At intervals, it arched forth its vast archangel wings, as if to
embrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings and throbbings shook it.
Though bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as some king's ghost
in supernatural distress. Through its inexpressible, strange eyes,
methought I peeped to secrets which took hold of God. As Abraham
before the angels, I bowed myself; the white thing was so white,
its wings so wide, and in those for ever exiled waters, I had
lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of towns.
Long I gazed at that prodigy of plumage. I cannot tell,
can only hint, the things that darted through me then.
But at last I awoke; and turning, asked a sailor what bird was this.
A goney, he replied. Goney! never had heard that name before;
is it conceivable that this glorious thing is utterly unknown
to men ashore! never! But some time after, I learned that goney
was some seaman's name for albatross. So that by no possibility
could Coleridge's wild Rhyme have had aught to do with those mystical
impressions which were mine, when I saw that bird upon our deck.
For neither had I then read the Rhyme, nor knew the bird to be
an albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly burnish
a little brighter the noble merit of the poem and the poet.
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