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,
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poem by Terence George Craddock
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