Читать книгу Poems of Coleridge - Coleridge Samuel Taylor - Страница 7

  "I fear thee, ancient Mariner!

  I fear thy skinny hand!

  And thou art long, and lank, and brown,

  As is the ribbed sea-sand.1

  I fear thee and thy glittering eye,

  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

  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 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,

  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 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,

  And no where 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 tracks 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 selfsame moment I could pray;

  And from my neck so free

  The Albatross fell off, and sank

  Like lead into the sea.