Rime of the Ancient Mariner Discussion
Even though Samuel Taylor
Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient
Mariner is one of the most
influential poems in the English
language, it's still a doozy of a
confusing read.
It's about an old sailor who stops a wedding guest from entering a
wedding celebration, and
says, essentially...
I know you want to get your drink and your dance
on, folks, but now I'm going to tell you a really long story about how I
got my entire crew killed and almost died myself because I acted like a
jerk while sailing the far reaches of the globe...
Chances are that this poem is unlike anything you've read
before. It will probably leave you with a bunch of
questions:
Why does Coleridge speak in such an old-fashioned voice? Why does the poem sound so
corny? Did Coleridge think this poem
was a big joke? Why is the Mariner saved after committing such an
atrocious act?
None of these questions are stupid or silly. Depending on your
tolerance for ghost stories that are filled
with strange images and questions that never get
answered, you'll either be fascinated by the
Mariner and his crazy exploits, or you'll be
completely frustrated by him.
The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Illustrated by Gustave Doré
The title has different levels of meaning. On the most basic level, the poem is a "rhyme" – that is, it has rhyming verses –
told by an old sailor, or mariner. Simple enough.
But why is "rhyme" spelled "rime"? Ah, now it gets interesting. In addition to "rhyme," the word "rime" means frost, and specifically the frost that forms in fog and wind
when the temperature cools down. "Rime" often forms on the windy side of sails and ships. Much of the poem takes
place in the Arctic, in a "land of ice and snow," and you expect to encounter a lot of rime in that climate.
Furthermore, the Mariner himself is described as being "frosty" in some respects. For example, his beard is described
as frosty or, "hoary.” If you wanted to turn this idea into symbolism, you might say that the Mariner's soul is covered with a layer of frost until he learns to have pity on his fellow
creatures.
Finally, he's an "ancient" mariner because, clearly, he's very old. "Ancient" makes him sound like some timeless artifact,
one that has always existed and always will exist.
The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Illustrated by Gustave Doré
Part the First.
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
“By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?
“The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May’st hear the merry din.”
Just as the poem has two different narratives, it also has two different settings. The first setting is outside
the wedding hall. There is no way to know in what year or even century the poem takes place, but it must
have been after the Age of Exploration, because the Mariner
describes a voyage all the way down to the Arctic. As for the place, we
know the Mariner and the Wedding Guest come from somewhere in the British Isles, but not exactly where. Judging by the use of the Scottish
word "kirk," and the fact that ballads were popular in Scotland, this poem
could be set in that region.
He holds him with his skinny hand,
“There was a ship,” quoth he.
“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:
The Mariner hath his will.
The wedding, quite frankly, sounds like a rockin' time. There's
singing, dancing, drinking, and a whole lot of merry-making. But we only hear all this revelry behind closed doors. The Wedding Guest is sitting on a rock
outside the feast, and maybe he catches a
glimpse or two of the party when people enter or leave. But
that's it. Otherwise, he's just sitting in the darkness listening to a grizzled old man with
magnetic eyes.
The Wedding–Guest sat on a stone:
He cannot chuse but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
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!
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.
Higher and higher every day,
Till over the mast at noon —
The Wedding–Guest here beat his breast,
For he heard the loud bassoon.
You got to love a speaker that says eleven words in the first two lines before passing the poem off to a strange old man who likes
to hang around outside wedding celebrations.
But, in all seriousness, the speaker of the poem is
basically a narrator who sets up the action in this
dramatic poem. The narrative has two levels: there's the story of the
Mariner and the Wedding Guest, and then there's
the story-within-a-story of the Mariner's voyage,
which takes up most of the poem. We can
comment briefly on the nature of the narrator of
each story.
The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;
Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.
The Wedding–Guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot chuse 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.
With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
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.
In pretty much any poem or novel about life at sea, you can expect quite a lot of attention to be devoted to the weather. But who could have expected a
huge fog near Antarctica, a massive drought that turns the ocean into a swamp, or a lightning show that gets
dead people moving again? Here's the general trajectory: the Mariner's
ship gets driven down south by a bad storm, then the albatross guides them through fog and ice, then
they suffer a truly horrifying, windless
drought, the Mariner sees a massive and
supernatural night-time storm, and he finally gets carried by invisible forces
back to the bay.
And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
The setting of the Mariner's story, on the
other hand, is full of spectacular scenery and supernatural elements. Special emphasis is put on the weather and on
astrological phenomena like the sun, moon, and
stars. These are obviously things of great concern for sailors. The story begins in the bay
with the receding shoreline. The boat travels down to the
equator and then to the Arctic Ocean, where
they run into trouble in an ice field. The ice is
cracking and groaning all around them.
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.
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and
howled,
Like noises in a swound!
The storm that drives the ship south is
compared metaphorically to
some kind of winged predator on the hunt.
The ship is like the animal at ground level
that runs in the "shadow" of the
predator to escape it.
The ice near Antarctica makes loud cracking
noises that sound "like noises in a swound,"
that is, like the sounds a fainting person might
hear. The word "like" makes clear that this is
a simile.
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.
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;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariners’ hollo!
Coleridge wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, as well as "Kubla Khan" and "This Lime-Tree
Bower My Prison" while living in
Somerset, England in a village called Nether Stowey. It
was one of the most productive times of
his life.
In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
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
I shot the ALBATROSS.
In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
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
I shot the ALBATROSS.
When it came to using moonlight to create dramatic, otherworldly effects, Coleridge was as shameless as a contemporary romance novelist. Many of his most famous poems – "Christabel," "Frost at Midnight," "Dejection: An Ode," "Kubla Khan," and, of course, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – treat the moon as an object of profound mystery and mythic influence. In both Greek and Roman mythology, the moon is a female goddess who exhibits a secret control over world affairs, similar to the moon's influence over the tides. Sometimes, the moon made you go crazy, from which comes our word, "lunatic." We don't think this would be an entirely inappropriate word for the Mariner.
We've got really mixed feelings about the
albatross. If it hadn't come along, then sure,
the whole crew probably would have died in that ice field. But, to be frank, the
consequences of shooting the albatross
seem almost worse than death. Maybe
that's because shooting it is a completely
senseless act. As a persecuted figure of
salvation, the albatross resembles Christ in
many ways, especially when you consider that a bird often symbolizes
Christ.
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.
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!
Then, the albatross comes, accompanied by a strange mist, to lead them out of the ice. After the albatross is killed, the setting shifts in the direction of the supernatural. The wind disappears, and the ocean is eerily calm and glassy. The sails go slack. Meanwhile, the sun turns red, the water changes color, and strange slippery creatures and sea-snakes come out. At night, these creatures glow on the water with phosphorescent effects. This section of the poem is characterized by extreme dryness, which we see in the drying of the sails and the appearance of the skeleton-like Ghost Ship. The ocean is like a brackish swamp.
And what about that ocean? The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is set in a time when, once you
crossed a certain point in your ship, you could
expect not to see other people for a long, long time. As in many works
of literature, like Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, the
ocean represents the mysteries of the human soul and, if you want to get all Sigmund Freud
about it, the unconscious. Just like the
sea, an individual's personality is often like a flat, uniform surface that
conceals a deepness filled with those bizarre
and often unsightly creatures we call
emotions or desires.
So, when the Mariner pollutes his soul by killing
the albatross, it's not a surprise to see that the
ocean becomes polluted with slime and horrible
creatures. Moreover, the imagery of the vast,
vacant ocean, particularly once the rest of the crew
has died, expresses a condition of spiritual
solitude and loneliness. It's the kind of setting that makes you realize we're truly all alone in
this world, with seemingly infinite depths
above and below us.
And I had done an hellish thing,
And it would work ’em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay
That made the breeze to blow!
Nor dim nor red, like God’s own head,
The glorious Sun uprist:
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.
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free:
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.
Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
’Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!
All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
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.
When the wind dies and the ship can't move, the scene is compared using a
simile to a motionless painting.
The ship's shrunken wood boards become central image of the terrible dryness that
the killing of the albatross produces.
The crew becomes so thirsty that it's as if
their mouths were full of dry "soot," or ashes, which is a
simile.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.
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.
And some in dreams assured were
Of the spirit that plagued us so:
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.
The water begins to turn strange
colors at night after the albatross has been killed. These
supernatural green, blue, and white
lights are compared in a
simile to "witch's oils," which are
used for spells and enchantments
And every tongue, through utter drought,
Was withered at the root;
We could not speak, no more than if
We had been choked with soot.
Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.
The one reading skill this poem requires
more than any other is patience. Not many
people have read poems as long as this
one, except in translation, where you
can often get away with skimming. The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner is packed with interesting symbols and images, and the
plot can turn on a dime.
In one stanza, the sailors are horrified
that the Mariner has killed the albatross, and in the next they
are blaming the albatross for the fog,
and then they go back to blaming the Mariner. Not to
mention all the crazy and confusing supernatural
elements, like the spirit "nine-fathoms
under" that somehow controls the boat.
Finally, Coleridge plays on the old-fashioned nature of the English
ballad by using archaic words like "shrieve"
and "kirk." Fortunately, he also recognizes that the ballad is a popular
form, so the language is mostly simple, and
there's a lot of repetition.
This poem will task your endurance, but, if you give yourself the
time to read it the whole way through – twice – it won't task
your noggin too much.
The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Illustrated by Gustave Doré
The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Illustrated by Gustave Doré
Part the Third.
There passed a weary time. Each throat
Was parched, and glazed each eye.
A weary time! a weary time!
How glazed each weary eye,
When looking westward, I beheld
A something in the sky.
At first it seemed a little speck,
And then it seemed a mist:
It moved and moved, and took at last
A certain shape, I wist.
A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!
And still it neared and neared:
As if it dodged a water-sprite,
It plunged and tacked and veered.
With throats unslaked, with black lips
baked,
We could not laugh nor wail;
Through utter drought all dumb we stood!
I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,
And cried, A sail! a sail!
With throats unslaked, with black lips
baked,
Agape they heard me call:
Gramercy! they for joy did grin,
And all at once their breath drew in,
As they were drinking all.
See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more!
Hither to work us weal;
Without a breeze, without a tide,
She steadies with upright keel!
The western wave was all a-flame
The day was well nigh done!
Almost upon the western wave
Rested the broad bright Sun;
When that strange shape drove suddenly
Betwixt us and the Sun.
And straight the Sun was flecked with bars,
(Heaven’s Mother send us grace!)
As if through a dungeon-grate he peered,
With broad and burning face.
If The Rime of the Ancient Mariner were a song, it
would have to be a country song.
The comparison between the ballad and country
music is appropriate because both are popular
folk genres. If you're like us and listen to country
music, you'll notice that a lot of the songs tell a story. These stories might not be as long as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but the
idea is the same. The singer wants to tell you about some hard times and then wrap
things up with a moral at the end. The Mariner
himself is essentially just his age's version of a
trucker, except his open road is the ocean.
Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud)
How fast she nears and nears!
Are those her sails that glance in the Sun,
Like restless gossameres!
Are those her ribs through which the Sun
Did peer, as through a grate?
And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a DEATH? and are there two?
Is DEATH that woman’s mate?
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.
The naked hulk alongside came,
And the twain were casting dice;
“The game is done! I’ve won! I’ve won!”
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.
The sails of the ghost ship are compared in
this simile to "gossamers" or
cobwebs. The forces of Death
and Life-in-Death are personified as the crew
of the Ghost Ship. Life-In-Death is a
strange mix of the beautiful and the
creepy, as evidenced by two similes: her hair is like gold, but her skin
is diseased like a leper's. The dice game they play represents
the random fate of the sailors.
The Sun’s rim dips; the stars rush out:
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper, o’er the sea.
Off shot the spectre-bark.
We listened and looked sideways up!
Fear at my heart, as at a cup,
My life-blood seemed to sip!
The stars were dim, and thick the night,
The steersman’s face by his lamp gleamed
white;
From the sails the dew did drip —
Till clombe above the eastern bar
The horned Moon, with one bright star
Within the nether tip.
One after one, by the star-dogged Moon
Too quick for groan or sigh,
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,
And cursed me with his eye.
In this simile, the skeleton-like Ghost Ship makes the sun look like a prisoner staring through the bars of a dungeon.
When the moon gets horny, you'd better watch out. Get your
mind out of the gutter: we're talking about the image of the crescent
moon with two "horns" pointing up.
One of the horns has a star next to it. This
apparently does not bode well for the crew: they all start to die off.
Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.
The souls did from their bodies fly,—
They fled to bliss or woe!
And every soul, it passed me by,
Like the whizz of my CROSS-BOW!
“I fear thee, ancient Mariner!
I fear thy skinny hand!
And thou art long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribbed sea-sand.
“I fear thee and thy glittering eye,
And thy skinny hand, so brown.”—
Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding–Guest!
This body dropt not down.
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.
The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.
I looked upon the rotting sea,
And drew my eyes away;
I looked upon the rotting deck,
And there the dead men lay.
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.
I closed my lids, and kept them close,
And the balls like pulses beat;
For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the
sky
Lay like a load on my weary eye,
And the dead were at my feet.
The cold sweat melted from their limbs,
Nor rot nor reek did they:
The look with which they looked on me
Had never passed away.
An orphan’s curse would drag to Hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! more horrible than that
Is a curse in a dead man’s eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.
Not only is the weather dry in the middle of the
poem, but so is the Mariner's heart. Dry, goes
the simile, as dust. His prayer is halted by a
"wicked whisper.”
The curse of the sailors is even worse than an
orphan's curse, which could drag a heavenly
spirit all the way down to Hell. Yowza!
After the crew dies, the water turns red in the
shadow of the ship. The water snakes leave a white
light in their wake that looks like "flakes" of frost.
The same light is compared using metaphor
to "golden fire.”
The moving Moon went up the sky,
And no where did abide:
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside.
What is this, an astrology lesson? With the attention he pays to the moon, sun, and stars, you'd think the Mariner had a Tarot card
collection. Well, that's actually not too far,
considering that these phenomena are invested
with supernatural powers, particularly after the Mariner shoots the
albatross. Above all, the moon is calling the shots,
both in terms of the Mariner's punishment and
his eventual penance. Watch out for any images of the moon and its white light.
As is frequent in myth, the moon is personified as
female. The moonlight is compared in a simile to the
late spring frost in the month of April.
Her beams bemocked the sultry main,
Like April hoar-frost spread;
But where the ship’s huge shadow lay,
The charmed water burnt alway
A still and awful red.
Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.
When the Mariner finally learns to pray, the curse is broken
and the albatross falls "like lead" (simile)
into the ocean.
Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire:
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.
O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.
The self same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.
Part the Fifth.
Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!
To Mary Queen the praise be given!
She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,
That slid into my soul.
The albatross becomes the defining symbol of the Mariner's big
mistake. As a symbol of the burden of sin, it is compared explicitly to
the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified.
The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Illustrated by Gustave Doré
The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Illustrated by Gustave Doré
The self same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.
Part the Fifth.
Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!
To Mary Queen the praise be given!
She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,
That slid into my soul.
The silly buckets on the deck,
That had so long remained,
I dreamt that they were filled with dew;
And when I awoke, it rained.
My lips were wet, my throat was cold,
My garments all were dank;
Sure I had drunken in my dreams,
And still my body drank.
I moved, and could not feel my limbs:
I was so light — almost
I thought that I had died in sleep,
And was a blessed ghost.
And soon I heard a roaring wind:
It did not come anear;
But with its sound it shook the sails,
That were so thin and sere.
The upper air burst into life!
And a hundred fire-flags sheen,
To and fro they were hurried about!
And to and fro, and in and out,
The wan stars danced between.
And the coming wind did roar more loud,
And the sails did sigh like sedge;
And the rain poured down from one black
cloud;
The Moon was at its edge.
Not only can he pray again, but he can also sleep again.
Exhausted from all the endless cursing and dying of
thirst, he falls asleep. He credits Mary, the mother of
Christ, for this sleep. Sleep is mythologized as a gift from the Virgin Mary.
Naturally, he dreams about drinking water. But his
dream actually comes true: it rains when he wakes up. Sailors are really good at collecting rainwater from their sails and in buckets,
and the Mariner has all the water he needs.
(In reality, a severely dehydrated person like that
would probably die from drinking too much water too
fast, but we won't quibble with Coleridge on this one.) He feels as light as if he had died and was now a ghost.
But a happy ghost.
The thick black cloud was cleft, and still
The Moon was at its side:
Like waters shot from some high crag,
The lightning fell with never a jag,
A river steep and wide.
The loud wind never reached the ship,
Yet now the ship moved on!
Beneath the lightning and the Moon
The dead men gave a groan.
Now that the curse has been lifted, more good news follows. He hears a loud
wind in the distance. The sound of the wind
rattles the dried out ("sere") sails. But it's important to remember that the wind
hasn't reached the ship yet. He sees new activity in the sky. More stars return, and he sees things he calls "fire- flags." We have to think he's
either talking about weird lightning flashes – but
without clouds to block the stars – or the Aurora (in this case, the Southern Lights). He sees a black cloud, the partial moon and lightning falling in perfectly vertical
fashion. We're not sure exactly what's going on,
except that these are wild descriptions.
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.
The helmsman steered, the ship moved on;
Yet never a breeze up blew;
The mariners all ‘gan work the ropes,
Where they were wont to do:
They raised their limbs like lifeless tools —
We were a ghastly crew.
We learn that angels control the
bodies of the sailors. In the morning, the singing of the
angels is compared in a
simile to singing birds and to a symphony of
instruments. A pleasant noise like a babbling
brook continues to be heard after the singing has
stopped.
The body of my brother’s son,
Stood by me, knee to knee:
The body and I pulled at one rope,
But he said nought to me.
“I fear thee, ancient Mariner!”
Be calm, thou Wedding–Guest!
’Twas not those souls that fled in pain,
Which to their corses came again,
But a troop of spirits blest:
For when it dawned — they dropped their
arms,
And clustered round the mast;
OK, so what was the point of the wind if it "never reached the ship"? The wind was supposed make the ship sail again, but it does no good at a distance. Except if you have a mysterious force moving your ship: score! Like a scene from Frankenstein, the dead sailors rise up amid the thunder and lightning. They look like zombies and don't say a word. But they all do the jobs they are supposed to do, helping to sail the ship. If you're starting to suspect that the movie Pirates of the Caribbean borrowed a lot of material from Coleridge, we're right there with you. The Mariner goes with the flow, and he basically says, "I don't care if these guys are just bodies with no souls, as long as we get moving again, I'll help out." The Wedding Guest interrupts the story again. He's not the bravest Wedding Guest we've ever heard of. He's afraid that the Mariner is now telling a zombie story. The Mariner reassures the frightened Wedding Guest that the bodies of the sailors were possessed not by their original owners, but by a bunch of good spirits, like angels. Oh, that helps. The Mariner continues his story…
Sweet sounds rose slowly through their
mouths,
And from their bodies passed.
Around, around, flew each sweet sound,
Then darted to the Sun;
Slowly the sounds came back again,
Now mixed, now one by one.
Sometimes a-dropping from the sky
I heard the sky-lark sing;
Sometimes all little birds that are,
How they seemed to fill the sea and air
With their sweet jargoning!
And now ’twas like all instruments,
Now like a lonely flute;
And now it is an angel’s song,
That makes the Heavens be mute.
He knew that spirits were angels because, when dawn comes, they all
escape from the bodies and break out into song. The spirits float around
the ship and sing like birds. They are like an
entire symphony of voices. They stop singing after dawn, but the sails
continue to make a pleasant sound like a
stream following through a forest. The ship keeps moving, but there's no wind. What gives? The
Mariner is sticking with his theory that someone or something is moving the
boat from underneath the ocean.
It ceased; yet still the sails made on
A pleasant noise till noon,
A noise like of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.
Till noon we quietly sailed on,
Yet never a breeze did breathe:
Slowly and smoothly went the ship,
Moved onward from beneath.
Under the keel nine fathom deep,
From the land of mist and snow,
The spirit slid: and it was he
That made the ship to go.
The sails at noon left off their tune,
And the ship stood still also.
The Sun, right up above the mast,
Had fixed her to the ocean:
But in a minute she ‘gan stir,
With a short uneasy motion —
Backwards and forwards half her length
With a short uneasy motion.
Then like a pawing horse let go,
She made a sudden bound:
It flung the blood into my head,
And I fell down in a swound.
The Mariner explains his theory in more detail. The same spirit "nine fathoms
deep" that earlier caused such problems near the Arctic has now decided to play nice and
guide the ship up to the equator. At noon the sun is
again directly above the mast, which means that we're back at the equator. The ship stops and remains motionless for a bit. Then, all of a sudden, the ship takes off as if someone
has just released a really fast horse or, to use a more modern metaphor, as if
someone has put the gas pedal to the floor. The force of this movement knocks out the
Mariner, and he loses consciousness. While in a
stupor, he hears two mysterious voices talking.
We're back in supernatural territory, here…
How long in that same fit I lay,
I have not to declare;
But ere my living life returned,
I heard and in my soul discerned
Two VOICES in the air.
“Is it he?” quoth one, “Is this the man?
By him who died on cross,
With his cruel bow he laid full low,
The harmless Albatross.
“The spirit who bideth by himself
In the land of mist and snow,
He loved the bird that loved the man
Who shot him with his bow.”
The other was a softer voice,
As soft as honey-dew:
Quoth he, “The man hath penance done,
And penance more will do.”
FIRST VOICE.
But tell me, tell me! speak again,
Thy soft response renewing —
What makes that ship drive on so fast?
What is the OCEAN doing?
SECOND VOICE.
Still as a slave before his lord,
The OCEAN hath no blast;
His great bright eye most silently
Up to the Moon is cast —
If he may know which way to go;
For she guides him smooth or grim
See, brother, see! how graciously
She looketh down on him.
FIRST VOICE.
But why drives on that ship so fast,
Without or wave or wind?
SECOND VOICE.
The air is cut away before,
And closes from behind.
Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high
Or we shall be belated:
For slow and slow that ship will go,
When the Mariner’s trance is abated.
I woke, and we were sailing on
As in a gentle weather:
’Twas night, calm night, the Moon was high;
The dead men stood together.
All stood together on the deck,
For a charnel-dungeon fitter:
All fixed on me their stony eyes,
That in the Moon did glitter.
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.
And now this spell was snapt: once more
I viewed the ocean green.
And looked far forth, yet little saw
Of what had else been seen —
The Mariner awakes from his trance and finds all the dead sailors still hanging around on the ship's deck. He thinks that a slaughterhouse would be a more
appropriate place to see a sight like that. But the sailors' curse has been lifted, and the ocean returns to its normal color. The
Mariner tries not to look back on the past horrors he has seen. He's still pretty frightened that they will catch up with him again.
He feels a pleasant wind on his body, but the wind seems to be located only around him and not the ocean outside the ship.
Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
But soon there breathed a wind on me,
Nor sound nor motion made:
Its path was not upon the sea,
In ripple or in shade.
It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek
Like a meadow-gale of spring —
It mingled strangely with my fears,
Yet it felt like a welcoming.
Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,
Yet she sailed softly too:
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze —
On me alone it blew.
Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed
The light-house top I see?
Is this the hill? is this the kirk?
Is this mine own countree!
We drifted o’er the harbour-bar,
And I with sobs did pray —
O let me be awake, my God!
Or let me sleep alway.
The harbour-bay was clear as glass,
So smoothly it was strewn!
And on the bay the moonlight lay,
And the shadow of the moon.
The strange wind is localized just around
the boat, but it means that the Mariner can sail
again, even as the boat is still being
pushed from beneath.
The Mariner ends up back at the port he left from so, so long
ago. He sees the lighthouse, hill, and church come back
into view. It's a beautiful sight, and
naturally, the Mariner is overjoyed.
The rock shone bright, the kirk no less,
That stands above the rock:
The moonlight steeped in silentness
The steady weathercock.
And the bay was white with silent light,
Till rising from the same,
Full many shapes, that shadows were,
In crimson colours came.
Ah, and all the moon imagery is
suddenly explained. A simile explains
that the relationship between the ocean and the moon is like that of a slave and master. The moon has been running
the show the whole time. The image of
the moon shining in the dead sailors'
eyes cements the moon's power in
this poem.
A little distance from the prow
Those crimson shadows were:
I turned my eyes upon the deck —
Oh, Christ! what saw I there!
Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat,
And, by the holy rood!
A man all light, a seraph-man,
On every corse there stood.
This seraph band, each waved his hand:
It was a heavenly sight!
They stood as signals to the land,
Each one a lovely light:
You thought we were done with crazy lights just because the Mariner made it back to port? The last supernatural image is of the white moonlight and the blood red "crimson" angels.
The moonlight shines across the bay, but
another set of lights soon appears. He sees shapes
in "crimson" or red colors. These turn out to be angels ("seraphs"). All the dead men who came
back to life to sail the ship go back to being dead,
and the angels are standing beside their
bodies. These must be the angels that took over the sailors' bodies. They wave at the Mariner as if to say, "Our work is done. We're gonna peace-out.“ They don't speak to the
Mariner, but he feels delighted anyway.
