Then plague and death came, and every man died except the guilty Mariner—­

    “Alone, alone, all, all alone,
        Alone on a wide, wide sea;
    And never a saint took pity on
        My soul in agony.
    . . . . .

    “I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;
        But or ever a prayer had gush’d,
    A wicked whisper came, and made
        My heart as dry as dust.”

But one day as the Mariner watched the water snakes, the only living things in all that dreadful waste, he blessed them unaware, merely because they were alive.  That self-same moment, he found that he could pray, and the albatross, which his fellows in their anger had hung about his neck, dropped from it, and fell like lead into the sea.  Then, relieved from his terrible agony of soul, the Mariner slept, and when he woke he found that the dreadful drought was over, and that it was raining.  Oh, blessed relief!  But more terrors still he had to endure until at last the ship drifted homeward—­

    “Oh, dream of joy! is this indeed
        The lighthouse top I see? 
    Is this the hill? is this the kirk? 
        Is this mine own countree?

    “We drifted o’er the Harbour-bar,
        And I with sobs did pray—­
    ’O let me be awake, my God! 
        Or let me sleep alway.’”

The shop had indeed reached home, but in the harbor it suddenly sank like lead.  Only the Mariner was saved.

When once more he came to land, he told his tale to a holy hermit and was shriven, but ever and anon afterward an agony comes upon him and forces him to tell the tale again, even as he has just done to the wedding guest.  And thus he ends his story—­

    “He prayeth best, who loveth best
        All things both great and small;
    For the dear God, who loveth us,
        He made and loveth all.”

Then he goes, leaving the wondering wedding guest alone.

    “The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
        Whose beard with age is hoar,
    Is gone; and now the Wedding Guest
        Turned from the Bridegroom’s door.

    “He went, like one that hath been stunned,
        And is of sense forlorn: 
    A sadder and a wiser man
        He rose the morrow morn.”

Among the poems which Wordsworth wrote for the book of Lyrical Ballads, was one which every one knows, We are Seven.  In another, called Lines written in Early Spring, he gives as it were the text of all his nature poems, and his creed, for here he tells us that he believes that all things in Nature, bird and flower alike, feel.

    “I heard a thousand blended notes,
        While in a grove I sate reclined,
    In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
        Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

    “In her fair works did Nature link
        The human soul that through me ran;
    And much it griev’d my heart to think
        What man has made of man.