Fear and Anxiety

I cannot tell why this imagined Despair has fallen upon me; The ghost of an ancient legend That will not let me be.

My spirit is too weak—mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagin’d pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship, tells me I must die Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky. 2

O Wedding Guest! This soul hath been Alone on a wide wide sea: So lonely ’twas, that God himself Scarce seemèd there to be.

Like one that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.

I fear thee, ancient Mariner! I fear thy skinny hand! And thou art long, and lank, and brown, As is the ribbed sea-sand. 1

We listened and looked sideways up! Fear at my heart, as at a cup, My lifeblood seemed to sip.

“The game is done! I’ve won, I’ve won!” Quoth she, and whistles thrice.

The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around: It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, Like noises in a swound!

High instincts before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.

Towered up between me and the stars, and still, For so it seemed, with purpose of its own And measured motion like a living thing, Strode after me.

Fair seedtime had my soul, and I grew up Fostered alike by beauty and by fear.

Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie, O, what a panic’s in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, Wi’ bickering brattle!

My specter around me night and day Like a wild beast guards my way. My emanation far within Weeps incessantly for my sin.

My mother groan’d! my father wept. Into the dangerous world I leapt: Helpless, naked, piping loud, Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

In every cry of every man, In every infant’s cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.

Never seek to tell thy love Love that never told can be; For the gentle wind does move Silently, invisibly. I told my love, I told my love, I told her all my heart; Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears— Ah, she doth depart. Soon as she was gone from me A traveler came by Silently, invisibly— Oh, was no deny.

Like a fiend in a cloud, With howling woe, After night I do crowd, And with night will go.

The spirits that I summoned up I now can’t rid myself of.

Alas, regardless of their doom, The little victims play! No sense have they of ills to come, Nor care beyond today.

To each his suff’rings: all are men, Condemn’d alike to groan, The tender for another’s pain, Th’ unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! why should they know their fate, Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies? Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, ’Tis folly to be wise.

Still as they run they look behind, They hear a voice in every wind, And snatch a fearful joy.

The meeting points the sacred hair dissever From the fair head, forever, and forever! Then flash’d the living lightning from her eyes, And screams of horror rend th’ affrighted skies.

Neither have the hearts to stay, Nor wit enough to run away.

Suspense in news is torture.