My miseries after, that their sounds may fall
Through your ears also, and shew (having fled
So much affliction) first, who rests his head
In your embraces, when, so far from home,
I knew not where t' obtain it resting room:
I am Ulysses Laertiades,
The fear of all the world...."
The Odysseys, George Chapman
[398].
The prose "argument" to the "Ancient Mariner," which is almost as rare a piece of reading as the Rime itself, has been omitted. But here is a fragment of it relating to the passage on pages 390-4: "...The Wedding-Guest feareth that a Spirit is talking to him; but the ancient Mariner assureth him of his bodily life, and proceedeth to relate his horrible penance. He despiseth the creatures of the calm, and envieth that they should live, and so many lie dead. But the curse liveth for him in the eye of the dead men. In his loneliness and fixedness he yearneth towards the journeying Moon, and the stars that still sojourn, yet still move onward; and every where the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed rest, and their native country and their own natural homes, which they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival.