moment, which constitutes poetic faith" (Hill, "Imagination in Coleridge"). When he refers to "shadows of the imagination," he is simply speaking of thesupernatural elements he included in his poem that reflect on any hidden supernatural beliefs humankind already holds in their imaginations or minds, like the belief in ghosts. When he speaks of "suspension of disbelief for the moment," he is speaking of the fact that while not everyone may believe in the supernatural under every normal circumstance, he wrote his poems in such a way that a reader "suspends" disbelief, meaning refrains from concluding that the content is unbelievable, which in simple terms only means that he wrote his poems in such as a way as they might seem believable. So, all in all, what he's saying here is simply that he wrote his supernatural poems in a way that they would be believable for the reader and able to evoke genuine emotions in the reader. Coleridge lists The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, "The Dark Ladie," and "Christable" as his examples of romantic, supernatural poetry.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a classic example of Coleridge's use of the supernatural. The poem is a tale of a mariner giving an account of a voyage to the Antarctic in which, as the ship sales past the horizon, the ship drops "Below the kirk, below the hill, / Below the lighthouse top," meaning below the church and below all of civilization. Even Coleridge's opening reference to a "Bridegroom" and the mariner as a "Wedding-Guest" conjure up supernatural images for the reader because, while the mariner is literally talking to a bridegroom, a bridegroom is also a symbolic, biblical reference to Jesus Christ, and the wedding guest symbolizes members of Christ's church. The story continues to speak of the mariner shooting an albatross. Albatrosses were believed to bring good luck to sailors, and the result is that the mariner's entire crew dies and haunts the mariner. Since readers, especially readers of Coleridge's time, will recognize the supernatural meaning behind these symbols, such as the supernatural element of faith in the divine and the supernatural element of belief in good luck, the readers will be able to feel the emotions the symbols evoke and find the tale believable in the sense that the reader can relate to experiencing the supernatural.

It would be easy to dismiss the poetry of Coleridge as the product of a man whose mind was tortured by opium-inspired visions and nightmares. Certainly his poetry includes much focus on the supernatural and other-worldly. It is interesting therefore that he himself in his criticism came up with the phrase that has been applied to so many Shakespeare plays and other forms of literature, which is the "willing suspension of disbelief," or the way in which the audience enters into a state where they are happy to suspend their disbelief and to trust the playwright or author and believe that what they see and read is actually the truth and clearly happened. In poems such as "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" there is obviously a massive need for this because otherwise the events narrated by the Mariner could easily be dismissed as the ravings of a madman and nothing more. Note how the deaths of his crew are described by the Mariner after the dice game:

Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.