is will.

The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.

'The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.

[The Mariner tells how the ship sailed
southward with a good wind and fair
weather, till it reached the Line.]

'The Sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!
And he shone bright, and on the right,
Went down into the sea.

Higher and higher every day,
Till over the mast at noon'--
The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,
For he heard the loud bassoon.

[The Wedding-Guest heareth the bridal music;
but the Mariner continueth his tale.]

The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;
Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.

The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.

[The ship drawn by a storm toward the south pole.]

'And now the storm-blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o'ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.

With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward aye we fled.

And now there came both mist sand snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.

[The land of ice, and of fearful sounds,
where no living thing was to be seen.]

And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken--
The ice was all between.

The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!

[Till a great sea-bird, called the Albatross,
came through the snow-fog, and was received
with great joy and hospitality.]

At length did cross an Albatross:
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.

It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!

[And lo! the Albatross proveth a bird of good
omen, and followeth the ship as it returned
northward, through fog and floating ice.]

And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did fo