the personal history of Coleridge has, unfortunately, little in common with the interest which attaches to TJie Ancient Mariner. It has, therefore, seemed proper to include in this volume only a short biographical sketch. Students who may be impelled by a laudable curiosity to seek a more detailed knowledge of the poet's life are referred to the biographies by Hall Caine, Dr. Alois Brandl (translated into English by Lady Eastlake), and J. Dykes Campbell. Coleridge's own Bio- grapJiia Literaria, in spite of its fragmentary character, is essential to a knowledge of his intellectual and moral development. Methods of teaching The Ancient Mariner must differ widely with different teachers and pupils. All efforts, however, should be subordinated to the: aim of helping students to read with their imaginations — to see what Coleridge describes. In order to arouse the attention and IV PREFACE. interest necessary to attain this end, students should be required to do something for themselves. The editor has found very useful the plan of assigning to different pupils the task of writing short papers, the best of which may be read to the class, on topics drawn from the poem, such as the diction and imagery of The Ancient Marine?', The Ancient Mariner as a ballad, the changes made in the poem since the version of 1798, the moral teaching of the poem. The text of the first version in this volume I believe to be faithfully copied, with a few unimportant changes in punctuation and typography, from the edition of 1829; that of the version of 1 798 is reprinted from the appendix of J. Dykes Campbell's edition of the poetical works of Coleridge (London and New York, 1893). L. R. G. Boston, Mass., Jan. 5, 1898, CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction vii I. Sketch of the Life of Coleridge vti II. Origin of the Lyrical Ballads xv III. Critical Comments xvii The Rime of the Ancient Mariner i Version of 1829 1 " 1798 25 Notes 49 INTRODUCTION. I. SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF COLERIDGE. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born at Ottery St. Mary's, Devonshire, on the 21st of October, 1772. His father, John Coleridge, who combined the offices of parish clergyman and schoolmaster, was a man of great learning, amazing eccentricity, and childlike simplicity in the ways of the world — traits which his son Samuel Taylor inher- ited in full measure. It is related of John Coleridge that he sometimes quoted the Old Testament to his country congregations in the original Hebrew, in order that they might hear "the authentic language of the Holy Spirit." The boy Coleridge was unnaturally precocious, being able to read a chapter of the Bible at three years, entering the grammar school at the same age, and beginning the study of Latin at six. His tastes, moreover, were not those of a healthy boy: he played little with his brothers and loved to be much alone, dreaming and reading fairy stories. In 1 78 1 his father died, leaving a large family in narrow circumstances. Thereupon Coleridge became a pupil of Christ's Hospital, London, a charitable institution for the education of orphan boys. The early years of his school life were unhappy. The discipline was barbarous, the slightest offenses being punished by a flogging; the food vni INTRODUCTION. was ill prepared and insufficient ; little attention was paid to the health of the boys. 1 Coleridge, a warm-hearted and poetic lad, longed for his country home in Devonshire. In Frost at Midnight, he says of his schooling : I was reared In the great city, pent mid cloisters dim, And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars. But Coleridge's school days, though sometimes wretched and lonely, were by no means idle. Indeed, his mental growth was too rapid to be quite healthy, and even as a schoolboy he developed the widely diversified tastes which in later life made it impossible for him to fix upon a calling or even to carry a literary project to completion. A visit to the hospitals with his brother Luke aroused his interest in medicine, and for a time he read voraciously whatever he could find on that subject, in Greek, Latin, and English. Before his fifteenth year he was deep in metaphysics, the taste which he then acquired for Neoplatonic mysticism persisting throughout his life and strongly influencing both his philosophy and his poetry. After reading Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, he professed himself an infidel, whereupon the head-master, the Rev. James Boyer, promptly resorted to the cane and gave the boy a flogging, the only one, says Coleridge, that he ever deserved. During the last two years of his stay at Christ's Hos- pital, Coleridge's principal taste in reading was for poetry. The influence of Milton's descriptive poems and of Gray may be traced in his early work. He also read with eager- ness the sonnets of Bowles (published 1789), which would 1 See Charles Lamb's " Christ's Hospital Five-and-thirty Years After " (in the Essays of Elia). INTR OD UC TION. ix now be utterly neglected were it not for the part they played in forming the tastes of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Whatever their intrinsic worth may be, they are at least of the Romantic school, which was about to declare its principles and gain its victories in the work of Coleridge and Wordsworth. The former professed an extravagant admiration for them, and on leaving school made forty copies of them with his own hand, which he presented to his schoolmates as parting gifts. To the present gener- ation Bowles represents the weakness rather than the strength of the Romantic tendency, — its undisciplined emotion, degenerating into sentimentality; but to Coleridge his work was a welcome contrast to the frigid artificiality of the imitators of Pope and Johnson; it had the saving qualities of sincerity and spontaneity. After remaining in Christ's Hospital nine years, Cole- ridge became a student of Jesus College, Cambridge, entering the university in 1791, just as Wordsworth was leaving it. His career there, though auspiciously begun, was a disappointment to his friends and ended disastrously. For the first year he studied diligently, obtaining in 1792 the Brown medal for a Greek Sapphic ode. Later he became a desultory student, though not an indolent one. His rooms were a gathering place for the most radical spirits in the university, who met there to discuss the stirring events of the French Revolution. Before leaving Christ's Hospital, he had celebrated in verse the destruc- tion of the Bastille; and perhaps the most important fact in his mental history from 1791 to 1794 is the quickening of his democratic sympathies by his reading and associa- tions at the university. ' Godwin's Political Justice came x INTROD UC TION. to his hands, and he became a convert to its communistic creed. He soon gave evidence of his democratic convic- tions in a ridiculous manner. In December, 1793, in a fit of despondency, caused by debt and perhaps by a disappointment in love, Coleridge left Cambridge and went to London to seek his fortune. Finding himself in the city with scarcely a penny in his pocket, he obeyed a sudden impulse to enlist as a dragoon. This he did under an assumed name — Silas Tomkyn Comberbach ; but after a few months of service, some Latin verses which he scribbled on his stall led to an investigation, his friends procured his discharge, and he was restored to the university. In June, 1794, Coleridge visited Oxford and made the acquaintance of Southey, then a student at the university. A few weeks after, they met again at Bristol. Southey was full of democratic ideas, which he dreamed of putting into practice by establishing a communistic settlement on the banks of the Susquehanna. He had no difficulty in arousing the ardent interest of Coleridge in this visionary scheme. They named the enterprise Pantisocracy. Its fundamental principles were the abolition of exclusive privileges and private property, and the universal reign of brotherly love. The Pantisocritans hoped that a few hours of daily labor would provide for their needs; the rest of the time they purposed to devote to conversation and literature. They needed money to charter a ship and purchase supplies; but they were penniless themselves and could enlist in the enterprise only those whose fortunes were as desperate as their own. All attempts to raise money failing, Southey, to Coleridge's great INTR OB UC TION. xi disgust, abandoned the project and accepted an advanta- geous offer to go to Lisbon with an uncle. Meanwhile, Coleridge had left the university without a degree, and had complied with one of the important regu- lations of the Pantisocratic community by taking a wife. On the 4th of October, 1795, he was married to Miss Sara Fricker, of Bristol. His opinions in politics and religion, which in youth and early manhood were heretical, had prevented his tak- ing a degree at Cambridge and barred him from a career in the university or the church. For more than a year he had formed no other plan for the future than the imprac- ticable Pantisocracy project. This failing him, he found himself, in the winter of 1796, with no certain means of support for himself and his wife. He settled at Clevedon, near Bristol, and tried to gain a livelihood by publishing a volume of his collected poems, lecturing, and writing