THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE This version created by Bob Hughes, January 2001. PART THE FIRST.
Gustave Doré's frontispiece for the 1877 edition of "The Ancient Mariner".
(Eighty years after Coleridge's first publication.)
Michael J. Weeder has put all of Doré's illustrations online at the Enteract site (which I think is in Chicago).
An ancient Mariner meeteth three Gallants
bidden to a wedding-feast, and detaineth one.
It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. "By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?
"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."
The Wedding-Guest is spellbound
by the eye of the old seafaring man, and constrained to hear his tale.
He holds him with his skinny hand,
"There was a ship," quoth he.
"Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!"
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.
He holds him with his glittering eye--
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years child :
The Mariner hath his will.
The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone: He cannot chuse but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner.
The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared, Merrily did we drop Below the kirk, below the hill, Below the light-house top.
The Mariner tells how the ship
sailed southward with a good wind and fair weather, till it reached
the line.
The Sun came up upon the left, Out of the sea came he! And he shone bright, and on the right Went down into the sea.
Higher and higher every day,
Till over the mast at noon--
The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,
For he heard the loud bassoon .
The Wedding-Guest heareth the bridal music;
but the Mariner continueth his tale.
The bride hath paced into the hall, Red as a rose is she; Nodding their heads before her goes The merry minstrelsy. The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast, Yet he cannot chuse but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner.
The ship driven by a storm toward
the south pole.
And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o'ertaking wings ,
And chased us south along.
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.
And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
The land of ice, and of fearful sounds
where no living thing was to be seen.
And through the drifts the snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen: Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken-- The ice was all between. The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around: It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, Like noises in a swound!
Till a great sea-bird, called the Albatross,
came through the snow-fog, and was received with great joy and
hospitality.
At length did cross an Albatross: Thorough the fog it came; As if it had been a Christian soul, We hailed it in God's name. It ate the food it ne'er had eat, And round and round it flew. The ice did split with a thunder-fit; The helmsman steered us through!
And lo! the Albatross proveth
a bird of good omen, and followeth the ship as it returned
northward through fog and floating ice.
And a good south wind sprung up behind; The Albatross did follow, And every day, for food or play, Came to the mariners' hollo! In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, It perched for vespers nine; Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, Glimmered the white Moon-shine.
The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth
the pious bird of good omen.
"God save thee, ancient Mariner! From the fiends, that plague thee thus!-- Why look'st thou so?"--With my cross-bow I shot the ALBATROSS.Coleridge composed these "marginal glosses" in 1815-16, while living in Church Street, Calne, Wiltshire - in a cottage rented by his friends the Morgans (Bristol wine-shippers).
They first appeared in the 1817 version, in "Sibylline Leaves".
Wordsworth thought them "a gratuitous after-thought" but others disagree. Lowes points out (in "The Road to Xanadu" (1928) p. 324) that glosses were a major feature of the travel books from which Coleridge drew his inspiration.
Coleridge aged 22.
This was painted by Peter Vandyke in 1795 -- two years before he wrote "The Ancient Mariner" -- when Coleridge was a radical activist, living and lecturing in Bristol. It was commissioned by his supporters, who included his publisher Joseph Cottle & his brother, John Prior Estlin (Unitarian preacher) and John Morgan (wine shipper).
National Portrait Gallery, London.
This was painted by Peter Vandyke in 1795 -- two years before he wrote "The Ancient Mariner" -- when Coleridge was a radical activist, living and lecturing in Bristol. It was commissioned by his supporters, who included his publisher Joseph Cottle & his brother, John Prior Estlin (Unitarian preacher) and John Morgan (wine shipper).
National Portrait Gallery, London.
This demonstrates one use of my "Morphscript" technique -- which gives
conventionally-structured html documents interactive behaviour
in suitable browsers, without stopping basic browsers displaying
all the content.
It only contains Part 1 of the Mariner; annotations are far from complete, as are various technical features.
It only works for Internet Explorer 5 at the moment, and real bare-bones browsers like Mosaic and Icab .
If you're interested in this, please mail me.
Bob Hughes Thursday, January 11, 2001
It only contains Part 1 of the Mariner; annotations are far from complete, as are various technical features.
It only works for Internet Explorer 5 at the moment, and real bare-bones browsers like Mosaic and Icab .
If you're interested in this, please mail me.
