They at length decided to
publish a book together to be called Lyrical Ballads.
In this book there was published the poem which of all that
Coleridge write is the best known, The Ancient Mariner. It tells
how this old old sailor stops a guest who is going to a wedding,
and bids him hear a tale. The wedding guest does not wish to
stay, but the old man holds him with his skinny hand--
"He holds him with his glittering eye--
The Wedding Guest stood still,
And listens like three years' child:
The Mariner hath his will."
He hath his will, and tells how the ship sailed forth gayly, and
how it met after a time with storms, and cold, and fog, until at
last it was all beset with ice. Then when to the sailors all
hope seemed lost, an albatross came sailing through the fog.
With joy they hailed it, the only living thing in that wilderness
of ice. They fed it with delight--
"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!"
Then on they gladly sailed, the albatross following, until one
day the Ancient Mariner, in a mad moment, shot the beautiful
bird.
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