for the press. In the spring of 1796 he edited a political and literary journal of his own, The Watchman, which failed after ten numbers, for lack of subscribers. Hoping to get a Unitarian pulpit, he preached a few times in Bath, but his eccentricity in dress and in the choice of subjects — he appeared in the pulpit in a blue coat and white waistcoat, and on one occasion preached on the Hair-Powder Tax — prevented him from getting the desired appointment. These struggles, eccentricities, and failures are typical of his entire life. After nearly a year's residence at Clevedon, Coleridge removed to Nether Stowey, in Somersetshire. In June, 1797, Wordsworth, with his sister Dorothy, took up his residence in the neighboring village of Alfoxden, princi- xil INTR OB UC TION. pally for the sake of Coleridge's society. Wordsworth's Descriptive Sketches (1793) had come into the hands of Coleridge, who saw in them the certain announcement of a great poetic genius. Wordsworth, on his part, had been attracted by Coleridge's lectures in Bristol. Only the opportunity for personal intercourse was needed to create a life-long friendship. Wordsworth shared Coleridge's disgust with artificiality and his desire for plain living and high thinking, without sharing his vague dreams of imme- diately founding an ideal community. The best of his influence on Coleridge was moral rather than literary. From the stronger character of Wordsworth, Coleridge gained confidence in his own powers, purpose, and energy. During the months when the two poets were neighbors — from June, 1797, to September, 1798 — he wrote much of his best poetry, — The Ancient Mariner, the first part of Christabel, The Dark Ladie, Fears in Solitude, France, and Kubla Khan. The years 1797 and 1798 are the culmina- tion of his career as a poet. In September, 1798, Coleridge again found himself in financial difficulties. A pension from the Wedgwood brothers, makers of the famous pottery, enabled him to spend a year of study in Germany. Henceforth he was no longer primarily a poet, but a critic, theologian and philosopher. From this time forward, therefore, the events of his personal history and even the growth of his mind and character are comparatively uninteresting to students of his poetry, and we may pass rapidly over them. In 1799, upon his return to England, he began his work as a pioneer in introducing German thought into England, by translating Schiller's Wallenstein. After a period of IX TROD UC TION. xiil successful service on a London newspaper, he was offered a lucrative position as editor, which he declined, fearing that the routine duties would interfere with " the lazy reading of old folios." In 1803 the consequences of inherited weakness and of indiscreet exposure during his school clays appeared in the form of a painful rheumatic affection. For relief he had recourse to a nostrum which contained laudanum, and in this way began a slavery to the opium habit, which lasted till 18 16. In 1804 he went to Malta in search of health, acting as secretary to the governor, but returned to England in 1806. This period of his life (1803-18 16) is the melancholy record of bondage 'to the opium habit, separation from his family, and genius wasted and misapplied. He supported himself by hack work for the newspapers, by lecturing on Shakespeare, Milton and the fine arts, by compiling text-books, and by writing sermons for indolent clergymen. In 1809 he made a second unsuccessful venture in journalism, The Friend. In 1 8 16 Coleridge became an inmate of the house of Dr. Gillman, of Highgate, London, under whose care he gained the mastery over the opium habit. Here he con- tinued to reside till his death in 1834. During this period he wielded an influence which had previously been denied him. He was visited by many of the noblest and most promising young men in England — Edward Irving, Julius Hare, A. H. Hallam, John Sterling, J. H. Green, and Frederic Denison Maurice, who listened to him as to a spiritual father. Both by his conversation with this group and by his Aids to Reflection (1825) he profoundly influ- enced the religious thought of England in the direction of a liberal, practical, and spiritual Christianity. xiv INTRODUCTION. About 1830 his health began to fail, and on the 25th of July, 1834, he died. Coleridge's contributions to English literature, in spite of their miscellaneous character, are not without a certain unity of aim. His work in criticism, almost as important as his work in creative writing, is an exposition of the principles underlying the Romantic movement, of which he was the great critical mind. His lectures on Shakespeare — though often more enthusiastic than discriminating — had their share in promoting the revival of interest in Shakespeare which marked the early years of the century. His criticism of Wordsworth was influential in breaking down the prejudice against which Wordsworth was com- pelled to struggle and in hastening his tardy recognition. As a critic, as well as a poet, theologian, and philosopher, Coleridge's position in the history of English literature is that of protest against the barren formalism of the 18th century. If it were necessary to characterize him in a single phrase, he should be called the supreme asserter of the rights of the imagination. The following are the dates of publication of Coleridge's more important works: The Watchman, 1796. Ode to the Departing Year, 1796. The Ancient Mariner, 1798. Wallenstein (translation), 1800. Remorse, 1813. Christabel, 1816. Biographia Literaria, 1817. Sibylline Leaves, 1817. Zapolya, 1817. INTRODUCTION. xv Aids to Reflection, 1825. Table-Talk, 1835. Confessions of an Enquiring Spirit, 1840. Notes upon Shakespeare, 1849. II. ORIGIN OF THE LYRICAL BALLADS. The Ancient Mariner was first published in the Lyrical Ballads (1798), the origin of which Wordsworth has described in the Fenwick note to We Arc Seven: In the autumn of the year 1798, he [Coleridge], my sister, and myself, started from Alfoxden pretty late in the afternoon, with a view to visit Lenton and the Valley of Stones near it; and, as our united funds were very small, we agreed to defray the expense of the tour by writing a poem, to be sent to the new monthly magazine, set up by Phillips, the bookseller, and edited by Dr. Aiken. Accordingly, we set off and proceeded along the Quantock Hills towards Watchet, and in the course of this walk was planned the poem of The Ancient Marine?-, founded on a dream, as Mr. Coleridge said, of his friend, Mr. Cruikshank. Much the greatest part of the story was Mr. Cole- ridge's invention; but certain parts I myself suggested: for example, some crime was to be committed which should bring upon the old navigator, as Coleridge afterwards delighted to call him, the spectral persecution, as a consequence of that crime, and his own wanderings. I had been reading in Shelvock's Voyages a day or two before, that while doubling Cape Horn they frequently saw albatrosses in that latitude, the largest of sea fowl, some extending their wings twelve or fifteen feet. " Suppose," said I, M you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the South Sea, and that the tutelary spirits of those regions take upon them to avenge the crime ? " The incident was thought fit for the purpose and adopted accordingly. I also suggested the navigation of the ship xvi INTRODUCTION. by the dead men, but do not recollect that I had anything more to do with the scheme of the poem. The gloss with which it was subsequently accompanied was not thought of by either of us at the time; at least, not a hint of it was given to me, and I have no doubt it was a gratuitous afterthought. We began the com- position together on that, to me, memorable evening. I furnished two or three lines at the beginning of the poem, in particular: And listened like a three years' child ; The mariner had his will. These trifling contributions, all but one (which Mr. C. has with unnecessary scrupulosity recorded), slipped out of his mind as they well might. As we endeavored to proceed conjointly (I speak of the same evening), our respective manners proved so widely different that it would have been quite presumptuous in me to do anything but separate from an undertaking upon which I could only have been a clog. . . . 