"A Sadder And A Wiser Man, He Rose The Morrow Morn"
Last Updated on May 9, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 180
Context: The two lines of this quotation are the last lines of Coleridge's poem, perhaps the most famous he wrote. It is one of the four poems which appeared in Lyrical Ballads as his contributions to that volume written by William Wordsworth and himself. The story of the ancient mariner who is killing an albatross brought a curse upon himself is told within a frame story. At the beginning of the poem the old sailor, under a compulsion to tell his story of curse and salvation, stops a wedding-guest just as the latter is about to attend, with two companions, a kinsman's wedding-feast, the din of which can be heard in the background. After the mariner has told his harrowing tale, the wedding-guest turns away from the nuptial festivities; the symbolic tale has taken for a time from the unwilling hearer any wish to be joyous. Coleridge describes the wedding-guest as he turns "from the bridegroom's door."
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He went like one hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.
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