The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner By Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772 1834

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834)

The Rime of the Ancient

Mariner
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772 - 1834)

Type of Work:

Lyrical fantasy ballad

Setting

A sailing ship traveling the seas; late

Medieval period

Principal Characters

The Ancient Mariner, a sailor-storyteller

The Wedding Guest, a listener

The Ship's Crew

The Allbatross, a symbolic representation
of God's creatures - and Man's guilt

The Hermit, a rescuer representing God

Story Overveiw
(Coleridge introduces his tale by describing
an old gray-headed sailor who approaches three young men headed for a wedding
celebration and compels one of them, the groom's next-of-kin, to hear his
story.

O Wedding-Guest! this sent both been

Alone on a wide wide sea:

So lonely 'twas, that God himself

Scarce seemed there to be.

At first the intrusion is resented, but
the stor is remarkable indeed, and the listener - who, of course, represents
you, the reader - soon falls captive to the building suspense, responding
at first with fear and then with horror as the tale unfolds.)

There was little apprehension among the
ship's crew as they sailed clear of the harbor, bound for the open sea.

Several days out, however, a storm arose and the vessel was driven before
the wind in a constant southerly direction, headed toward the South Pole.

As it entered the "land of ice, and of fearful sounds, where no living
thing was to be seen," a feeling of foreboding came over the helpless inmates;
and so it was with great relief that the crew eventually greeted the sight
of an albatross - a huge seabird - flying through the fog toward them.
("As if it had been a Christian soul,"
the Ancient Mariner tells his listener, "We hailed it in God's name.")

Everyone took this as a good omen, and
the bird followed the ship faithfully as it returned northward. Then, one
day, weary of the bird's incessant and now unnerving presence, the Mariner
shot the albatross with his crossbow - and brought the curse down upon
them all.

The south wind continued to propel them
northward, but somehow the old sailor realized he had done "a hellish thing";
retribution would soon follow, in the form of loneliness and spiritual
anguish, like that of Adam when he fell from God's grace.

The crew at first berated their mate for
killing the bird that had brought the change in the breeze. But as the
ship made its way out of the fog and mist and continued on, they decided
it must be the bird that had brought the mist. Perhaps their shipmate had
rightfully killed it after all.

The vessel sailed on northward until it
reached the equator, where the breeze ceased and the craft became becalmed.

After days without a breath of wind, it was decided by all that an avenging
spirit had followed them from the land of mist and snow, leaving them surrounded
only by foul water. With the unabsolved curse thus restored, the thirsting
crew angrily hung the dead albatross around the Mariner's neck, as a symbol
of his guilt. Time lost all meaning. The lips of the men baked and their
eyes glazed over for want of water.

I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;

But or ever a prayer had gusht,

A wicked whisper came, and made

My heart as dry as dust.

Then the old sailor saw a speck on the
horizon, which, as it wafted towards them, became a sail. The men waited
in silent dread. This could be no earthly ship - it moved along the water
without the slightest breeze.

Wide-eyed and trembling, the crew looked
on as this skeleton ship came alongside their own. On its deck the Mariner
saw two spectres: a Woman, Life-in-Death; and her mate, Death himself.

They were casting dice to see which of them would take control of the drifting
ship. Death won the entire ship's crew - all but the Ancient Mariner, who
was won by the Woman; he alone would live on, to expiate his sin against

Nature.

There followed a ghastly scene as the sun
dropped into the sea and night came over the silent waters. One by one
the two hundred men on board turned toward the Mariner, denounced him with
a soulful stare - for they could not speak - and dropped dead upon the
deck. As their souls flew from their bodies and sped past the old seaman,
the sound was "like the whizz of my crossbow" when he shot the albatross.
(The Wedding Guest by this time is terrified
of the Ancient Mariner, who he thinks must be a ghost; but assuring him
he is indeed mortal, the old man proceeds with his story.)

The Ancient Mariner was by now in agony,
as he looked upon all those whom Death had taken:

The many men, so beautiful!

And they all dead did lie:

And a thousand thousand slimy things

Lived on; and so did 1.

This, the Mariner's heartsick and acknowledged
disgust for non-human life, showed that he had not yet learned his lesson
nor completed the penance that Life-in-Death had prepared for him.

