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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in Seven Parts

From Lyrical Ballads

Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum universitate. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit? et gradus et cognationes et discrimina et singulorum munera? Quid agunt? quae loca habitant? Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit ingenium humanum, nunquam attigit. Juvat, interea, non diffiteor, quandoque in animo, tanquam in tabulâ, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contemplari: ne mens assuefacta hodiernae vitae minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat in pusillas cogitationes. Sed veritati interea invigilandum est, modusque servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a nocte, distinguamus. – T. Burnet, Archaeol. Phil., p. 68

Argument

How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by Storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country.

Part the First.

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
“By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stoppest thou me?

An ancient Mariner
meeteth three gallants
bidden to a wedding
feast, and detaineth
one.


“The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,(5)
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May'st hear the merry din.”
He holds him with his skinny hand,
“There was a ship,” quoth he.(10)
“Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!”
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.
He holds him with his glittering eye—
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years child:(15)
The Mariner hath his will.

The Wedding-Guest is
spell-bound by the eye
of the old seafaring
man, and constrained
to hear his tale.


The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,(20)
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the light-house top.
The Sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!(25)
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.

The Mariner tells how
the ship sailed southward
with a good wind
and fair weather, till it
reached the Line.


Higher and higher every day,
Till over the mast at noon—
The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,(30)
For he heard the loud bassoon.
The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;
Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.(35)

The Wedding-
Guest heareth the
bridal music; but the
Mariner continueth his tale.


The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o'ertaking wings,
And chased south along.

The ship drawn by
a storm toward the
South Pole.


With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow(45)
Still treads the shadow of his foe
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward aye we fled.
And now there came both mist and snow,(50)
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:(55)
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken—
The ice was all between.

The land of ice, and of
fearful sounds, where
no living thing was to
be seen.


The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,(60)
Like noises in a swound!
At length did cross an Albatross:
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.(65)

Till a great sea-bird,
called the Albatross,
came through the
snow-fog, and was
received with great joy
and hospitality.


It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!
And a good south wind sprung up behind;(70)
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariners' hollo!

And lo! the Albatross
proveth a bird of good
omen, and followeth
the ship as it returned
northward through fog
and floating ice.


In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;(75)
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white Moon-shine.
“God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—
Why look'st thou so?”—With my cross-bow(80)
I shot the Albatross.

The ancient
Mariner inhospitably
killeth the pious
bird of good omen.


Part the Second.

The Sun now rose upon the right:
Out of the sea came he,
Still hid in mist, and on the left
Went down into the sea.(85)
And the good south wind still blew behind
But no sweet bird did follow,
Nor any day for food or play
Came to the mariners' hollo!
And I had done an hellish thing,(90)
And it would work 'em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.

His shipmates cry
out against the
ancient Mariner for
killing the bird of
good luck.


Nor dim nor red, like God's own head,
The glorious Sun uprist:(95)
Then all averred, I had killed the bird
That brought the fog and mist.
'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,
That bring the fog and mist.

But when the fog
cleared off, they
justify the same,
and thus make
themselves accom
plices in the crime.


The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free:
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.

The fair breeze
continues; the ship
enters the Pacific
Ocean, and sails
northward, even till
it reaches the Line.


Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
'Twas sad as sad could be;(105)
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!

The ship hath been
suddenly becalmed.


All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,(110)
No bigger than the Moon.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean. (115)
  • the major work on which Coleridge and Wordsworth collaborated; its publication is usually credited with ushering in the Romantic Era.
  • [Latin] I well believe there to be more unseen natural things than visible in the universe of things. But who will explain to us all the families of these things? And the ranks and the relations and differentiating traits and the roles of each of them? What do they do? In what places do they live? Human knowledge has always circled around an understanding of such matters, but has never touched it. It helps, meanwhile, I do not deny, to consider in the mind, just as upon a tablet, the picture of a bigger and better world: that no mind accustomed to the minutia of today's life might draw itself together too much, and totally sink down into unimportant meditations. But meanwhile, one should be devoted to the truth, and order should be preserved, that we may distinguish certain from uncertain and day from night.
  • the equator; the imaginary line on the earth that separates Northern and Southern Hemispheres
  • from there
  • The Mariner feels a physical agony that can be cured only by telling his tale.
  • soon afterwards; quickly
  • a church
  • Be careful to note when the Mariner has stopped speaking and the narrator begins.
  • [Old English] see; know, understand
  • a large sea bird; before the publication of this poem, there was no superstition about killing albatrosses, and they were often killed as food for the sailors. There was, however, some belief that an albatross was the reincarnated soul of a sailor lost at sea.
  • a religious service; evening prayers performed at nine o'clock. Readers should note that Coleridge uses the number “nine” at least three times in this poem.
  • asserted, insisted
  • This is one of the most famous similes and images in English literature. The couplet that follows about there being nothing to drink while surrounded by vast amounts of water is also quite famous.
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