1. The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner
Written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Presented by team blue - green
2. Part 5
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is
written in loose, short ballad stanzas
usually either four or six lines long but
occasionally as many as nine lines long.
The meter is also somewhat loose, but
odd lines are generally tetra meter,
while even lines are generally tri meter.
The rhymes generally alternate in an A
B A B or A B A B A B scheme, though
there are again many exceptions.
3. The main idea of this poem is a moral
message, warning against thoughtless
and foolhardy actions such as the one
the Mariner performs in shooting the
albatross. The albatross had done the
Mariner no harm at all; in fact it seems it
had helped to guide his ship, so that his
wanton killing of it appears even more
inexcusable.
The poem shows the terrible
consequences of such a foolish and
cruel act, when the Mariner loses his
crew and finds himself alone and
doomed to wander the earth, telling
people like the young Wedding Guest
his woeful story and warning them to
always think before they act.
A subsidiary theme of the poem is that
one should respect nature and all living
things. The Mariner never gives any
reason for shooting the albatross; it
seems as if he does so simply because
he has the power to do so.
Introduction
4. Stanzas 67-70
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.
5. Stanzas 67-70
Summary
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.
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
6. Stanzas 71-74
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.
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.
7. Stanzas 71-74
Summary
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 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.
8. Stanzas 75-80
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.
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.
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:
9. Stanzas 75-80
Summary
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!
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.
The Mariner goes with the flow, and he basically says, "I
don't care if these people 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. That helps !
The Mariner continues his story.
He knew that spirits were angels because, when dawn
comes, they all escape from the bodies and break out
into song.
10. Stanzas 81-85
For when it dawned—they dropped their arms,
And clustered round the mast;
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.
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.
11. Stanzas 81-85
Summary
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. The Mariner is
sticking with his theory that
someone or something is
moving the boat from
underneath the ocean.
12. Stanzas 86-93
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.
13. 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.'
14. Stanzas 86-92
Summary
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.
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.
One of the voices wants to know if the Mariner is the guy
who shot the nice albatross. He sounds judgmental.
The other voice sounds gentler and says that the Mariner
has done a lot of penance for his mistake, and he'll do
more penance in the future.
