like air about the whole thing, that we accept it almost as if it were
a series of extracts from the ship's "log." Then again the execution--a
great thing to be said of so long a poem--is marvellously equal
throughout; the story never drags or flags for a moment, its felicities
of diction are perpetual, and it is scarcely marred by a single weak
line. What could have been better said of the instantaneous descent of
the tropical night than

"The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out:
At one stride comes the dark;"

what more weirdly imagined of the "cracks and growls" of the rending
iceberg than that they sounded "like noises in a swound"? And how
beautifully steals in the passage that follows upon the cessation of
the spirit's song--

"It ceased; yet still the sails made on
A pleasant noise till noon,
A noise like to a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune."

Then, as the ballad draws to its close, after the ship has
drifted over the harbour-bar--

"And I with sobs did pray--
O let me be awake, my God;
Or let me sleep alway,"