77ie Ancient Mariner grew and grew, till it became too important for our first object, which was limited to our expectation of five pounds, and we began to talk of a volume, which was to consist, as Mr. Coleridge has told the world, of poems chiefly on supernatural subjects taken from common life, but looked at, as much as might be, through an imaginative medium. Of the objects of this volume, Coleridge has given a full account in Biographia Literaria: During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbors our conversation turned frequently on the two cardi- nal points of poetry, — the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty, by the modifying colors of the imagination. The sudden charm which accidents of light and shade, which moonlight or sunset, diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the prac- INTR OD UC TION. X vil ticability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed, of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, super- natural; and the interest aimed at was to consist in the interest- ing of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. . . . For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and its vicinity where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them when they present themselves. In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads, in which it was agreed that my endeavors should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself, as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural by awakening the mind's atten- tion from the lethargy of custom and directing it to the loveli- ness and wonders of the world before us ; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes which see not, ears that hear not, and hearts which neither feel nor understand. III. CRITICAL COMMENTS. Whether or not a born "maker," he [Coleridge] was certainly a born theorist; and we believe not only that under all his most important achievements there was a basis of intellectual theory, but that the theory, so far XVlll - INTRODUCTION. from being an alien and disturbing presence, did duty as the unifying principle which coordinated the whole. We think we can see such a theory underlying The Ancient Mariner, and securing the almost unqualified success of that poem ; and we further think we can see it departed from in one isolated instance, with temporary artistic disaster as the result. Any one examining the poem with a critical eye for its machinery and groundwork will have noticed that Coleridge is careful not to introduce any element of the marvellous or supernatural until he has transported the reader beyond the pale of definite geographical knowledge, and thus left behind him all those conditions of the known and the familiar, all those associations with recorded fact and experience, which would have created an inimical atmos- phere. Indeed, there is perhaps something rather inartistic in his undignified haste to convey us to the aesthetically necessary region. In some half-dozen stanzas, beginning with " The ship was cleared," we find ourselves crossing the line and driven far towards the Southern Pole. Beyond a few broad indications thus vouchsafed, Coleridge very astutely takes pains to avoid anything like geography. We reach that silent sea into which we are the first that ever burst, and that is sufficient for imaginative ends. It is enough that the world, as known to actual navigators, is left behind, and a world which the poet is free to colo- nize with the wildest children of his dreaming brain, has been entered. Forthwith, to all intents and purposes, we may say, in the words of Goethe as rendered by Shelley: ff The bounds of true and false are passed; — Lead on, thou wandering gleam." INTRODUCTION. xix Thenceforth we cease to have any direct relations with the verifiable. Natural law is suspended; standards of proba- bility have ceased to exist. Marvel after marvel is accepted by us, as by the Wedding-Guest, with the unquestioning faith of "a three years' child." We become insensibly acclimatized to this dreamland. Nor is it the chaotic, anarchic, incoherent world of arabesque romance, where the real and unreal by turns arbitrarily interrupt and sup- plant each other, and are never reconciled at heart. On the contrary, here is no inconsistency, for with the consti- tution of this dream-realm nothing except the natural and the probable would be inconsistent. Here is no danger of the intellect or the reason pronouncing an adverse judgment, for the venue has been changed to a court where the jurisdiction of fancy is supreme. Thus far then, the Logic of the Incredible is perfect, and the result, from the view point of art, magnificent. But at last we quit this consistently, unimpeachably, most satisfactorily impossible world ; we are restored to the world of common experience ; and when so restoring us, the poet makes his first and only mistake. For the concluding miracle, or rather brace of miracles — the apparition of the angelic forms standing over the corpses of the crew, and the sudden preternatural sinking of the ship — take place just when we have returned to the province of the natural and regular, to the sphere of the actual and the known; just when, floating into harbor, we sight the well-remembered kirk on the rock, and the steady weathercock which the moonlight steeps in silentness. A dissonant note is struck at once. We have left a world where prodigies were normal, and have returned to one where they are monstrous. But xx INTRODUCTION. prodigies still pursue us with unseasonable pertinacity, and our feeling is somewhat akin to that of the Ancient Mariner himself, whose prayer is that he may either " be awake " or may " sleep alway." We would fain either surrender unconditionally to reality, or remain free, as naturalized citizens of a self-governing dreamland. William Watson, Excursions in Criticism, pp. 98-101. And this poem is beyond question one of the supreme triumphs of poetry. Witness the men who brought bat- teries to bear on it right and left. Literally: for one critic said that the "moral sentiment " had impaired the imagi- native excellence; another, that it failed and fell through for want of a moral foothold upon facts. Remembering these things, I am reluctant to proceed; but desirous to praise, as I best may. Though I doubt if it be worth while, seeing how The Ancient Mariner, praised or dis- praised, lives and is like to live for the delight equally of young boys and old men; and seeing also that the last critic cited was no less a man than Hazlitt. It is fortu- nate, among many misfortunes, that for Coleridge no warning word was needed against the shriek of the press gang from this side or that. He stooped once or twice to spurn them; but he knew that he stooped. His intense and overwrought abstraction from things of the day or hour did him no ill service here. The Ancient Mariner has doubtless more of breadth and space, more of material force and motion, than anything else of the poet's. And the tenderness of sentiment which touches with significant color the pure white imagination is here no longer morbid or languid, as in the earlier INTR OB UC TION. XXI poems of feeling and emotion. It is soft and piteous enough, but womanly rather than effeminate; and thus serves indeed to set off the strange splendors and bound- less beauties of the story. For the execution, I presume no human eye is too dull to see how perfect it is, and how high in kind of perfection. Here is not the speckless and elaborate finish which shows everywhere the fresh rasp of file or chisel on its smooth and spruce excellence; this is faultless after the fashion of a flower or a tree. Thus it has- grown: not thus has it been carved. Swinburne, Essays and Studies pp. 263, 264. It is enough for us here that he [Coleridge] has written some of the most poetical poetry in the language, and one poem, TJie Ancient' Mariner, not only unparalleled, but unapproached in its kind, and that kind of the rarest. It is marvellous in the mastery over that delightfully fortui- tous inconsequence that is the adamantine logic of dream- land. Coleridge has taken the old ballad measure and given to it by indefinable charm wholly his own all the sweetness, all the melody and compass of a symphony. And how picturesque it is in the proper sense of the word. I know nothing like it. There is not a description in it. It is all picture. Descriptive poets generally confuse us with multiplicity of detail; we cannot see their forest for trees; but Coleridge never errs in this way. With instinc- tive tact he touches the right chord of association, and is satisfied, as we also are. I should find it hard to explain the singular charm of his diction, there is so much nicety of art and purpose in it, whether for music or for mean- xxil INTROD UC TION. ing. Nor does it need any explanation, for we all feel it. The words seem common words enough, but in the order of them, in the choice, variety, and position of the vowel sounds they become magical. The most decrepit vocable in the language throws away its crutches to dance and sing at his piping. I cannot think it a personal peculiarity, but a matter of universal experience, that more bits of Cole- ridge have embedded themselves in my memory than of any other poet who delighted my youth — unless I should except the sonnets of Shakespeare. This argues perfect- ness of expression. Lowell, Democracy and Other Addresses, pp. 98, 99. Christabel, though not printed till 1816, was written mainly in the year 1797: The Rhyme of the Ancient Mari- ner was printed as a contribution to the Lyrical Ballads in 1798; and these two poems belong to the great year of Coleridge's poetic production, his twenty-fifth year. In poetic quality, above all in that most poetic of all qualities, a keen sense of, and delight in beauty, the infection of which lays hold upon the reader, they are quite out of proportion to all his other compositions. The form in both is that of the ballad, with some of its terminology, and some also of its quaint conceits. They connect themselves with that revival of ballad literature, of which Percy's Relics, and, in another way, Macpherson's Ossian are monuments, and which afterwards so powerfully affected Scott — " Young-eyed poesy All deftly masked as hoar antiquity." INTR OD UC TION. xxill The Ancient Mariner ... is a " romantic " poem, im- pressing us by bold invention, and appealing to that taste for the