Blood and Ice

PART IV

“I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;

But or ever a prayer had gushed,

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

Lay like a load on my weary eye,

And the dead were at my feet.”

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798