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''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' is a Poem written by the English Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1797 – 1799 and published in the first edition of '' Lyrical Ballads '' ( 1798 ). It is Coleridge's longest major poem. Along with other poems in ''Lyrical Ballads'', it was a signal shift to modern poetry, and the beginnings of British Romantic Literature . PLOT SUMMARY ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' relates the Supernatural events experienced by a Mariner on a long sea voyage. The Mariner stops a man who is on the way to a Wedding Ceremony , and begins to recite his story. The Wedding-Guest's reaction turns from bemusement and impatience to fascination as the Mariner's story progresses. The Mariner's tale begins with his ship leaving harbour; despite initial good fortune, the ship is driven off course by a spirits who then pursue the ship "''from the land of mist and snow''"; the south wind which had initially led them from the land of ice now sends the ship into uncharted waters, where it is becalmed. Day after day, day after day, Here, however, the sailors change their minds again and blame the Mariner for the torment of their thirst. ''Ah! Well a-day! What evil looks / Had I from old and young! / Instead of the cross, the albatross / About my neck was hung'') is metaphorically illustrating that the guilt of killing the albatross reflected when it hung around his neck, but in reality, it had plunged into the water. Eventually, in an eerie passage, the ship encounters a ghostly vessel. On board are Death (a skeleton) and the "Night-mare Life-in-Death" (a deathly-pale woman), who are playing dice for the souls of the crew. With a roll of the dice, Death wins the lives of the crew members and Life-in-Death the life of the mariner, a prize she considers more valuable. Her name is a clue as to the mariner's fate; he will endure a fate worse than death as punishment for his killing of the albatross. One by one all of the crew members die, but the Mariner lives on, seeing for seven days and nights the curse in the eyes of the crew's corpses, whose last expressions remain upon their faces. Eventually, the Mariner's curse is lifted when he sees sea creatures swimming in the water. Despite his cursing them as "slimy things" earlier in the poem, he suddenly sees their true beauty and blesses them (''a spring of love gush'd from my heart and I bless'd them unaware''); suddenly, as he manages to pray, the albatross falls from his neck and his guilt is partially expiated. The bodies of the crew, possessed by good spirits, rise again and steer the ship back home, where it sinks in a whirlpool, leaving only the Mariner behind. As penance for his deed, the Mariner is forced to wander the earth and tell his story, and teach a lesson to those he meets: He prayeth best, who loveth best BACKGROUND The poem may have been inspired by James Cook 's second voyage of exploration ( 1772 – 1775 ) of the South Seas and the Pacific Ocean ; Coleridge's tutor, William Wales , was the astronomer on Cook's Flagship and had a strong relationship with Cook. On his second voyage Cook plunged repeatedly below the Antarctic Circle to determine whether the fabled great southern continent existed. Critics have also opined that the poem may have been inspired by the voyage of Thomas James into the Arctic. "Some critics think that Coleridge drew upon James’s account of hardship and lamentation in writing ''The rime of the ancient mariner''."1 According to ), by Captain George Shelvocke . In the book, a melancholy sailor shoots a black Albatross : We all observed, that we had not the sight of one fish of any kind, since we were come to the Southward of the streights of le Mair, nor one sea-bird, except a disconsolate black Albatross, who accompanied us for several days (...), till Hattley, (my second Captain) observing, in one of his melancholy fits, that this bird was always hovering near us, imagin'd, from his colour, that it might be some ill omen. (...) He, after some fruitless attempts, at length, shot the Albatross, not doubting we shout have a fair wind after it. As they discussed Shelvocke's book, Wordsworth suggested to Coleridge, "Suppose you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the south sea, and the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime." Keach, William (ed.): "The Complete Poems/Samuel Taylor Coleridge", pages 498-499. Penguin, 1997. By the time the trio finished their walk, the poem had taken shape. The poem may also have been inspired by the legend of the Wandering Jew , who was forced to wander the Earth until Judgement Day, for taunting Jesus on the day of the Crucifixion. Having shot the albatross the Mariner is forced to wear the bird about his neck as a symbol of guilt. ''Instead of the cross, the Albatross / About my neck was hung.'' This supports the idea of the Wandering Jew, who is branded with a cross as a symbol of guilt. It is also thought that Coleridge, a known user of Opium , could have been under the drug's effects when he wrote some of the more strange parts of the poem, especially the Voices of The Spirits communicating with each other. The poem received mixed reviews from critics, and Coleridge was once told by the publisher that most of the book's sales were to sailors who thought it was a naval songbook. Coleridge made several modifications to the poem over the years. In the second edition of ''Lyrical Ballads'' ( 1800 ), he replaced many of the archaic