[40-27] This is Coleridge's beautiful way of telling us that in the tropics there is little or no twilight.
[40-28] _Clomb_ is an old form of _climbed_.
[40-29] That is, the waning moon. Did you ever see the moon "with one bright star within the nether tip"?
[41-30] In his notes on the poem, Coleridge stated that the last two lines of this stanza were composed by Wordsworth.
[42-31] Can you see any reason for the repetition in this line, and for the unusual length? Does it suggest the _load_ and the _weariness_ in the next line?
[43-32] This is the turning point of the poem. As soon as the mariner felt in his heart love for the "happy living things," the spell which had been laid on him for the wanton slaying of the albatross began to break. In the third stanza from the end of the poem, this point is clearly brought out.
[44-33] _Silly_ here means _helpless, useless_.
[44-34] _Sheen_ means bright, _glittering_.
[45-35] Note this fine alliterative line.
[49-36] The mariner has been thrown into a trance, for the ship is being driven northward faster than a human being could endure.
[50-37] A charnel-dungeon is a vault or chamber underneath or near a church, where the bones of the dead are laid.
[52-40] "The silence sank like music on my heart," is among the beautiful lines that you will often hear quoted.
[53-41] An ivy-tod is a thick clump of ivy.
[57-42] A friend of Coleridge's once told him that she admired _The Ancient Mariner_, but had a serious fault to find with it--it had no moral. Do you think, as you read this stanza, that her objection was a valid one?
I do not pose as an Indian lover. In fact the instincts and impressions of my early life bent me in the opposite direction. My father's log house, in which I was born, stood within a few rods of Rock River, about forty-five miles west of this city. The stream was the boundary line, in a half-recognized way, between two tribes of Indians, and a common highway for both. I well remember their frequent and unheralded entries into our house, and their ready assumption of its privileges. I can see them yet--yes, and smell them, too. In some unventilated chamber of my rather capacious nostrils an abiding breath of that intense, all-conquering odor of fish, smoke and muskrat, which they brought with them, still survives. I well remember their impudent and sometimes bullying demeanor; and the horror of one occasion I shall never forget, when a stalwart Winnebago, armed with a knife, tomahawk and gun, seized my mother by the shoulder as she stood by her ironing table, and shook her because she said she had no bread for him. I wrapped myself in her skirts and howled in terror. Having been transplanted from the city to the wilderness, she had a mortal fear of Indians, but never revealed it to them. She had nerve, and resolution as well; and this particular fellow she threatened with her hot flat-iron and drove him out of the house. So you see I have no occasion for morbid or unnatural sympathy with any of the Indian kind.