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                                                          Part IV

'I fear thee, ancient Mariner!                                         The Wedding-Guest feareth
I fear thy skinny hand!                                                   that a Spirit is talking to him; 
And thou art long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribbed sea-sand.

I fear thee and thy glittering eye,                                     But the ancient Mariner
And thy skinny hand, so brown'. -                                  assureth him of his bodily
Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest!                        life, and proceedeth to 
This body dropt not down.                                            relate his horrible penance. 

Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.

The many men, so beautiful!                                          He despiseth the creatures
And they all dead did lie:                                              of the calm, 
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.

I looked upon the rotting sea,                                         And envieth that they
And drew my eyes away;                                               should live, and so many
I looked upon the rotting deck,                                       lie dead.
And there the dead men lay. 

I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;
But or ever a prayer had gusht,
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,                          But the curse liveth for
Nor rot nor reek did they:                                              him in the eye of the 
The look with which they looked on me                          dead men. 
Had never passed away. 

An orphan's curse would drag to hell                              In his loneliness and fixedness
A spirit from on high;                                                      he yearneth towards the
But oh ! more horrible than that                                       journeying Moon, and the
Is the curse in a dead man's eye!                                     stars that still sojourn, yet 
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,                      still move onward; and every
And yet I could not die.                                                  where the blue sky belongs


                                                                                                                   to them, and is their
The moving Moon went up the sky,                                 appointed rest, and their
And no where did abide:                                                 native country and their
Softly she was going up,                                                  own natural homes, which
And a star or two beside -                                              they enter unannounced, as 
                                                                                                                   lords that are certainly
Her beams bemocked the sultry main,                              expected and yet there is 
Like April hoar-frost spread;                                           a silent joy at their arrival. 
But where the ship's huge shadow lay,
The charmed water burnt alway
A still and awful red.

Beyond the shadow of the ship,                                      By the light of the Moon he
I watched the water-snakes:                                           beholdeth God's creatures
They moved in tracks of shining white,                            of the great calm.
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 and their . 
Their beauty might declare:                                             happiness
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:                                          He blesseth them in his 
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,                                 heart.
And I blessed them unaware.                                          The spell begins to break. 

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

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