The souls did from their bodies fly,-- 220 They fled to bliss or woe! And every soul, it passed me by, Like the whizz of my cross-bow!" PART IV [Sidenote: The Wedding-Guest feareth that a Spirit is talking to him;] "I Fear thee, ancient Mariner! I fear thy skinny hand! 225 And thou art long, and lank, and brown, As is the ribbed sea-sand. I fear thee and thy glittering eye, And thy skinny hand, so brown."-- "Fear me not, fear not, thou wedding-guest! 230 This body dropt not down. [Sidenote: But the ancient Mariner assureth him of his bodily life, and proceedeth to relate his horrible penance.] Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on the wide, wide sea! And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony. 235 [Sidenote: He despiseth the creatures of the calm.] The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I. [Sidenote: And envieth that they should live, and so many lie dead.] I looked upon the rotting sea, 240 And drew my eyes away; I looked upon the rotting deck, And there the dead men lay. I looked to heaven, and tried to pray; But or ever a prayer had gusht, 245 A wicked whisper came, and made My heart as dry as dust. I closed my lids, and kept them close, And the balls like pulses beat; For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky 250 Lay like a load on my weary eye, And the dead were at my feet. [Sidenote: But the curse liveth for him in the eye of the dead men.] The cold sweat melted from their limbs, Nor rot nor reek did they: The look with which they looked on me Had never passed away. An orphan's curse would drag to hell A spirit from on high; But oh! more horrible than that Is a curse in a dead man's eye! Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, And yet I could not die. [Sidenote: 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.] The moving Moon went up the sky, And nowhere did abide: Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside-- Her beams bemocked the sultry main, Like April hoar-frost spread; But where the ship's huge shadow lay, The charmed water burnt alway A still and awful red. [Sidenote: By the light of the Moon he beholdeth God's creatures of the great calm.]