’Tis the terror of tempest.  The rags of the sail
Are flickering in ribbons within the fierce gale: 
From the stark night of vapours the dim rain is driven, 
And when lightning is loosed, like a deluge from Heaven, 
She sees the black [bad word] of the waterspouts spin               5 
And bend, as if Heaven [bad word] in, 
Which they seemed to sustain with their terrible mass 
As if ocean had sunk from beneath them:  they pass 
To their graves in the deep with an earthquake of sound, 
And the waves and the thunders, made silent around,                  10 
Leave the wind to its echo.  The vessel, now tossed 
Through the low-trailing rack of the tempest, is lost 
In the skirts of the thunder-cloud:  now down the sweep 
Of the wind-cloven wave to the chasm of the deep 
It sinks, and the walls of the watery vale           15 
Whose depths of dread calm are unmoved by the gale, 
Dim mirrors [bad word]  hang gleaming about; 
While the surf, like a chaos of stars, like a rout 
Of death-flames, like whirlpools of fire-flowing iron, 
With splendour and terror the black ship environ,                20 
Or like sulphur-flakes hurled from a mine of pale fire 
In fountains spout o’er it.  In many a spire 
The pyramid-billows with white points of brine 
In the cope of the lightning inconstantly shine, 
As piercing the sky from the floor of the sea.              25 
The great ship seems splitting!  it cracks as a tree, 
While an earthquake is splintering its root, ere the blast 
Of the whirlwind that stripped it of branches has passed. 
The intense thunder-balls which are raining from Heaven 
Have shattered its mast, and it stands black and riven.                30 
The chinks suck [bad word]   The heavy dead hulk 
On the living sea rolls an inanimate bulk, 
Like a corpse on the clay which is hungering to fold 
Its [bad word] around it.  Meanwhile, from the hold, 
One deck is burst up by the waters below,              35 
And it splits like the ice when the thaw-breezes blow 
O’er the lakes of the desert!  Who sit on the other? 
Is that all the crew that lie burying each other, 
Like the dead in a breach, round the foremast?  Are those 
Twin tigers, who burst, when the waters arose,               40 
In the agony of terror, their chains in the hold; 
(What now makes them tame, is what then made them bold;) 
Who crouch, side by side, and have driven, like a crank, 
The deep grip of their claws through the vibrating plank 
Are these all?  Nine weeks the tall vessel had lain            45 
On the windless expanse of the watery plain, 
Where the death-darting sun cast no shadow at noon, 
And there seemed to be fire in the beams of the moon, 
Till a lead-coloured fog gathered up from the deep, 
Whose breath was quick pestilence; then, the cold sleep                 50 
Crept, like blight through the ears of a thick field of corn,
O’er the populous vessel.  And even and morn, 
With their hammocks for coffins the seamen aghast 
Like dead men the dead limbs of [bad word] cast 
Down the deep, which closed on them above and around,                      55 
And the sharks and the dogfish their grave-clothes unbound, 
And were glutted like Jews with this manna rained down 
From God on their wilderness.  One after one 
The mariners died; on the eve of this day, 
When the tempest was gathering in cloudy array,                  60 
But seven remained.  Six the thunder has smitten, 
And they lie black as mummies on which Time has written 
His scorn of the embalmer; the seventh, from the deck 
An oak-splinter pierced through his breast and his back, 
And hung out to the tempest, a wreck on the wreck.                    65 
No more?  At the helm sits a woman more fair 
Than Heaven, when, unbinding its star-braided hair, 
It sinks with the sun on the earth and the sea. [...]