Bob Hughes Thursday, January 11, 2001
When Coleridge first drafted "the Ancient Mariner" (late 1797) he was himself
"one of three". The other two were
Dorothy and William Wordsworth
That autumn, Coleridge spent whole days and
nights roaming the Quantocks with the Wordsworths. Dorothy says that
it was on one of these walks (which started at dusk on November 17th)
that "The Ancient Mariner" first took shape.
who had just moved to Alfoxden - a few miles from the cottage in Nether Stowey where Coleridge had settled with Sara and their baby son Hartley.
who had just moved to Alfoxden - a few miles from the cottage in Nether Stowey where Coleridge had settled with Sara and their baby son Hartley.
Hypnotic eyes featured in the gothic tales (like Lewis's "The Monk")
that Coleridge had been reviewing in 1797 and 1798.
John Livingston Lowes ...in his "The Road to Xanadu" (1927)... traced the origin of "glittering" eyes back to Coleridge's notebook (probably 1795 or 1796) and a magical incident involving his baby son, Hartley.
John Livingston Lowes ...in his "The Road to Xanadu" (1927)... traced the origin of "glittering" eyes back to Coleridge's notebook (probably 1795 or 1796) and a magical incident involving his baby son, Hartley.
"-- Hartley fell down and hurt himself -- I caught him up crying and screaming -- and ran out of doors with him. -- The Moon caught his eye -- he ceased crying immediately -- and his eyes and the tears in them, how they glittered in the moonlight!"
The 1798 version was full of
choice archaisms
British intellectuals at this time were rediscovering early
English literature - a major factor in the "gothic" movement.
A key text (which Coleridge owned) was Thomas Percy's
"Reliques of Ancient English Poetry" (1765).
like this, attracting a fair
amount of negative comment (not least from Wordsworth).
"Eftsoons" ("straight away") is one of the few that survived.
The simile "like a three years child" came from William Wordsworth.
He also suggested the description of the Mariner:
"For thou art long, and lank, and brown
As is the ribbed sea-sand."
In December 1797, while Coleridge was writing this, his friend and neighbour
Tom Poole asked a Dr. Langford for the loan of a bassoon for the
village choir (of which
Coleridge was an active member).
Lowes says:
Lowes says:
"I think we may safely agree with Mrs Sandford [his source] that the instrument which caused the Wedding-Guest to beat his breast, and which incidentally struck out of the voyage the stretch from the Equator to the Cape, sounded first in the church at Nether Stowey."- Road to Xanadu, p. 213.
The nodding heads occur again in "The Ballad of the Dark Ladie":
But first the nodding minstrels go
With Music sweet for lordly bowers,
The children next in snow-white vests.
Strewing buds and flowers!
This was first published in 1831 - but Coleridge says in his biography that he
was working on it at the same time as the Mariner.
John Livingston Lowes found this likely source in Chaucer's "The Squire's Tale":
"Beforne him goth the loude minstralcie."
"Beforne him goth the loude minstralcie."
By 1815-16 (when this was redrafted) the storm had ceased to be mere weather.
It had crystallized into an image of the fear felt by a transgressor.
Since 1798 Coleridge's life had caught up with his poem: the death, in and perhaps because of his absence, of Sara's second baby, Berkeley; his guilty love for Sara Hutchinson; illness, and finally, opium, had given him an Albatross of his own.
Since 1798 Coleridge's life had caught up with his poem: the death, in and perhaps because of his absence, of Sara's second baby, Berkeley; his guilty love for Sara Hutchinson; illness, and finally, opium, had given him an Albatross of his own.
The words "drift" and "clift" are specific terms used liberally in the early accounts. "Drift" is "drift-ice" -- and Coleridge read about it in the "Memoirs of Mauritius Augustus, Count de Benyowski" which he borrowed from the Bristol Library on December 1st 1797. It describes Benyowski's exile in Kamchatka.
"Clift" has two meanings: for Gerrit de Veer (describing Barents's voyage in Purchas) it is a "cliff" - but for Frederick Martens ("Voyage into Spitzbergen and Greenland" 1694) it is a "cleft", packed with snow. Wordsworth owned the Martens book, which also included the accounts of Sir John Narborough and Captain Wood - both of whom used "clifts" in that sense, and Lowes concludes that's the sense Coleridge is using. (Road to Xanadu p. 144).
"Clift" has two meanings: for Gerrit de Veer (describing Barents's voyage in Purchas) it is a "cliff" - but for Frederick Martens ("Voyage into Spitzbergen and Greenland" 1694) it is a "cleft", packed with snow. Wordsworth owned the Martens book, which also included the accounts of Sir John Narborough and Captain Wood - both of whom used "clifts" in that sense, and Lowes concludes that's the sense Coleridge is using. (Road to Xanadu p. 144).
