endure ; and even after his escape, when "the ship goes down like lead," he continues all life long a slave.

"God save thee, Ancient Mariner,

From the fiends that plague thee thus."

We remember the time when there was an outcry among the common critics, "What! all for shooting a bird!" We answered them then as now-but now they are all dead and buried, and blinder and deeper even than when alive—that no one who will submit himself to the magic that is around him, and suffer his senses and his imagination to be blended together, and exalted by the melody of the charmed words, and the splendour of the unnatural apparitions, with which the mysterious scene is opened, will experience any revulsion towards the very centre and spirit of this haunted dream-"I SHOT THE ALBATROSS." All the subsequent miseries of the crew, we then said, are represented as having been the consequence of this violation of the charities of sentiment; and these are the same miseries that were spoken of by the said critics, as being causeless and unmerited. There is, we now repeat, without the risk of wanting the sympathies of one single human being-man, woman, or child—the very essence of tenderness in the sorrowful delight with which the Ancient Mariner dwells upon the image of the pious bird of good omen, as it

66 Every day for food or play,

Came to the Mariner's hollo!"

and the convulsive shudder with which he narrates the treacherous issue, bespeaks to us no more than the pangs that seem to have followed justly on that inhospitable crime. It seems as if the very spirit of the universe had been stunned by his wanton cruelty, as if earth, sea, and sky had all become dead and stagnant in the extinction of the moving breath of love and gentleness.

"Water, water, everywhere,

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!

Yes, 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,
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.

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.

Ah! well-a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!

Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung."

The sufferings that ensue are painted with a power far transcending that of any other poet who has adventured on the horrors of thirst, inanition, and drop-by-drop wasting away of clay bodies into corpses. They have tried by luxuriating among images of misery to exhaust the subject-by accumula tion of ghastly agonies-gathered from narratives of shipwrecked sailors, huddled on purpose into boats for weeks on sun-smitten seas-or of shipfuls of sinners crazed and delirious, staving liquor-casks, and in madness murdering and devouring one another, or with yelling laughter leaping into the sea. Coleridge concentrated into a few words the essence of torment --and showed soul made sense, and living but in baked dust and blood.

"With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
We could nor laugh nor wail;

Through utter drought all dumb we stood !

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,

And all at once their breath drew in,
As they were drinking all."

ance.

This is the true Tragedy of Remorse-and also of RepentThirst had dried, and furred, and hardened his throat the same as the throats of the other wretches-but God had cracked too his stony heart, and out of it oozed some drops of blood that could be extorted but by its own moral misery. “I bit my arm, I sucked the blood," and why? Not to quench that thirst, but that he might call a sail! a sail! Remorse edged his teeth on his own flesh-Remorse mad for salvation of the wretches suffering for his sin; and in the act there was Repentance. But Remorse and Repentance, what are they to Doom? They neither change nor avert—and seeing themselves both baffled, again begin to ban and to curse, till there is a conversion; and out of perfect contrition arise, even in nature's extremest misery, resignation and peace.

And never a saint took pity on

My soul in agony.

The many men so beautiful!

And they all dead did lie :

And a thousand thousand slimy things

Lived on; and so did I.

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 ;

But or ever a prayer had gush'd,
A wicked whisper came, and made
My heart as dry as dust.

I closed my lids, and kept them close,

And the balls like pulses beat;

For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky

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 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

Is the 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,

And nowhere did abide :
Softly she was going up,

And a star or two beside

Her beams bemocked the sultry main,
Like April hoar-frost spread;

But where the ship's huge shadow lay,
The charmed water burnt alway
A still and awful red.

Beyond the shadow of the ship

I watched the water-snakes:

They moved in tracts of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.

Within the shadow of the ship

I watched their rich attire:

Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam ; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.

O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare :

A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware.

Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.

The self-same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea."

be

In reference to another senseless objection, we may pardoned for saying, what all but idiots know, that the crime of one man involves in its punishment the death of hundreds and thousands-on shore and at sea-even in the ordinary course of nature—and while death is their doom, life is his, as in this strangest of all shadows of the wild ways of Providence.

Nor were the rest of the crew innocent, for they approved the deed-they suffer and die—and after death, the chief criminal beholds their beatified spirits; but he who in wantonness and madness killed the beautiful bird, that came out of the snowcloud whiter than snow, and kept for days sailing along with the ship on wings whiter than ever were hers in the sunshine -he lives on-a heavier doom-and in his ceaseless trouble has but one consolation, and out of it the hope arises that enables him to dree his rueful penance-the Christian hope that his confession may soften other hearts in the hardness, or awaken them from the carelessness of cruelty, and thus be of avail for his own sake before the throne of justice and of mercy at the last day.

"O wedding-guest! this soul hath been

Alone on a wide wide sea:

So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.

O sweeter than the marriage-feast,
"Tis sweeter far to me,

To walk together to the kirk
With a goodly company!

To walk together to the kirk,

And all together pray,

While each to his great Father bends,

Old men, and babes, and loving friends,
And youths and maidens gay!

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou wedding guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all."