Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Alone, alone, all, all alone,

Alone on a wide wide sea!

And never a saint took pity on

My soul in agony.

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell

To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!

''' He prayeth well, who loveth well

Both man and bird and beast.

So lonely 't was, that God himself

Scarce seemed there to be.

No voice; but oh! the silence sank

Like music on my heart.

The self-same moment I could pray;

And from my neck so free

The Albatross fell off, and sank

Like lead into the sea.

Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,

Beloved from pole to pole.

Like one that on a lonesome road

Doth walk in fear and dread,

And having once turned round walks on,

And turns no more his head;

Because he knows, a frightful fiend

Doth close behind him tread.

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 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.

'Is it he?' quoth one, 'Is this the man?'

By him who died on the cross,

With his cruel bow he laid full low

The harmless Albatross

The spirit who bideth by himself

In the land of mist and snow,

He loved the bird that loved the man

That shot him with his bow.

He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.