First Voice:
“But why drives on that ship so fast,
Without or wave or wind?”
Second Voice:
“The air is cut away before,
And closes from behind.
Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high!
Or we shall be belated:
For slow and slow that ship will go,
When the Mariner’s trance is abated.’
The super-natural motion is retarded; the Mariner awakes, and his penance begins anew.
I WOKE, and we were sailing on
As in a gentle weather:
’Twas night, calm night, the Moon was high;
The dead men stood together.
All stood together on the deck,
For a charnel-dungeon fitter:
All fix’d on me their stony eyes,
That in the Moon did glitter.
The pang, the curse, with which they died.
Had never pass’d away:
I could not draw my eyes from theirs,
Nor turn them up to pray.
The curse is finally expiated.