words. COLERIDGE'S COMMENTS In ''Biographia Literaria XIV'', Coleridge writes: ''The thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural, and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life...In this idea originated the plan of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’; in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith....With this view I wrote the ‘Ancient Mariner’.'' In ''Table Talk, 1830-32'', Coleridge wrote: ''Mrs Barbauld tole me that the only faults she found with the Ancient Mariner were – that it was improbable and had no moral. As for the probability – to be sure that might admit some question – but I told her that in my judgment the poem had too much moral, and that too openly obtruded on the reader, It ought to have no more moral than the story of the merchant sitting down to eat dates by the side of a well and throwing the shells aside, and the Genii starting up and saying he must kill the merchant, because a date shell had put out the eye of the Genii’s son.'' WORDSWORTH'S COMMENTS Wordsworth wrote to Joseph Cottle in 1799: ''From what I can gather it seems that the Ancyent Mariner has upon the whole been an injury to the volume, I mean that the old words and the strangeness of it have deterred readers from going on. I f the volume should come to a second Edition I would put in its place some little things which would be more likely to suit the common taste.'' However, when ''Lyrical Ballads'' was reprinted, Wordsworth included it despite Coleridge’s objections, writing: ''The Poem of my Friend has indeed great defects; first, that the principal person has no distinct character, either in his profession of Mariner, or as a human being who having been long under the control of supernatural impressions might be supposed himself to partake of something supernatural; secondly, that he does not act, but is continually acted upon; thirdly, that the events having no necessary connection do not produce each other; and lastly, that the imagery is somewhat too laboriously accumulated. Yet the Poem contains many delicate touches of passion, and indeed the passion is every where true to nature, a great number of the stanzas present beautiful images, and are expressed with unusual felicity of language; and the versification, though the metre is itself unfit for long poems, is harmonious and artfully varied, exhibiting the utmost powers of that metre, and every variety of which it is capable. It therefore appeared to me that these several merits (the first of which, namely that of the passion, is of the highest kind) gave to the Poem a value which is not often possessed by better Poems.'' THE GLOSS In 1815 - 1816 Coleridge added to the poem marginal notes in prose that Gloss the text, written in the style of a seventeenth century antiquarian. The gloss describes the poem as an account of sin and restoration. While some critics see the gloss as spelling out clearly the moral of the tale, others point to the inaccuracies and illogicalities of the gloss and interpret it as the voice of a dramatized character that only serves to highlight the poem's cruel meaninglessness.Duncan Wu, ''A Companion to Romanticism'', Blackwell Publishing, 1998, p137. ISBN 0631218777 INTERPRETATIONS There are many different interpretations of the poem. Some critics believe that the poem is a metaphor of Original Sin in Eden with the subsequent regret of the mariner and the rain seen as a Baptism . Although the poem is often read as a Christian Allegory , Jerome McGann argues that it is really a story of ''our'' Salvation ''of'' Christ, rather than the other way round. The structure of the poem, according to McGann, is influenced by Coleridge's interest in Higher Criticism and its function "was to illustrate a significant continuity of meaning between cultural phenomena that seemed as diverse as pagan superstitions, Catholic theology, Aristotelian science, and contemporary philological theory, to name only a few of the work's ostentatiously present materials."McGann, Jerome J. ''The Beauty of Inflections'': Clarendon Press, 1985. In 1927, John Livingston Lowes published an exhaustive investigation of Coleridge's sources for the poem, as well as for " Kubla Khan ". The book, entitled " The Road To Xanadu ", is an intriguing analysis of those sources by a man, of great learning, who immersed himself in Coleridge's reading, imagination and writing. IN POPULAR CULTURE Literature
::''Her lips were red, her looks were free'' ::''Her locks were yellow as gold'' ::''Her skin was as white as leprosy'' ::''The Night-mare Life-in-death was she'' ::''Who thicks man's blood with cold''
::Then I did this: ::Shouldered the cross of an albatross ::up the hill of the sky, ::Why? To follow a ship. ::But I felt my wings ::clipped by the squint of a crossbow's eye.
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::All things bright and beautiful, ::All creatures great and small, ::All things wise and wonderful: ::The Lord God made them all.
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::About, about in reel and rout, ::The death-fires danced at night; ::The water, like a witch's oils, ::Burnt green, and blue and white
::They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, ::Nor spake nor moved their eyes; ::It had been strange even in a dream, ::To have seen those dead men rise.
::And through the drifts the snowy clifts ::Did send a dismal sheen: ::Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken-- ::the ice was all between
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