The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Argument

How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country.

.

This 1834 epic poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is one of my hands down favorites.  The tale is bold, the telling is spooky, and the language is close to the heart.  It is best to read it aloud in your best rendition of a Scottish accent.  Don’t be shy.  Recite it as though you have a toothache and so that the neighbors can hear you.  Let ‘em know you’re a grey-beard loon!

Admittedly, the poem gets off to a slow start.  Our passive narrator meets the Ancient Mariner at a wedding, and is somewhat man-handled into hearing his story.  That’s the first twelve or so stanzas, really all of Part I, but if you can get past that, you’re in for some real action.  Also, the words rhyme, so this is an actual poem (unlike my poems, which not only don’t rhyme, but also have total contempt for structure and meter.)

Oh, and keep a dictionary handy.  Words such as “eftsoons,” “uprist,” “wist,” “gramercy,” “gossameres,” and “clomb,”will intrude.  Okay, and “countree” rhymes with “see.”  That may be outright cheating.

Be sure to keep up with the ALBATROSS.  The albatross is what we would today call a meme on the intertubes.  It is from Coleridge’s Rime that we get the saying, “albatross around one’s neck,” which connotes a heavy burden.

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 Ancient Mariner, as it happens, shot the albatross with a crossbow, and it turns out there is a price to be paid for that infraction.  So you cannot skip Part I, as dull as it is.

Among accounts payable for killing the bird is a sailing ship being subjected to an evil wind.  Between the bad wind and the doldrums, the ship goes badly off course.  They encounter a ghost ship (“spectre-bark”), which is a mixed blessing.  The encounter with the dead is evidently miserable, but our mariner is freed of the albatross:

The albatross fell off, and sank

Like lead into the sea.

Thus ends Part IV.  At last they gain a more favorable breeze.  Or do they?  The ship careens toward the southern latitudes “without wave or wind.”  Is the ship’s company alive or dead?  Things have gotten pretty weird by Part VI.

Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze –

On me alone it blew.

Our mariner finds himself in what appears to be safe harbor and is met by the harbor pilot’s boat.  The pilot’s boy is a bit of a loon, and he has to take over the rowing.  Upon landing, he is met by a hermit, to whom he recites his tale.  Who’s crazy now?

h/t Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org