supernatural, that longing for le frisson, a shudder, to which the "romantic" school in Germany, and its derivations in England and France directly ministered. In Coleridge, personally, this taste had been encouraged by his odd and out-of-the-way reading in the old-fashioned literature of the marvellous — books like'Purch.a.s' sPt/grims, early voyages like Hakluyt's, old naturalists and visionary moralists, like Thomas Burnet, from whom he quotes the motto of The Ancient Mariner, "Facile credo, plures esse naturas invisibilcs quam visibiles in rerutn universitate" etc. Fancies of the strange things which may very well happen, even in broad daylight, to men shut up alone in ships far off on the sea, seem to have occurred to the human mind in all ages with a peculiar readiness, and often have about them, from the story of the stealing of Dionysus downwards, the fascination of a certain dreamy grace, which distinguishes them from other kinds of marvellous inventions. This sort of fascination The Ancient Mariner brings to its highest degree: it is the delicacy, the dreamy grace, in his presentation of the marvellous, which makes Coleridge's work so remarkable. The too palpable intruders from a spiritual world in almost all ghost literature, in Scott and Shakespeare even, have a kind of crudity or coarseness. Coleridge's power is in the very fineness with which, as by some really ghostly finger, he brings home to our inmost sense his inventions, daring as they are — the skeleton ship, the polar spirit, the inspiriting of the dead corpses of the ship's crew. The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner has XXIV INTRODUCTION. the plausibility, the perfect adaptation to reason and the general aspect of life, which belongs to the marvellous, when actually presented as part of a credible experience in our dreams. (Doubtless, the mere experience of the opium- eater, the habit he must almost necessarily fall into of noting the more elusive phenomena of dreams, had some- thing to do with that \ in its essence, however, it is con- nected with a more purely intellectual circumstance in the development of Coleridge's poetic gift. Some one once asked William Blake, to whom Coleridge has many resem- blances, when either is at his best (that whole episode of the re-inspiriting of the ship's crew in The Ancient Mariner being comparable to Blake's well-known design of the " Morning Stars singing together"), whether he had ever seen a ghost, and was surprised when the famous seer, who ought, one might think, to have seen so many, answered frankly, rr Only once ! " His ff spirits," at once more delicate, and so much more real than any ghost — the burden, as they were the privilege, of his temperament — like it, were an integral element in his everyday life. And the difference of mood expressed in that question and its answer, is indicative of a change of temper in regard to the supernatural which has passed over the whole modern mind, and of which the true measure is the influence of the writings of Swedenborg. What that change is we may see if we compare the vision by which Swedenborg was " called," as he thought, to his work, with the ghost which called Hamlet, or the spells of Marlowe's Faust with those of Goethe's. The modern mind, so minutely self-scrutinizing, if it is to be affected at all by a sense of the supernatural, needs to be more INTR 01) UC TION. xx v finely touched than was possible in the older, romantic presentment of it. The spectral object, so crude, so impossible, has become plausible, as " The blot upon the brain That will show itself without ;" and is understood to be but a condition of one's own mind, for which, according to the skepticism, latent at least, in so much of our modern philosophy, the so-called real things themselves are but spectra after all. It is this finer, more delicately marvellous supernatural- ism, fruit of his more delicate psychology, that Coleridge infuses into romantic adventure, itself also then a new or revived thing in English literature; and with a fineness of weird effect in The Ancient Mariner, unknown in those older, more simple, romantic legends and ballads. It is a flower of mediaeval or later German romance, growing up in the peculiarly compounded atmosphere of modern psychological speculation, and putting forth in it wholly new qualities. The quaint prose commentary, which runs side by side with the verse of The A?icient Mariner, illustrates this — a composition of quite a different shade of beauty and merit from that of the verse which it accom- panies, connecting this, the chief poem of Coleridge, with his philosophy, and emphasizing therein that psychological interest of which I have spoken, its curious soul-lore. Completeness, the perfectly rounded wholeness and unity of the impression it leaves on the mind of a reader who fairly gives himself to it — that, too, is one of the characteristics of a really excellent work, in the poetic as in every other kind of art ; and by this completeness, The Ancic7it Mariner certainly gains upon Christabel — a com- xxvi INTRODUCTION. pleteness, entire as that of Wordsworth's LeecJi-gatherer, or Keats's Saint Agnes Eve, each typical in its way of such wholeness or entirety of effect on a careful reader. It is Coleridge's one great complete work, the one really finished thing, in a life of many beginnings. CJiristabel remained a fragment. In The Ancient Mariner this unity is secured in part by the skill with which the incidents of the marriage-feast are made to break in dreamily from time to time upon the main story. And then, how pleasantly, how reassuringly, the whole nightmare story itself is made to end, among the clear fresh sounds and lights of the bay, where it began, with " The moonlight steeped in silentness, The steady weathercock." Walter Pater, Appreciations, pp. 96-101. 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? quae loca habitant? Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit ingenium humanum, numquam attigit. Juvat, interea, non diffiteor, quandoque in animo, tamquam in tabula, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contemplari : ne mens assuefacta hodiernae vitas minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota s'ubsidat in pusillas cogitationes. Sed veritati interea invigilandum est, modusque servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a nocte, distinguamus. T. Burnet, Archaol. Phil., p. 68. THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER. IN SEVEN FARTS. detaineth one. Part I. It is an ancient Mariner, ^ ^ ncient t ' Manner meet- And he stoppeth one of three. fitS£j£- "By thy long gray beard and glittering eye, feasted n£ Now wherefore stopp'st thou me ? 5 "The Bridegroom's doors are opened 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, 10 "There was a ship," quoth he. "Hold off ! unhand me, graybeard loon !" Eftsoons his hand dropt he. He holds him with his glittering eye - The wedding-guest stood still, 15 And listens like a three years' child : The Mariner hath his will. (1) The wedding- guest is spell- bound by the eye of the old seafaring man, and constrain- ed to hear his tale. COLERIDGE. The Mariner tells how the ship sailed southward with a good wind and fair weather, till it reached the line. The wedding-guest sat on a stone : He can not choose but hear ; And thus spake on that ancient man, 20 The bright-eyed Mariner. The ship was cheered, the harbor cleared, Merrily did we drop Below the kirk, below the hill, 24 Below the light-house 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. Higher and higher every day, 30 Till over the mast at noon — The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast, For he heard the loud bassoon. The wedding- guest heareth the bridal music; but the Mariner con- tinueth his tale. The ship drawn by a storm toward the south pole. The bride hath paced into the hall, Red as a rose is she ; Nodding their heads before her goes The merry minstrelsy. 37 The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast, Yet he can not choose but hear ; And thus spake on that ancient man, 4° 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. THE ANCIENT MARINER. 45 With sloping masts and dipping prow, As who pursued with yell and blow Still treads the shadow of his foe, And forward bends his head, The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, 50 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. 