Still louder and more dread:
It reached the ship, it split the bay;
The ship went down like lead.
The ship suddenly sinketh.
Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound,
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.
The ancient Mariner is saved in 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.
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.
‘O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!’
The Hermit crossed his brow.
‘Say quick,’ quoth he, ‘I bid thee say—
What manner of man art thou?’
The ancient Mariner earnestly entreateth the Hermit to shrieve him; and the penance of life falls on him.
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,
That agony returns:
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
And ever and anon throughout his future life an agony constraineth him to travel from land to land;
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!