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

[He despiseth the creatures of the calm,
And envieth that they should live, and so
many lie dead.]

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.

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

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 the curse in a dead man's eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.

[In his loneliness and fixedness, he yearneth
towards the 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.]

The moving Moon went up the sky,
And nowhere 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.

[By the light of the Moon he beholdeth
God's creatures of the great calm.]

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.

[Their beauty and their happiness.
He blesseth them in his heart.]

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