For seven days and seven nights the wretched
survivor was forced to confront the open, accusing eyes of his dead shipmates.

The pang, the curse, with which they died,

Had never passed away:

I could not draw my eyes from theirs,

Nor turn them up to pray.

Finally, suspended in utter loneliness,
the horrified sailor stood watching out over the moonlit water. Sea snakes
darted and swam nearby. He was startled to behold their beauty, and at
once felt a rush of love for these creatures, blessing them as the only
other living things in his damnable world. "O happy living things!", he
cried. And with those few words, the spell was broken. The Ancient Mariner
could pray at last, and the albatross fell from his neck and sank "like
lead into the sea." With welcome release he fell into a deep sleep. When
he awakened later, it was raining - and his body drank in the moisture.

Now gazing into the heavens, the seaman
witnessed strange, never-before-seen sights. And stranger still, on the
bloody deck of the ship, the bodies of his dead companions arose and went
mutely about their mundane tasks of sailing, no longer transfixing him
with their dead stares.
(Here the Mariner hastens to again reassure
the Wedding Guest that the spirits animating the crew's bodies were not
those souls which had fled them at death, but "a blessed troop of angelic
spirits" called down by his guardian saint.) At dawn the spirits left;
but still the ship sailed on, with no help from any breeze. It was moved
now by a spirit from the land of mist and snow - the Polar Spirit, still
seeking cleansing repentance from the Mariner for having killed the albatross.

At noon the ship suddenly stood still,
and then began moving back and forth in a bizarre, dancing tug-of-war.

Was Death again trying to win the Ancient Mariner? Suddenly the ship leaped
free of the unseen grapplers with such force that the sailor fell into
a trance. He knew little of what transpired until he heard the voices of
two spirits. Their conversation revealed that the ship was now being powered
by angelic forces and traveling northward at such speed he could not have
endured it in full consciousness.

When the dazed and astonished sailor again
awoke, it was night, and the dead men stood together on the deck, the curse
blazing anew in their eyes. What joy came to him when that spell finally
broke and the ship sped homeward. At last he was among the dear and familiar
landmarks he had thought never to view again.

Soon the angelic spirits departed from
the bodies of the Mariner's dead comrades, and standing on top of each
lifeless form was a "man all light, a seraph man," shining as a rescue
signal to the land. But just as a small rescue boat came alongside the
ship, a terrible noise rumbled through the water, splitting and sinking
the vessel and throwing the sailor overboard. He was quickly pulled into
the boat - but his gruesome adventure had taken its toll; the sight of
the ravaged Mariner terrified everyone aboard. Once ashore, the penitent
old sailor begged the holy Hermit of the Wood to bless him and cast off
his sin. "What manner of man art thou?" asked the man of God, crossing
himself. At this question, an agony of spirit prompted the Ancient Mariner
to recount his story, freeing himself for a brief hour from the curse of
remembrance.
(And so the Mariner concludes his story
once again. He tells the Wedding Guest that ever since the Hermit's blessing,
he has been obliged to travel from land to land, never knowing when the
agony of remembrance might return. But whenever the curse again darkens
his soul, he recognizes the face of a man with whom he must share his message
of love and reverence for God's creation:

He prayeth well, who loveth well

Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.

The Wedding Guest, incidentally, never
does go on to the wedding. So moved is he by the mood of the Mariner, that
when the old man vanishes, he also departs, "a sadder and a wiser man.")

Commentary

There are critics who contend that The

Rime of the Ancient Mariner is autobiographical in its strange, imaginative
theme and storyline. Coleridge, even this early in his writing, was haunted
by remorse for his addiction to opium, which he had first taken to relieve
pain as a patient at Christ's Hospital. But whether or not the poem actually
served as a catharsis for its author's guilt, it stands on its own merits.

Coleridge's interests always lay with the
exotic and the supernatural, which he hoped to make more real for his readers
by employing simple, straightforward language in an archaic English ballad
form. In this relatively brief poem, he succeeds in making the extraordinary
believable; and his graphic word-pictures - some fraught with horror, others
piercing us with brief visions of exquisite beauty - evoke images so clear
and deep that they touch every one of our senses and emotions.

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