The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a poem written by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1797-1798 and published in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads (1798). It is the longest major poem that Coleridge wrote.

1 Plot summary
2 Background
3 Interpretations
4 Popular culture
5 External links

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Plot summary

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner relates the supernatural events experienced by a mariner on a long sea voyage. The mariner stops a man who is on the way to a wedding ceremony, and begins to recite his story. The wedding guest's reaction turns from bemusement and impatience to fascination as the mariner's story progresses.

The mariner's tale begins with his ship leaving harbour; Despite initial good fortune, the ship is driven off course by a storm and, driven south, eventually reaches Antarctica. An albatross, traditionally a good omen, appears and leads them out of the threatening land of ice; even as the albatross is praised by the ship's crew, however, the mariner shoots it with a crossbow, for reasons unknown. The other sailors are angry with the Mariner and blame him for the change in weather that subsequently occurs as he killed the bird that brought the wind. This crime also arouses the wrath of supernatural spirits who then pursue the ship; the south wind which had initially led them from the land of ice now sends the ship into uncharted waters, where it is becalmed. When the weather becomes misty, the sailors change their minds and hail the Mariner for killing the bird that brought the fog.

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, everywhere,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.

However, the sailors change their minds again and blame the Mariner for the torment of their thirst, and hang the albatross around the mariner's neck as a sign of his guilt. Eventually, in an eerie passage, the ship encounters a ghostly vessel. Onboard are DEATH (a skeleton) and the "Night-Mair" LIFE-IN-DEATH (a pale, deathly-fair woman), who are playing dice for the souls of the crew. With a roll of the dice, Death wins the lives of the crew members and Life-in-death the life of the mariner, a prize she considers more valuable. Her name is a clue as to the mariner's fate; he will endure a fate worse than death as punishment for his killing of the albatross. One by one all two hundred crew members die, but the Mariner lives on, seeing for seven days and nights the curse in the eyes of the crew's corpses, whose last expressions remain upon their faces. Eventually, the Mariner's curse is lifted when he sees sea creatures swimming in the water. Despite his cursing them as "slimy things" earlier in the poem, he suddenly sees their true beauty and blesses them (a spring of love gush'd from my heart and I bless'd them unaware); suddenly, as he manages to pray, the albatross falls from his neck and his guilt is partially expiated. The bodies of the crew, possessed by good spirits, rise again and steer the ship back home, where it sinks in a whirlpool, leaving only the Mariner behind. In penance for his deed, the Mariner is forced to wander the earth and tell his story, and teach a lesson to those he meets:

He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.

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Background

The poem may have been inspired by James Cook's second voyage of exploration (1772-1775) of the south seas and the Pacific Ocean; Coleridge's tutor, William Wales, was astronomer on the Cook's flagship and had a strong relationship with Cook. On his second voyage Cook plunged repeatedly below the Antarctic circle to determine whether the fabled great southern continent existed.

The poem may also have been inspired by the legend of the Wandering Jew, who was forced to wander the Earth until Judgement Day, for taunting Jesus on the day of the Crucifixion.

The idea of the mariner's shooting of the albatross came from Captain George Shelvocke's A Voyage round the World (1726):

We all observed, that we had not the sight of one fish of any kind, since we were come to the Southward of the streights of le Mair, nor one sea-bird, except a disconsolate black Albitross, who accompanied us for several days (...), till Hattley, (my second Captain) observing, in one of his melancholy fits, that this bird was always hovering near us, imagin'd, from his colour, that it might be some ill omen. (...) He, after some fruitless attempts, at length, shot the Albitross, not doubting we shout have a fair wind after it.

When William Wordsworth and Coleridge planned the scheme for their joint collection Lyrical Ballads, it was agreed that Wordsworth would contribute poems describing common life and Coleridge would contribute poems on supernatural themes.

It is also thought that Coleridge, a known hard user of opium, could have been under the drug's effects when he wrote some of the more strange and weird parts of the poem, especially the Voices of The Spirits communicating with each other.

The poem received mixed reviews from critics, and Coleridge was once told by the publisher that most of the book's sales were to sailors who thought it was a naval songbook. Coleridge made several modifications to the poem over the years. In the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (1800), he replaced many of the archaic words. In 1817, in the Sibylline Leaves, he added the marginal glosses.

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Interpretations

There are many different interpretations of the poem. Some critics believe that the poem is a metaphor of original sin in Eden with the subsequent regret of the mariner and the rain seen as a baptism. Template:Citation needed

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Popular culture

In Richard O'Brien's Shock Treatment, the character Betty Hapschatt recites the entire poem to Judge Oliver Wright who, along with an entire theater of people, has fallen asleep by its closing lines.
The poem features prominently in the plot of Douglas Adams's novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. It is also a large influence upon Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is also the title of a song by Iron Maiden from their 1984 album Powerslave, a 14-minute heavy metal epic based on Coleridge's poem. Singer Bruce Dickinson introduces the song on the live album Live After Death as "what not to do if a bird shits on you".
The song "Good Morning Captain" by American underground rock band (see also "math-rock" and "post-rock") Slint from the album Spiderland is an adaptation of this poem.
Baseball pitcher Diego Segui, who was pitching for the Seattle Mariners at the age of 40, was tagged by sportswriters as "The Ancient Mariner".
In the ITV/A&E nautical adventure series Hornblower Captain Sir Edward Pellew quotes "As idle as a painted ship / Upon a painted ocean" when his own frigate is becalmed in the episode "The Frogs and the Lobsters".
In The Wizard of Oz, the Wizard says to the Scarecrow, "Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain!"
Cecil F. Alexander wrote a hymn published in 1848 containing the following refrain which echoes the sentiment of the Ancient Mariner:

All things bright and beautiful,

All creatures great and small,

All things wise and wonderful:

The Lord God made them all.

In the season one episode of seaQuest DSV entitled "Hide and Seek", Captain Bridger quotes from the poem in order to convince Commander Ford that it is the correct course of action to allow an ex-dictator named Tezlof (as well as Tezlof's autistic son) safe passage on the seaQuest.
A portion of the poem was recited by Wonder Woman as the body and longship of the Viking Prince were sent into the Sun, during the Justice League Unlimited episode "To Another Shore".
The major themes of this epic poem are woven throughout the film Serenity (2005) by Joss Whedon. The significance of the albatross is described by the main character Malcolm Reynolds, who mentions he read this poem.
Since 1978, the U.S. Coast Guard has recognized the active duty member with the most accumulated time aboard its ships and an exemplary character as the "Ancient Mariner", as noted in the list of USCG Medals and Awards (pdf).
In the collectible/playable card game Magic: The Gathering, there is a card named and fashioned after the Will o' the Wisp described in the poem; the card even features flavor text with a pertinent excerpt from the poem:

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

Another card from Magic: The Gathering called Scathe Zombies features another quote from the epic poem:

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.

And yet another card from Magic: The Gathering called Wall of Ice features another quote:

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

In The Ice Dream, an irreverent Australian talk show covering the 2002 Winter Olympics, the hosts said that a curse had been put on Australia's Winter Olympic team after Cedric Sloane skewered a seagull in a cross-country skiing event at the Oslo Winter Olympics, which could only be lifted by the team winning a gold medal.
In an episode of The Simpsons, Boy-Scoutz N the Hood, Homer Simpson says "Don't you know the poem? 'Water, water, everywhere, so let's all have a drink.'"
In issue #36 ("Boy Loses Girl") of Y: The Last Man, Hero Brown, referring to her brother Yorick Brown, tells Beth Deville "...don't let him become an albatross, you know?"

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