The Ancient Mariner: And Select Poems

Front Cover
C. Scribner's Sons, 1908 - 82 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page xxxi - Lyrical Ballads'; in which it was agreed that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.
Page xli - The author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition' in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort.
Page 45 - And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced : Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail: And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river.
Page xxxi - The thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts, /[n the one, the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real.
Page xxxi - During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination.
Page 29 - They passed the hall, that echoes still, Pass as lightly as you will! The brands were flat, the brands were dying, Amid their own white ashes lying; But when the lady passed, there came A tongue of light, a fit of flame; And Christabel saw the lady's eye, 160 And nothing else saw she thereby, Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall, Which hung in a murky old niche in the wall. O softly tread, said Christabel, My father seldom sleepeth well.
Page 18 - Doth close behind him tread. But soon there breathed a wind on me, Nor sound nor motion made: Its path was not upon the sea, In ripple or in shade. It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek Like a meadow-gale of spring — It mingled strangely with my fears, Yet it felt like a welcoming.
Page 25 - The thin gray cloud is spread on high, It covers but not hides the sky. The moon is behind, and at the full ; And yet she looks both small and dull. The night is chill, the cloud is gray: 'Tis a month before the month of May, And the spring comes slowly up this way.
Page 46 - Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome ! those caves of ice ! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware ! His flashing eyes, his floating hair, Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Page 5 - 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!

Bibliographic information