The bride hath paced into the hall, Red as a rose is she; Nodding their heads before her goes The merry minstrelsy. Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free; We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea. Spirituality, argues the Mariner, is to be valued above all else, and the highest form of spirituality is through a Romantic engagement with nature. In a symbolic moment, the Albatross, a reminder of his sin and guilt, falls from his neck into the ocean.
They sailed along smoothly until they reached the equator. And every tongue, through utter drought, Was withered at the root; We could not speak, no more than if We had been choked with soot. And a hundred fire-flags sheen, To and fro they were hurried about! He credits Mary, the mother of Christ, for this sleep. The ship seems to be haunted by a bad spirit, and weird stuff starts appearing, like slimy creatures that walk on the ocean. The Mariner sees another ship's sail at a distance. The moving Moon went up the sky, And no where did abide : Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside-- Her beams bemocked the sultry main, Like April hoar-frost spread ; But where the ship's huge shadow lay, The charméd water burnt alway A still and awful red. They all turned against him and called him a wretch.
The self-same moment I could pray ; And from my neck so free The Albatross fell off, and sank Like lead into the sea. In the evening, it sank into the sea on their left i. In 1817, he published Biographia Literaria, which contained his finest literary criticism. Stanza 13: And every tongue, through utter drought, Was withered at the root; We could not speak, no more than if We had been choked with soot. There is a use of simile in the last two lines of this stanza.
How loudly his sweet voice he rears! Upon the whirl where sank the ship The boat spun round and round; And all was still, save that the hill Was telling of the sound. With sloping masts and dipping prow, As who pursued with yell and blow Still treads the shadow of his foe, And forward bends his head, The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, And southward aye we fled. The wedding-guests are there: But in the garden-bower the bride And bridemaids singing are: And hark the little vesper bell, Which biddeth me to prayer! The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin; The guests are met, the feast is set: May'st hear the merry din. And thou art long, and lank, and brown, As is the ribbed sea-sand. But soon I heard the dash of oars, I heard the pilot's cheer; My head was turned perforce away And I saw a boat appear. And on the bay the moonlight lay, And the shadow of the moon.
Within the shadow of the ship I watched their rich attire: Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, They coiled and swam; and every track Was a flash of golden fire. . The word at the end of the first phrase is rhyming with the end of the second phrase. It is to be noted that the Albatross was the first living being the sailors came across in the region of mist and snow. She sent the gentle sleep from heaven, That slid into my soul.
The Albatross sinking into the ocean like lead later leads to the ship sinking like lead. But now they approve of it, and hold the bird responsible for the fog and the mist. He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. Coleridge's views, however, began to change over the course of his first year at Cambridge. Still addicted to opium, he moved in with the physician James Gillman in 1816. It is first and foremost a crime against the natural world, and thus against God, for which the Mariner will never be fully absolved.
However, he also uses the outburst to provide the Wedding Guest with his final, most overt lessons. Stanza 7: All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody Sun, at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the Moon. I pass, like night, from land to land; I have strange power of speech; The moment that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me: To him my tale I teach. After that, the spiritual world begins to punish the Ancient Mariner and the other sailors by making all elements of the temporal world painful. We should pay attention to the scene the poet creates here.
It had made the breeze to blow. We drifted o'er the harbour-bar, And I with sobs did pray— O let me be awake, my God! With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, Agape they heard me call: Gramercy! The bride hath paced into the hall, Red as a rose is she; Nodding their heads before her goes The merry minstrelsy. And they all dead did lie; And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I. They stood as signals to the land, Each one a lovely light; This seraph band, each waved his hand, No voice did they impart-- No voice; but oh! And the good south wind still blew behind, But no sweet bird did follow, Nor any day for food or play Came to the mariners' hollo! The air is cut away before, And closes from behind. 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. At this point, the Wedding Guest notices that the Ancient Mariner looks at once grave and crazed.
He went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man, He rose the morrow morn. All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody sun, at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the moon. But his dream actually comes true: it rains when he wakes up. Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, And yet I could not die. And every tongue, through utter drought, Was withered at the root; We could not speak, no more than if We had been choked with soot.