This seraph-band, each waved his hand,
No voice did they impart —
No voice; but oh! the silence sank
Like music on my heart.
But soon I heard the dash of oars;
I heard the Pilot’s cheer;
My head was turned perforce away,
And I saw a boat appear.
The Pilot, and the Pilot’s boy,
I heard them coming fast:
Dear Lord in Heaven! it was a joy
The dead men could not blast.
I saw a third — I heard his voice:
It is the Hermit good!
He singeth loud his godly hymns
That he makes in the wood.
He’ll shrieve my soul, he’ll wash away
The Albatross’s blood.
The Mariner hears a boat coming toward the ship. A "pilot" or oarsman and his young crewmate are coming to rescue him. There's another man on the boat, too: the nice old "hermit." A hermit is someone, often very religious, who lives his or her life in solitude. This particular hermit lives in
the forest. The Mariner looks forward to the hermit clearing away his sins by asking him questions, by "shrieving" his soul, like a confession.
The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Illustrated by Gustave Doré
The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Illustrated by Gustave Doré
Part the Seventh.
This Hermit good lives in that wood
Which slopes down to the sea.
How loudly his sweet voice he rears!
He loves to talk with marineres
That come from a far countree.
He kneels at morn and noon and eve —
He hath a cushion plump:
It is the moss that wholly hides
The rotted old oak-stump.
The skiff-boat neared: I heard them talk,
“Why this is strange, I trow!
Where are those lights so many and fair,
That signal made but now?”
“Strange, by my faith!” the Hermit said —
“And they answered not our cheer!
The planks looked warped! and see those
sails,
How thin they are and sere!
I never saw aught like to them,
Unless perchance it were
“Brown skeletons of leaves that lag
My forest-brook along;
When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow,
And the owlet whoops to the wolf below,
That eats the she-wolf’s young.”
“Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look —
(The Pilot made reply)
I am a-feared”—“Push on, push on!”
Said the Hermit cheerily.
The boat came closer to the ship,
But I nor spake nor stirred;
The boat came close beneath the ship,
And straight a sound was heard.
Under the water it rumbled on,
Still louder and more dread:
It reached the ship, it split the bay;
The ship went down like lead.
Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound,
Which sky and ocean smote,
Like one that hath been seven days drowned
My body lay afloat;
But swift as dreams, myself I found
Within the Pilot’s boat.
Upon the whirl, where sank the ship,
The boat spun round and round;
And all was still, save that the hill
Was telling of the sound.
I moved my lips — the Pilot shrieked
And fell down in a fit;
The holy Hermit raised his eyes,
And prayed where he did sit.
Who now doth crazy go,
Laughed loud and long, and all the while
His eyes went to and fro.
“Ha! ha!” quoth he, “full plain I see,
The Devil knows how to row.”
And now, all in my own countree,
I stood on the firm land!
The Hermit stepped forth from the boat,
And scarcely he could stand.
“O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!”
The Hermit crossed his brow.
“Say quick,” quoth he, “I bid thee say —
What manner of man art thou?”
Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched
With a woeful agony,
Which forced me to begin my tale;
And then it left me free.
Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns;
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.
What loud uproar bursts from that door!
The wedding-guests are there:
But in the garden-bower the bride
And bride-maids singing are:
And hark the little vesper bell,
Which biddeth me to prayer!
O Wedding–Guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide wide sea:
So lonely ’twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.
The Mariner explains to the Wedding Guest that the voyage could be a metaphor for his own lonely and isolated condition.
O sweeter than the marriage-feast,
’Tis sweeter far to me,
To walk together to the kirk
With a goodly company!—
To walk together to the kirk,
And all together pray,
While each to his great Father bends,
Old men, and babes, and loving friends,
And youths and maidens gay!
Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding–Guest!
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 Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone: and now the Wedding–Guest
Turned from the bridegroom’s door.
The expression, "He prayeth well, who loveth well" could be the Mariner's motto for the entire poem. He recites this expression in
each of these two stanzas, turning it into a refrain.
He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.
The End
The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Illustrated by Gustave Doré