55 And through the drifts the snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen : Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken — The ice was all between. The land of ice and of fearful sounds, where no living thing was to be The ice was here, the ice was there, 60 The ice was all around : It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, Like noises in a swound ! At length did cross an Albatross : Thorough the fog it came ; 65 As if it had been a Christian soul, We hailed 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 ; 70 The helmsman steered us through ! Till a great seabird called the Albatross came through the snow-fog, and was re- ceived with great joy and hospital ity. COLERIDGE. And lo ! the Albatross proveth a bird of good omen, and followeth the ship as it returned northward through fog and floating ice. The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen. And a good south wind sprung up behind ; The Albatross did follow, And every day, for food or play, Came to the mariner's hollo ! In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, 76 It perched for vespers nine ; Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, Glimmered the white moon-shine. " God save thee, ancient Mariner ! From the fiends, that plague thee thus ! — Why look'st thou so ? " — With my cross-bow 82 I shot the Albatross. Part II. The Sun now rose upon the right : Out of the sea came he, 85 Still hid in mist, and on the left Went down into the sea. And the good south wind still blew behind, But no sweet bird did follow, Nor any day for food or play 9° Came to the mariners' hollo ! His ship- mates cry out against the ancient Mari- ner, for killing the bird of good luck. And I had done an hellish thing, And it would work 'em woe : For all averred, I had killed the bird That made the breeze to blow. 95 Ah wretch ! said they, the bird to slay, That made the breeze to blow ! THE ANCIENT MARINER. But when the fog cleared off, they jus- tify the same, and thus make themselves accomplices in the crime. Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, The glorious Sun uprist : Then all averred, I had killed the bird ioo That brought the fog and mist. 'T was right, said they, such birds to slay, That bring the fog and mist. The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The. fair breeze ' ' continues ; the The furrow followed free ; SSfcoSST, 105 We were the first that ever burst 5Jard"?enun- Into that silent sea. the Line. Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, T e h e e slv 'T was sad as sad could be ; And we did speak only to break no The silence of the sea! en suddenly becalmed. All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody Sun, at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the Moon. 115 Day after clay, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion ; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, everywhere, 1 20 And all the boards did shrink ; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. The very deep did rot : O Christ ! That ever this should be ! And the Al- batross begins to be avenged. COLERIDGE. 125 Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea. About, about, in reel and rout The death-fires danced at night ; The water, like a witch's oils, 13° Burnt green, and blue and white. And some in dreams assured were Of the spirit that plagued us so ; Nine fathom deep he had followed us From the land of mist and snow. A spirit had followed them ; one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither de- parted souls nor angels ; concerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus, may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no climate or element without one or more. 135 And every tongue, through utter drought, Was withered at the root ; We could not speak, no more than if We had been choked with soot. The ship- mates in their sore distress would fain throw the whole guilt on the ancient Mariner ; in sign whereof they hang the dead sea-bird round his neck. The ancient Mariner be- holdeth a sign in the element afar off. Ah ! well-a-day ! what evil looks Had I from old and young ! Instead of the cross, the Albatross About my neck was hung. Part III. There passed a weary time. Each throat Was parched, and glazed each eye. 145 A weary time ! a weary time ! How glazed each weary eye, When looking westward, I beheld A something in the sky. THE ANCIENT MARINER. At first it seemed a little speck, 15° And then it seemed a mist ; It moved and moved, and took at last A certain shape, I wist. A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist ! And still it neared and neared : 155 As if it dodged a water-sprite, It plunged and tacked and veered. With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, ^ a n c e h ^f t r seemeth him to be a ship ; Through utter drought all dumb we stood ! ransom a he ear freeth his speech from the bonds of thirst. We could not laugh nor wail ; 160 I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, And cried, A sail ! a sail ! With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, Agape they heard me call : Gramercy ! they for joy did grin, 165 And all at once their breath drew in, As they were drinking all. See ! see ! (I cried) she tacks no more ! Hither to work us weal ; Without a breeze, without a tide, 170 She steadies with upright keel ! The western wave was all a-flame. The day was well nigh done ! Almost upon the western wave Rested the broad bright Sun ; 175 When that strange shape drove suddenly Betwixt us and the Sun. A flash of joy : And horror follows. For can it be a ship that comes onward without wind or tide ? COLERIDGE. It seemeth him but the skeleton of a ship. 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, 184 Like restless gossameres? And its ribs are seen as bars on the face of the set- ting Sun. The spectre- woman and her death- mate, and no other on board the skeleton- ship. Like vessel, like crew ! 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? 19° Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold : Her skin was as white as leprosy, The Night-mare Life-in-Death was she, 194 Who thicks man's blood with cold. Death and Life-in-Death have diced for the ship's crew, and she (the latter) winneth the ancient Mariner. No twilight within the courts of the Sun. The naked hulk alongside came, And the twain were casting dice ; "The game is done ! I 've, I 've won !" Quoth she, and whistles thrice. The Sun's rim dips ; the stars rush out :oo At one stride comes the dark ; With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea, Off shot the spectre-bark. THE ANCIENT MARINER. We listened and looked sideways up ! Fear at my heart, as at a cup, 205 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 horned Moon, with one bright star Within the nether tip. 210 At the rising of the Moon, One after one, by the star-dogged Moon, Too quick for groan or sigh, Each turned his face with a ghastly pang, 215 And cursed me with his eye. ' One after another, Four times fifty living men, (And I heard nor sigh nor groan) With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, They dropped down one by one. His shipmates drop down dead ; 220 The souls did from their bodies fly, They fled to bliss or woe ! And every soul, it passed me by, Like the whizz of my cross-bow ! Rut Life-in- Death begins her work on the ancient Mariner. Part IV. " I fear thee, ancient Mariner ! 225 I fear thy skinny hand ! And thou art long, and lank, and brown, As is the ribbed sea-sand. The wedding- guest feareth that a spirit is talking to him 10 COLERIDGE. But the ancient Mariner assur- eth him of his bodily life, and proceedeth to relate his hor- rible penance. He despiseth the creatures of the calm. " I fear thee and thy glittering eye, 229 And thy skinny hand, so brown." — Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest ! This body dropt not down. Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea ! And never a saint took pity on 235 My soul in agony. The many men, so beautiful ! And they all dead did lie : And a thousand thousand slimy things 239 Lived on ; and so did I. And envieth that they should live, and so many lie dead. I looked upon the rotting sea, And drew my eyes away ; I looked upon the rotting deck, And there the dead men lay. I looked to Heaven, and tried to pray ; 245 But or ever a prayer had gusht, A wicked whisper came, and made My heart as dry as dust. But the curse liveth for him in the eye of the dead men. I closed my lids, and kept them close, And the balls like pulses beat; [the sky 250 For the sky and the sea, and the sea and Lay like a load on my weary eye, And the dead were at my feet. The cold sweat melted from their limbs, Nor rot nor reek did they : THE ANCIENT MARINER. 11 255 The look with which they looked on me Had never passed away. An orphan's curse would drag to Hell A spirit from on high ; But oh ! more horrible than that 260 Is a curse in a dead man's eye ! Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, And yet I could not die. The moving Moon went up the sky, in Ms laneii- o r J > ness and fixed- And nowhere did abide: STtoSJS™" 265 Softly she was going up, Mo^SEf A n ,i-i stars that still And a star or two beside — sojourn, yet still move on- ward; and everywhere the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed rest, and their native country and their own natural homes, which they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival. Her beams bemocked the sultry main, Like April hoar-frost spread; But where the ship's huge shadow lay, 270 The charmed water burnt alway A still and awful red. By the light of the Moon he beholdeth God's crea- Beyond the shadow of the ship, I watched the water-snakes: They moved in tracks of shining white, great cai m e 275 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, 280 They coiled and swam; and every track Was a flash of golden fire. 12 COLERIDGE. "Sa^Sp- ° ha PPy livin S thin S s ! no tongue piness - Their beauty might declare: 284 A spring of love gushed from my heart, Hebiesseth ^nd j blessed them unaware: them in his heart - Sure my kind saint took pity on me, And I blessed them unaware. T ins to break ^he se lf same moment I could pray; And from my neck so free 290 The Albatross fell off and sank Like lead into the sea. Part V. Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole ! To Mary Queen the praise be given ! 295 She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, That slid into my soul. Sif Mother 1 * Tne sill y buckets on the deck, SESSaC That had so long remained, freshed with j dreamt fa^ t]lQy WQre fiUed ^^ dew . 3 00 And when I awoke, it rained. My lips were wet, my throat was cold, My garments all were dank ; Sure I had drunken in my dreams, And still my body drank. 3°5 I moved, and could not feel my limbs: I was so light — almost THE ANCIENT MARINER. U 310 I thought that I had died in sleep, And was a blessed ghost. And soon I heard a roaring wind: It did not come anear; But with its sound it shook the sails, That were so thin and sere. The upper air burst into life ! And a hundred fire-flags sheen, 315 To and fro they were hurried about ! And to and fro, and in and out, The wan stars danced between. And the coming wind did roar more loud, And the sails did sigh like sedge ; 320 And the rain poured down from one black cloud ; The Moon was at its edge. The thick black cloud was cleft, and still The Moon was at its side: Like waters shot from some high crag, 325 The lightning fell with never a jag, He heareth strange sounds and seeth strange sights and commo- tions in the sky and the ele- ment. A river steep and wide. The loud wind never reached the ship, Yet now the ship moved on ! Beneath the lightning and the moon 330 The dead men gave a groan. They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, Nor spoke, nor moved their eyes ; It had been strange, even in a dream, To have seen those dead men rise. The bodies of the ship's crew are inspired, and the ship moves on : 14 COLERIDGE. 335 The helmsman steered, the ship moved on; Yet never a breeze up blew; The mariners all 'gan work the ropes, Where they were wont to do; They raised their limbs like lifeless tools — 340 We were a ghastly crew. The body of my brother's son Stood by me, knee to knee : The body and I pulled at one rope, 344 But he said nought to me. s P o U uis n of ?he the " 1 fear tnee > ancient Mariner! " iE£°of by Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest! mTddel^but 'T was not those souls that fled in pain, by a blessed iit-i • 1 t i_i_ • troop of an- Which to their corses came again, gelic spirits, . . sent down by the But a trOOp 01 Spirits blest I invocation of the guardian saint. 35° For when it dawned — they dropped their arms, And clustered round the mast ; Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, And from their bodies passed. Around, around, flew each sweet sound, 355 Then darted to the Sun ; Slowly the sounds came back again, Now mixed, now one by one.. Sometimes a-dropping from the sky I heard the sky-lark sing ; THE ANCIENT MARINER. 15 360 Sometimes all little birds that are, How they seemed to fill the sea and air With their sweet jargoning ! And now 't was like all instruments, Now like a lonely flute ; 365 And now it is an angel's song, That makes the Heavens be mute. It ceased ; yet still the sails made on A pleasant noise till noon, A noise like of a hidden brook 37o In the leafy month of June, That to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune. Till noon we quietly sailed on, Yet never a breeze did breathe : 375 Slowly and smoothly went the ship, Moved onward from beneath. Under the keel nine fathom deep, From the land of mist and snow, The spirit slid : and it was he 3 8 ° That made the ship to go. The sails at noon left off their tune, And the ship stood still also. The Sun, right up above the mast, Had fixed her to the ocean : 3 8 5 But in a minute she 'gan stir, With a short uneasy motion — Backwards and forwards half her length With a short uneasy motion. The lonesome spirit from the south pole car- ries on the ship as far as the line, in obedi- ence to the an- gelic troop, but still requir- eth vengeance. 16 COLERIDGE. The Polar Spirit's fellow- demons, the invisible in- habitants of the element, take part in his wrong ; and two of them relate, one to the other, that penance long and heavy for the ancient Mariner hath been accorded to the Polar Spirit, who returneth southward. Then like a pawing horse let go, 39° She made a sudden bound : It flung the blood into my head, And I fell down in a swound. How long in that same fit I lay, I have not to declare ; But ere my living life returned, I heard and in my soul discerned Two voices in the air. "Is it he?" quoth one, " Is this the man? By him who died on cross, With his cruel bow he laid full low The harmless Albatross. 402 " The spirit who bideth by himself In the land of mist and snow, He loved the bird that loved the man 405 Who shot him with his bow." The other was a softer voice, As soft as honey-dew : Quoth he, " The man hath penance done, And penance more will do." Part VI. First Voice. 410 " But tell me, tell me ! speak again, Thy soft response renewing — What makes that ship drive on so fast? What is the Ocean doing?" THE ANCIENT MARINER. 17 Second Voice. " Still as a slave before his lord, 4 1 5 The Ocean hath no blast ; His great bright eye most silently Up to the Moon is cast — If he may know which way to go ; For she guides him smooth or grim. 420 See, brother, see ! how graciously She looketh down on him." First Voice. " But why drives on that ship so fast, Without or wave or wind ?" Second Voice. " The air is cut away before, 4 2 5 And closes from behind. " Fly, brother, fly ! more high, more high ! Or we shall be belated : For slow and slow that ship will go, When the Mariner's trance is abated." The Mariner hath been cast into a trance ; for the angelic power causeth the vessel to drive north- ward faster than human life could endure. 43° I woke, and we were sailing on As in a gentle weather : The supernat- ural motion is retarded ; the Mariner 'T was night, calm night, the Moon was high ; hX^enarJS? The dead men stood together. All stood together on the deck, 435 For a charnel-dungeon fitter : All fixed on me their stony eyes, That in the Moon did glitter. IS COLERIDGE. The pang, the curse, with which they died, Had never passed away : 440 I could not draw my eyes from theirs, Nor turn them up to pray. finSrTx 6 i- And now this spell was snapt : once more ated - I viewed the ocean green, And looked far forth, yet little saw 445 Of what had else been seen — Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head ; 45° Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread. But soon there breathed a wind on me, Nor sound nor motion made : Its path was not upon the sea, 455 In ripple or in shade. It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek Like a meadow-gale of spring — It mingled strangely with my fears, Yet it felt like a welcoming. 460 Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship, Yet she sailed softly too : Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze — On me alone it blew. dent^iarili'er Oh' dream of joy ! is this indeed EI^EI. The light-house top I see ? THE ANCIENT MARINER. 19 Is this the hill ? is this the kirk ? Is this mine own countree ? We drifted o'er the harbor-bar, And I with sobs did pray — 47o O let me be awake, my God ! Or let me sleep alway. The harbor-bay was clear as glass, So smoothly it was strewn ! And on the bay the moonlight lay, 475 And the shadow of the moon. The rock shone bright, the kirk no less, That stands above the rock : The moonlight steeped in silentness The steady weathercock. 480 And the bay was white with silent light, Till rising from the same, Full many shapes, that shadows were, ^Mtfilave In crimson colors came. bodies^ A little distance from the prow * n v »ng 355 That makes the heavens be mute. It ceas'd : yet still the sails made on A pleasant noise till noon, A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, 360 That to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune. Listen, O listen, thou Wedding-guest ! l ' Marinere ! thou hast thy will : ' For that, which comes out of thine eye, doth make 3 6 5 ' My body and soul to be still.' Never sadder tale was told To a man of woman born ; Sadder and wiser thou wedding-guest ! Thou 'It rise to-morrow morn. 370 Never sadder tale was heard By a man of woman born : The Marineres all return'd to work As silent as beforne. The Marineres all 'gan pull the ropes, 375 But look at me they n'old : 1 11. 362-377. These four stanzas omitted. THE ANCIENT MARINER. 39 Thought I, I am as thin as air — They cannot me behold. Till noon we silently sail'd on Yet never a breeze did breathe : 380 Slowly and smoothly went the ship Mov'd onward from beneath. Under the keel nine fathom deep From the land of mist and snow The spirit slid : and it was He 385 That made the Ship to go. The sails at noon left off their tune And the Ship stood still also. The sun right up above the mast Had fix'd her to the ocean : 39° But in a minute she 'gan stir With a short uneasy motion — Backwards and forwards half her length With a short uneasy motion. Then, like a pawing horse let go, 395 She made a sudden bound : It flung the blood into my head, And I fell into a swound. How long in that same fit I lay, I have not to declare ; 400 But ere my living life return'd, I heard and in my soul discern'd Two voices in the air. ' Is it he ?' quoth one, ' Is this the man ? 1 By him who died on cross, 40 COLERIDGE. 