"The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out: At one stride comes the dark;"
what more weirdly imagined of the "cracks and growls" of the rending iceberg than that they sounded "like noises in a swound"? And how beautifully steals in the passage that follows upon the cessation of the spirit's song--
"It ceased; yet still the sails made on A pleasant noise till noon, A noise like to a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, That to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune."
Then, as the ballad draws to its close, after the ship has drifted over the harbour-bar--
"And I with sobs did pray-- O let me be awake, my God; Or let me sleep alway,"
with what consummate art are we left to imagine the physical traces which the mariner's long agony had left behind it by a method far more terrible than any direct description--the effect, namely, which the sight of him produces upon others--
"I moved my lips--the Pilot shrieked And fell down in a fit; The holy Hermit raised his eyes, And prayed where he did sit.
"I took the oars: the Pilot's boy, _Who now doth crazy go_, Laughed loud and long, and all the while His eyes went to and fro. 'Ha! ha!' quoth he, 'full plain I see, The Devil knows how to row.'"
Perfect consistency of plan, in short, and complete equality of execution, brevity, self-restraint, and an unerring sense of artistic propriety--these are the chief notes of the _Ancient Mariner_, as they are _not_, in my humble judgment, the chief notes of any poem of Coleridge's before or since. And hence it is that this masterpiece of ballad minstrelsy is, as has been said, so confounding to the "pigeon-holing" mind.
