SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

��But the curse liveth for him in the eye of the dead men.

��I look'd 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;

But 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 look'd on me Had never pass'd 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, yearneth

. / i -, towards the

And a star or two beside journeying

Moon, and the

stars that still sojourn, yet still move onward ; and everywhere the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed rest and their native country and their own natural homes, which they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected, and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival.

Her beams bemock'd 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.

��inhisloneli-

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