In punishment for this deed terrible disasters fell upon
that ship and its crew. Under a blazing sun, in a hot and slimy
sea filled with creeping, crawling things, they were becalmed--
"Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean."
Then plague and death came, and every man died except the guilty
Mariner--
"Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea;
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.
. . . . .
"I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;
But or ever a prayer had gush'd,
A wicked whisper came, and made
My heart as dry as dust."
But one day as the Mariner watched the water snakes, the only
living things in all that dreadful waste, he blessed them
unaware, merely because they were alive. That self-same moment,
he found that he could pray, and the albatross, which his fellows
in their anger had hung about his neck, dropped from it, and fell
like lead into the sea.
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