Coleridge Manuscript

Coleridge Manuscript

The lines are:

With never a whisper in the main

Off shot the spectre ship:

And stifled words & groans of pain

Mix’d on each {murmuring / trembling} lip

[And] We look’d round & we look’d up

And Fear at our hearts as at a Cup

The Life-blood seem’d to sip

The Sky was dull & dark the Night,

The Helmsman’s Face by his lamp gleam’d bright,

From the Sails the Dews did drip

Till rose clomb above the Eastern Bar

The horned moon, with one bright Star

Within its nether Tip.

One after one, by the star-dogg’d moon, etc.

 

These lines are from Coleridge’s notebook (number eleven) and were reportedly written in October, 1806.

The jotted down lines are a section of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (lines 201-212 from the 1817 edition).