Twentieth Century Mariner
All quotations from 'The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner' by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
I oft wondered why
under cold grey overcast;
west coast coastal hometown sky.
I never met a mystic man
with glittering hypnotic inner eye;
whose beard was experience hoar with age.
Who would teach me tiding things
fever pitch, storm tossed, born within me;
inflamed, I needed, sought to know.
For me there was not, could never be,
no third stopped meeting an ‘ancient Mariner’; (1.)
like ‘three years child’ way laid ‘Wedding-Guest’. (15.)
But then where was ‘Storm-Blast’ windswept, (41.)
such fabled ship wrecked need;
for I was that ‘ancient ill- fated
Mariner’; and as unto ‘a Christian soul’ God; (65.)
was that searing pain burning in my brain.
That taught me like an Albatross’s flight,
all ‘helmsman steered’ I, fog-smoke white, ’ (70.) (77.)
fate sought needed to lifetime know.
And all my long life I ‘lamp gleamed white; ’ lived (207.)
‘Alone on a wide wide sea! ’ ‘My soul in agony.' (233.) (235.)
And to our ‘great Father’ ‘God himself’ (607.) (599.)
have I oft been conscience forced;
to bend a youthful, penitent knee.
For perhaps it is my utmost penance,
to seek such blessed spiritual reverence,
as to love all creatures ‘great and small.’ (615.)
‘For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.’ (616-17.)
For my ‘dear God’ has said (616.)
and Coleridge hath said
such men ‘prayeth best,
who loveth best’ of all. (614.)
I praise and humbly ‘in God’s name’ (66.)
thank a loving forgiving God;
who through his created; ‘strange power of speech; ’ (587.)
elemental fundamental universal principle;
men unknowing calleth chance;
lead me to glittering inspired ‘Hermit’ revelation. (499.)
Which I must utter as strange answer,
to ‘pass, like night from land to land; ’ (586.)
bespoken as ‘tale’ testament, inscribed encoded here.
Coincidence met; is thee strange way ‘I teach’; (590.)
in which my eternal; ever Lord master walks.
I follow heaven sent, sought signs ‘I see’, (588.)
pertaining to his purposed passage;
heaven sourced, and sing his hosannas,
in incumbent works, thus written here.
Numerous reluctant past prophets
also, blazed their personalized trail.
With marker stone prophetic words
signaling, their fevered benediction.
Yet more after my precursor passage
shall, survive to favoured flotsam follow.
Still others will fall upon fabled wayside
through, world epochs as yet uncharted.
Behold contemporary mariner
walking, in throng bulwark midst;
and chance bound spellcast met;
‘at an uncertain hour, ’ know it; (582.)
yet recognize not that that man thou met;
you, ‘man that must hear me: ’ (589.)
not until message faced be spoken.
poem by Terence George Craddock
Added by Poetry Lover
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