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 —
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
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.
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,
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.
He’ll shrieve my soul, he’ll wash away
The Albatross’s blood.
VII.
This Hermit good lives in that wood
Which slopes down to the Sea.
How loudly his sweet voice he rears!
He loves to talk with Marineres
That come from a far Contrée.
He kneels at morn and noon and eve —
He hath a cushion plump:
It is the moss, that wholly hides
The rotted old Oak-stump.
The Skiff-boat ne’rd: I heard them talk,
”Why, this is strange, I trow!
“Where are those lights so many and fair
”That signal made but now?
“Strange, by my faith!” the Hermit said —
”And they answer’d not our cheer.
“The planks look warp’d, and see those sails
”How thin they are and sere!
“I never saw aught like to them
”Unless perchance it were
“The skeletons of leaves that lag
”My forest brook along:
“When the Ivy-tod is heavy with snow,
“And the Owlet whoops to the wolf below
”That eats the she-wolf’s young.
“Dear Lord! it has a fiendish look” —
(The Pilot made reply)
“I am a-fear’d.—”Push on, push on!”
Said the Hermit cheerily.
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,
Still louder and more dread:
It reach’d 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:
Like one that hath 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,
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.
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
His eyes went to and fro,
“Ha! ha!” quoth he—”full plain I see,
”The devil knows how to row.”
And now all in mine own Countrée
I stood on the firm land!
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
”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.
Since then at an uncertain hour,
Now oftimes and now fewer,