4°5 * With his cruel bow he lay'd full low 1 The harmless Albatross. 1 The spirit who 'bideth by himself ' In the land of mist and snow, ' He lov'd the bird that lov'd the man 410 ' Who shot him with his bow.' The other was a softer voice, As soft as honey-dew : Quoth he the man hath penance done, And penance more will do. VI First Voice. 4 T 5 ' But tell me, tell me ! speak again, 'Thy soft response renewing — * What makes that ship drive on so fast ? ' What is the Ocean doing ? ' Second Voice. 1 Still as a Slave before his Lord, 4 2 ° ' The Ocean hath no blast : ' His great bright eye most silently * Up to the moon is cast — ' If he may know which way to go, 1 For she guides him smooth or grim. 425 ' See, brother, see ! how graciously 1 She looketh down on him.' First Voice. 1 But why drives on that ship so fast * Withouten wave or wind ? ' THE ANCIENT MARINER. 41 Second Voice. 1 The air is cut away before, 43° ' And closes from behind. ' Fly, brother, fly ! more high, more high, ' Or we shall be belated ; For slow and slow that ship will go, ' When the Marinere's trance is abated.' 435 I woke, and we were sailing on As in a gentle weather : 'Twas night, calm night, the moon was high; The dead men stood together. All stood together on the deck, 440 For a charnel-dungeon fitter : All fix'd on me their stony eyes That in the moon did glitter. The pang, the curse, with which they died, Had never pass'd away : 445 I could not draw my een from theirs Ne turn them up to pray. And in its time the spell was snapt, And I could move my een : I look'd far-forth, but little saw 45° Of what might else be seen. Like one, that on a lonely road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turn'd round, walks on And turns no more his head : 455 Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread. 42 COLERIDGE. But soon there breath'd a wind on me, Ne sound ne motion made : Its path was not upon the sea, 460 In ripple or in shade. It rais'd my hair, it fann'd my cheek, Like a meadow-gale of spring — It mingled strangely with my fears, Yet it felt like a welcoming. 465 Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship, Yet she sail'd softly too : Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze — On me alone it blew. O dream of joy ! is this indeed 47° The light-house top I see ? Is this the Hill? Is this the Kirk ? Is this mine own countree ? We drifted o'er the Harbour-bar, And I with sobs did pray — 475 ' O let me be awake, my God ! ' Or let me sleep alway !' The harbour-bay was clear as glass, So smoothly it was strewn ! And on the bay the moon light lay, 4 § o And the shadow of the moon. The moonlight bay was white all o'er, 1 Till rising from the same, Full many shapes, that shadows were, Like as of torches came. 1 11. 481-502. These five stanzas omitted. THE ANCIENT MARINER. 43 485 A little distance from the prow Those dark-red shadows were ; But soon I saw that my own flesh Was red as in a glare. I turn'd my head in fear and dread, 490 And by the holy rood, The bodies had advanc'd and now Before the mast they stood. They lifted up their stiff right arms, They held them strait and tight ; 495 And each right-arm burnt like a torch, A torch that 's borne upright. Their stony eye-balls glitter'd on In the red and smoky light. I pray'd and turn'd my head away 500 Forth looking as before. There was no breeze upon the bay, No wave against the shore. The rock shone bright, the kirk no less That stands above the rock : 505 The moonlight steep'd in silentness The steady weathercock. And the bay was white with silent light, Till rising from the same Full many shapes, that shadows were, 510 In crimson colours came. A little distance from the prow Those crimson shadows were : I turn'd my eyes upon the deck — O Christ ! what saw I there ? 44 COLERIDGE. 5 J 5 Each corse lay fiat, lifeless and flat; And by the Holy rood, A man all light, a seraph-man, On every corse there stood. This seraph-band, each wav'd his hand 5 2 ° It was a heavenly sight : They stood as signals to the land, Each one a lovely light : This seraph-band, each wav'd his hand, No voice did they impart — 5 2 5 No voice ; but O ! the silence sank, Like music on my heart. Eftsones I heard the dash of oars, I heard the pilot's cheer : My head was turn'd perforce away, 53° And I saw a boat appear. Then vanish'd all the lovely lights ;' The bodies rose anew : With silent pace, each to his place, Came back the ghastly crew. 535 The wind, that shade nor motion made, On me alone it blew. The pilot, and the pilot's boy I heard them coming fast : Dear Lord in Heaven ! it was a joy, 54o 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. 545 He '11 shrieve my soul, he '11 wash away The Albatross's blood. 1 11. 531-536. This stanza omitted. THE ANCIENT MARINER. 45 VI] This Hermit good lives in that wood Which slopes down to the Sea. How loudly his sweet voice he rears ! 550 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 555 The rotted old Oak-stump. The skiff-boat ne'rd : I heard them talk, 1 Why, this is strange, I trow ! ' Where are those lights so many and fair ' That signal made but now ? ' 560 ' Strange, by my faith ! ' the Hermit said — ' And they answer'd not our cheer. ' The planks look warp'd, and see those sails 1 How thin they are and sere ! 1 1 never saw aught like to them 5 6 5 ' Unless perchance it were 1 The skeletons of leaves that lag ' My forest-brook along : ' When the Ivy-tod is heavy with snow, 1 And the Owlet whoops to the wolf below 57o ' That eats the she-wolf's young.' ' Dear Lord ! it has a fiendish look — (The Pilot made reply) ' I am afear'd ' — ' Push on, push on ! ' Said the Hermit cheerily. 46 COLERIDGE. 575 The Boat came closer to the Ship, But I ne spake ne stirr'd ! The Boat came close beneath the Ship, And strait a sound was heard ! Under the water it rumbled on, 5 8 ° Still louder and more dread : It reached the Ship, it split the bay ; The Ship went down like lead. Stunn'd by that loud and dreadful sound, Which sky and ocean smote : 5 8 5 Like one that had been seven days drown'd My body lay afloat : But, swift as dreams, myself I found Within the Pilot's boat. Upon the whirl, where sank the Ship, 59° The boat spun round and round: And all was still, save that the hill Was telling of the sound. I mov'd my lips : the Pilot shriek'd And fell down in a fit, 595 The Holy Hermit rais'd his eyes And pray'd where he did sit. I took the oars : the Pilot's boy, Who now doth crazy go, Laugh'd loud and long, and all the while 6oo His eyes went to and fro. ' Ha ! ha ! ' quoth he — ' full plain I see, 1 The devil knows how to row.' And now all in mine own Countree I stood on the firm land ! THE ANCIENT MARINER. 47 605 The Hermit stepp'd forth from the boat, And scarcely he could stand. ' O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy Man ! ' The Hermit cross'd his brow — ' Say quick,' quoth he, ' I bid thee say 610 ' What manner man art thou ?' Forthwith this frame of mine was wrench'd With a woeful agony, Which forc'd me to begin my tale And then it left me free. 615 Since then at an uncertain hour, 1 Now oftimes and now fewer, That anguish comes and makes me tell My ghastly aventure. I pass, like night, from land to land ; 620 I have strange power of speech ; The 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 ! 625 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. 1 11. 615-618. Since then at an uncertain hour That agony returns ; And till my ghastly tale is told This heart within me burns. 48 COLERIDGE. 630 O Wedding-guest ! this soul hath been Alone on a wide wide sea : So lonely 't was, that God himself Scarce seemed there to be. O sweeter than the Marriage-feast, 635 'T is sweeter far to me To walk together to the Kirk With a goodly company. To walk together to the Kirk And all together pray, 640 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 ! 645 He prayeth well who loveth well, Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best who loveth best, All things both great and small : For the dear God, who loveth us, 650 He made and loveth all. The Marin ere, whose eye is bright, Whose beard with age is hoar, Is gone ; and now the wedding-guest Turn'd from the bridegroom's door. 655 He went, like one that hath been stunn'd And is of sense forlorn : A sadder and a wiser man He rose the morrow morn. NOTES. Rime. The derivation (Anglo-Saxon, rim ; Middle English, rime) shows this spelling to be correct rather than the ordinary form, rhyme, which is the result of a confusion beginning about 1550 between rime and rhythm . The gloss did not appear in the earliest editions ; it was added in Sibyl- line Leaves ( 1 S v i 7 ) . 1 1. It is an ancient Mariner. A common form of introduction in the ballads. 1 3. "By thy long gray beard." Brandl regards this Turkish oath as an indication of the " eclectic tendency " of the Romantic school ! 1 8. What is the subject of maysthear? 1 12. Eftsoons, at once. (Anglo-Saxon, aeft and sona.) 1-2 13-19. Notice the mixed tenses. Cf. 11. 57-58, 363-65. Is this the result of carelessness ? 1 15-16. These lines are Wordsworth's. 2 18. He can not choose but hear. " Doubtless this is a feature taken from life, for such a fascination did Coleridge himself exercise over his hearers." (Brandl.) 