This pitiful, haunted, haggard wretch Was as friendless as man may be; And upon his face lay the ugly trace Of a secret agony. When day departed they heard his cry To the God of all power and might, And his hollow groan, as he moved alone, At the darkest hour of night. He told his crime to the Evening Star And a wandering wild sea-bird, “They will bear my tale on the angry gale,” He whispered when no man heard. “They will cry my deed to the icy wind, And the wind to the white-capped wave; They will tell the sun the thing I have done Far under his western grave. “I slew a friend in his hour secure, While a woman pointed the way; And I saw the flood of his good heart’s blood Leap red as the Judgment Day!” That terrible deed they knew alone-- God and the Devil and the Dead-- Then a morning came, upon wings of flame, And deluged the world with red. “O, who shall tell?” cried the sailor-men, “What this vision of woe can mean, Filling sea and air with a gory glare And the lurid clouds between? “Red, as at rising or going down, Reels the sun at the hour of noon, And the stars by night are like sparks of light From the bale-fire of the moon. “Red are the hungry and steel-eyed sharks, Where they swim in these crimson seas, And horribly red, to her top-mast head, Is the luckless _Bunch o’ Keys_. “Now mad we grow, as a beast grows mad When his eyes the red shambles see, And it is not well that we suffer hell For another’s villainy.” Thus did they threaten, those sailor-men; But the master cried, “God of grace!” And pointed away to the dying day, Where the sun sank down apace. And there, from out circles of liquid flame, Spread abroad on the ocean’s breast, Ascended a Hand, like the sight of land, From under the shining west. [Illustration: “ASCENDED A HAND, LIKE THE SIGHT OF LAND”] Crooked, gigantic, and lean and gaunt, And ebon, and naked and vast, It hid the skies from the terrified eyes Of those who beheld aghast. Sombre and grim as a blind man’s night, It arose like a mountain peak; Each finger-bone was a pillar of stone, Each claw was a dragon’s beak. All the black malice of deepest hell Did the palm of the monster show, With passions sore, full many more Than human natures know. Its pulsing wrist made the waters leap, Where it moved through that blood-red sea; While the caravel, like a rocking shell, Awaited her destiny. As a herd of frightened flying sheep Ran the sailors, with cry and groan; But their cursed mate met the fall of Fate Where he stood, on the poop alone. From the inky mass of that awful Hand Did the thumb and finger bend, And, as crawling ant from the leaf of plant, They plucked him unto his end.