[32-8] Clifts means cleft rocks.
[32-9] “Like noises one hears in a swound.”
[32-10] Thorough is used here instead of through, as it often is in poetry, for the sake of the meter.
[32-11] Besides the joy the sailors felt at seeing a living creature after the days in which they had seen “nor shapes of men nor beasts,” they had a special pleasure in welcoming the albatross because it was regarded as a bird of good omen.
[34-12] Coleridge does not state that it was the albatross that brought the “good south wind:” he lets us infer it.
[34-13] In what direction were they sailing now?
[35-14] Uprist is an old form for uprose.
[35-15] It was this attitude of the sailors toward the mariner’s brutal act of killing the bird that brought punishment upon them; they cared nothing for the death of the harmless bird, but only for its effect upon them.
[35-16] Note the striking alliteration in these two lines. Read this stanza and the succeeding one aloud, and see how much easier it is to read these alliterative lines rapidly than it is any of the other six lines. Such relation of movement to meaning is one of the artistic things about the poem.
[35-17] How far northward had the ship returned?