primitive in its ceremonies, unequalled in its liturgical England, in a tolerating age, has shown herself em forms; that our Church, which has kindled and dis- nently tolerant, and far more so, both in Spirit and in played more bright and burning lights of Genius and fact, that many of her most bitter opponents, who Learning, than all other Protestant churches since profess to deem toleration itself an insult on the the Reformation, was (with the single exception of rights of mankind! As to myself, who not only know the times of Laud and Sheldon) least intolerant, the Church-Establishment to be tolerant, but who when all Christians unhappily deemed a species of see in it the greatest, if not the sole safe bulwark of intolerance their religious duty; that Bishops of our Toleration, I feel no necessity of defending or pal church were among the first that contended against liating oppressions under the two Charleses, in order this error; and finally, that since the Reformation, to exclaim with a full and fervent heart, ESTO PFR when tolerance became a fashion, the Church of PETUA!

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

IN SEVEN PARTS.

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 ingenium 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: Archaol. Phil. P. 68.

The Mariner tells

how the ship sailed southward with a good wind

and fair weather,

fill it reached the line

By thy long gray beard and glitter-
ing eye,

Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

"The Bridegroom's doors are open'd
wide,

And I am next of kin ;

The guests are met, the feast is set:
Mayst hear the merry din."

He holds him with his skinny hand:
"There was a ship," quoth he.
"Hold off! unhand me, gray-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.

The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone,
He cannot choose but hear;

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

Was tyrannous and strong:

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

With sloping masts and dripping 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 roar'd the
blast,

And southward aye we fled.

And now there came both mist and

snow,

Aud it grew wondrous cold;

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

by a storm toward the south pole

The ship was cheer'd, the harbor And through the drifts the snowy clifts The land of ice,

clear'd,

Merrily did we drop

Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the light-house top.

The Sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!

Did send a dismal sheen:
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:

And he shone bright, and on the right It crack'd and growl'd, and roar'd and

Went down into the sea.

Higher and higher every day,

Till over the mast at noon

howl'd,

Like noises in a swound!

At length did cross an Albatross :

The Wedding-Guest here beat his Thorough the fog it came;

breast,

For he heard the loud bassoon.

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

70

and of fearful sounds, where no living thing was to be seen.

Till a great seabird, called the Albatross, came through the snow fog, and was received with great joy and hospital

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!

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

And lo! the Al- And a good south-wind sprung up Water, water, everywhere,

eth the ship as it And every day, for food or play, Came to the mariner's hollo!

returned northward through fog and floating ice.

The ancient Mariner inhospitably

killeth the pious bird of good

omen.

His shipmates cry out against the ancient Mariner,

for killing the bird of good-luck.

But when the fog

cleared off, they

justify the same,

and thus make themselves ac

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,

It perch'd for vespers nine;

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!

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs

Whiles all the night, through fog- Upon the slimy sea.
smoke white,

Glimmer'd the white moon-shine.

"God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee
thus!

About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue and white.

Why look'st thou so?"-With my And some in dreams assured were

cross-bow

I shot the ALBATROSS.

PART II.

Of the spirit that plagued us so;
Nine fathom deep he had follow'd us
From the land of mist and snow.

And the Albatross begins to be avenged.

A spirit had followed them: one of the invisible in

habitants of this planet.-neither departed souls nor angels; con

THE Sun now rose upon the right: cerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic
Out of the sea came he,

Still hid in mist, and on the left
Went down into the sea.

Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus, may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no climate or element without

one or more.

And the good south-wind still blew And every tongue, through utter

head,
The glorious Sun uprist:

Then all averr'd, I had kill'd the bird

complices in the That brought the fog and mist.

crime.

The fair breeze

continues; the ship enters the

Pacific Ocean and

throat

Each

Was parch'd, and glazed each eye.
A weary time! a weary time!
How glazed each weary eye,

"T was right, said they, such birds to When looking westward, I beheld

The furrow follow'd free;

sails northward, We were the first that ever burst

even till it reach

es the Line.

The ship hath been suddenly beca.med.

Into that silent sea.

It moved and moved, and took at last
A certain shape, I wist.

A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!
And still it near'd and near'd:

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt As if it dodged a water-sprite,

down,

"T was sad as sad could be;

And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!

