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 shrive my soul, he'll wash away
The albatross's blood.

The hermit of the wood

PART 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 countrée.

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 neared; 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 not our cheer!

The planks look warped! and see those sails,
How thin they are and sere!

I never saw aught like to them,
Unless perchance it were

11

"Brown 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 hath a fiendish look,"
The pilot made reply,

"I am a-feared"—"Push on, push on!"
Said the hermit cheerily.

The boat came closer to the ship,
But I nor spake nor stirred;

The boat came close beneath the ship,

And straight a sound was heard.

Under the water it rumbled on,

Still louder and more dread:

It reached the ship, it split the bay;
The ship went down like lead.

The ship suddenly sinketh.

The ancient mar

Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound, iner is saved in

Which sky and ocean smote,

Like one that hath been seven days

drowned,

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.

the pilot's boat.

I moved my lips,

-the pilot shrieked,

And fell down in a fit;

The holy hermit raised his eyes,
And prayed where he did sit.

I took the oars: the pilot's boy,
Who now doth crazy go,

Laughed 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 my own countree,

I stood on the firm land!

The hermit stepped forth from the boat,
And scarcely he could stand.

The ancient mari- "O, shrive me, shrive me, holy man !

ner earnestly en

treateth the her- The hermit crossed his brow. mit to shrive him; ..

and the penance of life falls on him.

And ever and

Say quick," quoth he, "I bid thee say, What manner of man art thou?"

Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched
With a woful agony,

Which forced me to begin my tale;
And then it left me free.

Since then, at an uncertain hour,

anon throughout That agony returns :

his future life an

agony constrain- And till my ghastly tale is told,

eth him to travel

from land to land, This heart within me burns.

I

pass, like night, from land to land;

I have strange power of speech ;

That moment that his face I see,

I know the man that must hear me :
To him my tale I teach.

What loud uproar bursts from that door!

The wedding-guests are there:

But in the garden bower the bride

And bridemaids singing are:

And hark! the little vesper bell,
Which biddeth me to prayer!

O wedding-guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide wide sea:

So lonely 't was, that God himself
Scarce seeméd there to be.

O, sweeter than the marriage-feast,
"T is 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!

And to teach, by Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
his own example,
love and rever- To thee, thou wedding-guest!
ence to all things He prayeth well who loveth well

that God made

and loveth. 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.

The mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,

Is gone and now the wedding-guest
Turned from the bridegroom's door.

He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn;

A sadder and a wiser man

He rose the morrow morn.

As fair a craft as ever flung aside the laughing spray. Upon the shore were tearful eyes, and scarfs were in

the air,

As to her, o'er the Zuyder Zee, went fond adieu and prayer;

And brave hearts, yearning shoreward from the outward-going ship,

Felt lingering kisses clinging still to tear-wet cheek

and lip.

She steered for some far eastern clime, and, as she skimmed the seas,