The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
1798
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
1798
One of the most haunting poems in the English language opens with a stranger gripping a wedding guest's arm, insisting he hear a tale. The ancient mariner recounts a voyage that began in joy and descended into an nightmare when he killed an albatross, a bird of good omen. The crew perishes in a dead calm, the sky burns, and he is left alone with the bodies of his mates, the corpse of his captain lashed to the mast. This is not merely a ghost story but a profound meditation on guilt, nature, and the long road to grace. Coleridge's hypnotic repetition, his personification of wind and water, and his shift between serene beauty and grotesque horror create a poem that feels like a fever dream you cannot wake from. The mariner's redemption comes through loving all creatures great and small, a lesson that breaks around him like dawn after an endless night. Yet the price of his wisdom is permanent: he must wander, telling his story, for as long as there are ears to hear it. This is the poem that launched British Romanticism, and it remains unsettling, beautiful, and strange.
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“Water, water, everywhere,And all the boards did shrink;Water, water, everywhere,Nor any drop to drink.””
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“Day after day, day after day,We stuck, nor breath nor motion;As idle as a painted shipUpon a painted ocean.””
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony.””
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“He prayeth best, who loveth bestAll things both great and small;For the dear God who loveth us,He made and loveth all.””
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“Like one, that on a lonesome roadDoth walk in fear and dread,And having once turned round walks on,And turns no more his head;Because he knows, a frightful fiendDoth close behind him tread.””
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold:Her skin was white as leprosy,The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold.””
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“Since then, at an uncertain hour, That agony returns: And till my ghastly tale is told, This heart within me burns.””
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“The many men, so beautiful!And they all dead did lie:And a thousand thousand slimy thingsLived on; and so did I.””
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“The fair breeze blew,The white foam flew,And the forrow followed free.We were the first to ever burst into the silent sea.””
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner-6009fee4-8122-46a7-bad3-ba8f79a9cd3b.Coleridge, S. T. (1798). The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner-6009fee4-8122-46a7-bad3-ba8f79a9cd3bColeridge, Samuel Taylor. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner-6009fee4-8122-46a7-bad3-ba8f79a9cd3b.