All in a hot and copper sky,

The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.

It plunged and tack'd and veer'd.

The shipmates, 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 beholdeth a sign in the element afar off

With throats unslaked, with black One after one, by the star-dogged One after au lips baked,

"I FEAR thee, ancient Mariner!

And straight the Sun was fleck'd I fear thy skinny hand!

Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding- But the ancient

Nor rot nor reek did they;
The look with which they look'd on

The stars were dim, and thick the Had never pass'd away.

The upper air burst into life!

n his loneliness The moving Moon went up the sky, And a hundred fire-flags sheen,

and fixedness he 7earneth towards the journeying Moon, and the

stars that still so

And nowhere did abide.

Softly she was going up,

And a star or two beside

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;
And the rain pour'd down from one
The Moon was at its edge.
black cloud;

The thick black cloud was cleft, and
still

The Moon was at its side:

Like waters shot from some high crag,
The lightning fell with never a jag,
A river steep and wide.

in the sky and

the element.

The loud wind never reach'd the The bodies of the

ship,

Yet now the ship moved on!
Beneath the lightning and the Moon
The dead men gave a groan.

Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, They groan'd, they stirr'd, they all

They coil'd and swam; and every

track

Was a flash of golden fire.

Their beauty and O happy living things! no tongue their happiness. Their beauty might declare:

He blesseth them in his heart.

The spell begins to break.

By grace of the

holy Mother, the ancient Mariner

is refreshed with

rain.

A spring of love gush'd from my
heart,

And I bless'd them unaware:

uprose,

Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To have seen those dead men rise.

The helmsman steer'd, the ship
moved on,

Yet never a breeze up blew;
The mariners all 'gan work the ropes,

Sure my kind saint took pity on me, Where they were wont to do;
And I bless'd 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 body of my brother's son
Stood by me, knee to knee:
The body and I pull'd at one rope,
But he said nought to me.

To Mary Queen the praise be given! "I fear thee, ancient Mariner!"
She sent the gentle sleep from Be calm, thou Wedding-guest!

ship's crew are inspired, and the ship moves on.

But not by the souls of the men,

'T was not those souls that fled in nor by dæmons of

pain,

Which to their corses came again,
But a troop of spirits blest:

earth or middle air, but by a blessed troop of angelic spirits, sent down by the invocation of the

For when it dawn'd-they dropp'd guardian saint.

their arms,

My lips were wet, my throat was cold, And cluster'd round the mast;

My garments all were dank;

Sure I had drunken in my dreams,

And still my body drank.

Sweet sounds rose slowly through

their mouths,

And from their bodies pass'd.

I moved, and could not feel my Around, around, flew each sweet

limbs :

I was so light-almost

I thought that I had died in sleep,
And was a blessed ghost.

sound,

Then darted to the Sun;

Slowly the sounds came back again,
Now mix'd, now one by one.

The lonesome spirit from the south-pola carries

on the ship as far as the line, in obedience to the angelic troop, but still requireth vengeance.

Sometimes, a-drooping from the sky,
I heard the sky-lark sing;
Sometimes all little birds that are,
How they seem'd to fill the sea and

air,

With their sweet jargoning!

And now 't was like all instruments,
Now like a lonely flute;

And now it is an angel's song,
That makes the Heavens be mute.

PART VI.

FIRST VOICE.

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.

Still as a slave before his lord,
The OCEAN hath no blast;
His great bright eye most silently

It ceased; yet still the sails made on Up to the Moon is cast

A pleasant noise till noon,

A noise like of a hidden brook

In the leafy month of June,

If he may know which way to go;
For she guides him smooth or grim.

That to the sleeping woods all night See, brother, see! how graciously

Singeth a quiet tune.

Till noon we quietly sailed on,
Yet never a breeze did breathe:

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
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:
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,
She made a sudden bound:
It flung the blood into my head,
And I fell down in a swound.

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.

Two VOICES in the air.

"Is it he?" quoth one, "Is this the
man?

By him who died on cross,

I view'd the ocean green,
And look'd far forth, yet little saw

With his cruel bow he laid full low Of what had else been seen

But soon there breathed a wind on me,

Quoth he, "The man hath penance Nor sound nor motion made: