The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s narrative poem about a seafarer compelled to recount a voyage marked by wrongdoing and suffering. The killing of an albatross leads into a strange sequence of isolation, fear, and spiritual trial. A change in the mariner’s response to other living creatures becomes part of his movement towards renewal. Yet return does not erase responsibility: the need to tell his story persists. The wedding guest who hears him becomes part of the poem’s larger concern with how an experience changes both speaker and listener.