Reading
No.6
Reader
Hilary Mantel
Author
Recorded at St Mary's Church,
Ottery St Mary, Devon,
Coleridge's 'sweet birthplace'
Artwork
Linder
Post-Mortem
Photomontage
The Sun now rose upon the right:
Out of the sea came he,
Still hid in mist, and on the left
Went down into the sea.
And the good south wind still blew behind,
But no sweet bird did follow,
Nor any day for food or play
Came to the mariner's hollo!
And I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work 'em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay,
That made the breeze to blow!
Bethink thee of the albatross: whence come those clouds of spiritual wonderment and pale dread, in which that white phantom sails in all imaginations? Not Coleridge first threw that spell; but God's great, unflattering laureate, Nature.
I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during a prolonged gale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas... there, dashed up the main hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, and with a hooked, Roman bill sublime. At intervals, it arched forth its vast archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark...
Herman Melville
Moby-Dick, 1851