The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

About

Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) is the founding work of English Romantic poetry and the most immediately gripping narrative poem in the language: a sailor who kills an albatross and is cursed with supernatural punishment narrates his ordeal to a wedding guest who cannot choose but hear. The poem's imagery — the ship of ice, the dead crewmen, 'Water, water, everywhere' — lodged itself permanently in the language. It reads aloud with hypnotic power; the ballad stanza and the incantatory repetitions make it ideal for group performance with a narrator and responsive voices.