2 20. What is gained by putting the story into the mouth of the Ancient Mariner himself ? Is there any advantage in his having the impatient wedding-guest as a listener? See Introduction, p. xxvi. 2 23. kirk, a Northern form of church. Explain the presence of dialect words and archaisms in the poem. 2 21-24. What is the point of view — that of the Ancient Mariner on board the ship or that of an observer on shore ? 2 34. Red as a rose. A very common comparison in the ballads. 2 36. minstrelsy, musicians. 3 47. still, constantly. 2-3 21-50. Do you agree with William Watson (see Introduction, p. xviii) that Coleridge shows " undignified haste to convey us to the aesthetically necessary region ?" 3 55. clifts, cliffs. 3 56. sheen, brightness. In 1. 314 the word is used as an adjective. 3 57. ken, descry. 50 NOTES. 3 61. Notice the harmony between sound and sense. 3 62. swound, swoon. 3 64. Thorough, through. An archaism. 4 76. vespers, evenings. 4 82. " The details were gathered from Shelvocke's Voyage round the World. He [Wordsworth] there read of a captain, by name Simon Hatley, a discontented, cruel, splenetic man. . . . The same, on a fearfully cold and stormy passage, far south of the Terra del Fuego, saw a black albatross, the only living thing in the wide waste of waters, who soared round and round the vessel for many days. The captain accordingly imagined in his superstitious way that the dark, disconsolate-looking bird had something to do with the bad weather, and in one of his gloomy fits shot the albatross, 'not doubting' (perhaps) ' that we should have a fair wind after it.' The guardian spirits of Nature, of whom Coleridge often sang in Stowey, revenged the murder ; and the ship's company agreed to put the mark of Cain on the criminal, by hanging the body of the albatross about his neck." (Brandl.) 4 92. 'em. Not colloquial, but archaic. (A.-S., him, dat. pi. of he, heo, hit; M. E., hem) 5 97. like God's own head. Care should be taken in reading to con- nect this phrase with the latter part of the sentence. 5 98. uprist, arose. In Chaucer this word is usually either a substantive or a contracted form of the third sing. pres. ind. (upriseth) ; but in a few cases it is used, as Coleridge uses it here, as a third sing. pret. ind. 5 103-104. Alliteration. 5 104. The furrow followed free. In the edition of 1817 Coleridge changed this line to The furrow streamed off free. His reason for doing so was that actual observation on board ship had taught him that the image described in the text is the one seen by a specta- tor from the shore or from another vessel, and that from the ship itself the wake appears like a brook flowing off from the stern. But in the later edi- tions he restored the present reading. Which of the readings is preferable ? 5 117-118. Cf. Hamlet, II. ii. 502, wdien Pyrrhus' sword seemed i' the air to stick : So as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood, And like a neutral to his will and matter Did nothing. (Hales.) 6 128. death-fires, luminous appearances supposed to be seen over dead bodies. Cf. Coleridge's Ode to the Departing Year, NOTES. 51 Mighty armies of the dead Dance, like death-fires, round her tomb. 6 138. Notice the force of this homely comparison. 6 141. Five of the seven parts of the poem end with a reference to the Mariner's crime. Is this by accident or design ? See 82, note. 7 152. I wist. This expression was probably conceived by Coleridge, and the ballad writers whom he imitated, to mean " I think " or " I guess." It is properly an adverb meaning "certainly." (A.-S., gewis ; M. E., r-w/s, i-wis.) The two syllables being printed separately, the word was mistaken for a verb with subject pronoun. 7 149-161. " He [Coleridge] was accustomed to wander of evenings on the shore to the north of Stowey, and watch a vessel emerging to sight on the open sea — first a little spot between himself and the setting sun ; then a dark little cloud ; then a shadowy form, mast and yards, black as iron cross-bars; while the solitary character of the coast helped to heighten the ghostly impression." (Brandl.) 7 164. Gramercy ! An exclamation of gratitude or surprise (Fr., grand tnerc'i). grin. "I took the thought of 'grinning for joy' . . . from poor Burnett's remark to me, when we had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon, and were nearly dead with thirst. We could not speak from the constric- tion, till we found a little puddle under a stone. He said to me, — ' You grinned like an idiot ! ' He had done the same." (Coleridge's Table-Talk, May 31, 1S30.) 8 177-187. The skeleton ship was suggested to Coleridge by the dream of his friend Cruikshank. S 184. gossameres, filmy cobwebs woven by small spiders. 8 197. ff I 've, I 've won ! " Many editions, including Mr. Campbell's, read / \>e won, I 've won ; but the reading in the text is that of the edition of 1S29, the latest that was printed under Coleridge's personal supervision. 8 198. thrice, a mystical number, much used in charms. Cf. Milton's Com us, 11. 914-15, Thrice upon thy finger's tip, Thrice upon thy rubied lip. 9 209. clomb, climbed. An archaism. 9 210-11. Is this imagination or observation? Are stars ever visible so near the moon ? 9 226-27. " For the last two lines of this stanza I am endebted to Mr. Wordsworth. It was on a delightful walk from Nether Stowey to Dul- verton, with him and his sister, in the autumn of 1797, that this poem was planned and in part composed." (Coleridge's note.) 52 NOTES. 11 263-66. Notice the contrast between the beauty of this stanza and the horrors of the narrative. 11 270. charmed, under a spell. (Lat. carmen, a song, an incantation.) 11 273. water-snakes. " In these monsters he [Coleridge] seems to have taken particular interest, and to have consulted various zoological works ; for the note-book of this date contains long paragraphs upon the alligators, boas, and crocodiles of antediluvian times." (Brandl.) 12 282-91. Dowden comments: "That one self-centred in crude egoism should be purified and converted through a new sympathy with suffering and sorrow is a common piece of morality ; this purification through sym- pathy with joy is a piece of finer and higher doctrine." {New Studies in Literature, p. 341.) 12 29-2-93. Cf. The Pains of Sleep, Sleep, the wide blessing. 12 295-96. Cf. Browning, Christmas Eve, Have I been sure, this Christmas Eve, God's own hand did the rainbow weave, Whereby the truth from heaven slid Into my soid? 12 297. silly, useless. 13 314. sheen, bright. The use of this word as an adjective is archaic. 15 362. jargoning. fargonner is the usual word in Old French for the singing of birds. 14-15 354-72. Memorize. 15 385-88. Notice the skilful adaptation of the metre to the motion described. 16 404-5. " The consciousness of a central spirit of love and redemp- tion is the religion of Coleridge's most vital poem, the ' Ancient Mariner.' " (Vida D. Scudder, The Life of the Spirit in the Modern English Poets, p. 312.) 16 407. honey-dew, a sweet substance found in minute drops on the leaves of plants and trees. Cf. Kubla Khan, Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes witli holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise. 17 435. charnel-dungeon, a vault for the deposit of dead bodies. 18 452 ff. " As the voyage approaches its conclusion, ordinary instru- mentalities appear once more. There is first the rising of the soft familiar NOTES. 53 wind, ' like a meadow gale in spring,' then the blessed vision of the light- house top, the hill, the kirk, all those well-known realities which gradually relieve the absorbed excitement of the listener, and favour his slow return to ordinary daylight." (Mrs. Oliphant.) IS 460-63. Alliteration. 19 467. countree, an archaic form of country, very common in the ballads. 19 489. rood, cross. 20 492-95. Alliteration. 20 512. shrieve, hear confession and pronounce absolution. 21 521-22. Cf. Christabel, And naught was green upon the oak, But moss and rarest mistletoe. 21 524. trow, think, believe. 21 535. ivy-tod, ivy-bush, a dialect word. 22 549. See Introduction, p. xix. — » 22 560-69. Traill comments : " With what consummate art are we left to imagine the physical traces which the Mariner's long agony had left behind it, by a method far more terrible than any direct description — the effect, namely, which the sight of him produces upon others." {Coleridge, p. 52.) 24 610-17. " Mrs. Barbauld once told me that she admired ' the Ancient Mariner ' very much, but that there were two faults in it, — it was improba- ble, 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 imagi- nation." (Coleridge's Table-Talk, May 31, 1S30.) Mrs. Oliphant does not agree with Coleridge: "And then comes the ineffable half-childish, half-divine simplicity of those soft moralisings at the end, so strangely different from the tenor of the tale, so wonderfully perfecting its visionary strain. After all, the poet seems to say, after this weird excursion into the very deepest, awful heart of the seas and mys- teries, here is your child's moral, a tender little half-trivial sentiment, yet profound as the blue depth of heaven. . . . This unexpected gentle conclu- sion brings our feet back to the common soil with a bewildered sweetness of relief and soft quiet after the prodigious strain of mental excitement which is like nothing else we can remember in poetry." {Literary Histcny of England, XVIIIth and XTXth Centuries, vol. I, p. 249.) JUL 15 »898 I mwr LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ■K 014 457 952 5