The "dismal sheen" is the "ice-blink": light reflected by distant ice onto the clouds. Martens describes the effect of sun on snow, packed into the "clifts" between the rocks:
When the reflected light hits clouds, the effect is the "dismal" sheen mentioned by Shelvocke in "Voyage round the World by way of the Great South Sea".
when the Sun shin'd pale upon them, the Snow giving the Air a bright reflection.
When the reflected light hits clouds, the effect is the "dismal" sheen mentioned by Shelvocke in "Voyage round the World by way of the Great South Sea".
"We had continual squals of sleet, snow and rain, and the heavens were perpetually hid from us by gloomy dismal clouds."
Several of Coleridge's sources were awed by the utter absence of life in the polar sea -- but the key description is almost certainly from Shelvocke; the very passage that introduces the Albatross:
"In short, one would think it impossible that any living thing could subsist in so rigid a climate; and, indeed, we all observed, that we had not had the sight of one fish of any kind, since we were come to the Southward of the streights of le Mair, nor one sea-bird, except a disconsolate black Albitross, who accompanied us for several days, hovering about us as if he had lost himself"(see "Road to Xanadu" p. 145, quoted in full on p. 226)
Coleridge had read many vivid descriptions of the unnerving sounds made by pack-ice. E.g. Dithmar Blefkins (in Purchas) says that the ice
The image of "souls in torment" has striking relevance here.
Later, during his stay in Germany in 1798-99, he was able to observe ice for himself at Ratzeburg:
so made a mournfull sound afarre off, as if miserable howlings were heard there. Hereupon the Islanders think the souls of the damned are tormented in this Ice.
The image of "souls in torment" has striking relevance here.
Later, during his stay in Germany in 1798-99, he was able to observe ice for himself at Ratzeburg:
"About a month ago ... there was a storm of wind; during the whole night, such were the thunders and howlings of the breaking ice that they have left a conviction on my mind, that there are Sounds more sublime than any Sight can be."(Letter to his wife Sara, quoted in "Road to Xanadu" p. 137)
John Livingston Lowes traced the "swound" image to an incident in Gerrit de Veer's account (in Purchas) of Willem Barents' 1596 expedition to Novaya Zemlya (where he died). The crew, in a makeshift cabin, had made a fire from sea-coal, whose fumes nearly killed them:
By 1797 Coleridge may already have experienced "noises in a swound" himself, via his use of opium medications, for a solid fortnight in early 1796, during an eye infection. By 1816-17 (the final version) he certainly had: opium had almost killed him.
a great swounding and dazeling in our heads;
he that opened the doore fell down in a swound upon the Snow.;
otherwise without doubt we had dyed in a sudden swound. etc.
By 1797 Coleridge may already have experienced "noises in a swound" himself, via his use of opium medications, for a solid fortnight in early 1796, during an eye infection. By 1816-17 (the final version) he certainly had: opium had almost killed him.
In Shelvocke, it is
"a disconsolate black Albitross, who accompanied us for several days, hovering about us as if he had lost himself, till Hatley, (my second Captain) observing, in one of his melancholy fits, that this bird was always hovering near us, imagin'd, from his colour, that it might be some ill omen. That which, I suppose, induced him the more to encourage his superstition, was the continued series of tempestuous winds, which had oppress'd us ever since we got into this sea. But be that as is would, he, after some fruitless attempts, at length, shot the Albitross, not doubting (perhaps) that we should have a fair wind after it."(Quoted by Lowes in "Road to Xanadu", p. 226)
In the 1798 edition, this line went:
"The Mariners gave it biscuit worms"... which seems an odd lapse, and got the chop in the 1780 edition. However John Lowes discovered that the equivalent passage in Purchas -- Magellan's entry into the Pacific via Cape Horn ("he was in very truth 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'") -- does indeed mention biscuit worms:
"having in this time consumed all their Bisket and other Victuals, they fell to such necessitie, that they were inforced to eate the powder that remayned thereof, being now full of Wormes."See "Road to Xanadu" p. 150.
The dramatic way in which seemingly permanent sea-ice can suddenly part. In Barents' last voyage:
"the ship burst out of the ice with such a noise, and so great a cracke, that they thought verily that they were all cast away"... and Commodore Phipps ("Voyage to the North-East")
"But the Omnipotent ... caused ... the ice to part in an astonishing manner, rending and cracking with a tremendous noise, surpassing that of the loudest thunder. At this very instant the whole continent of ice ... moved together in various directions, splitting and dividing into vast bodies"[and with sails all spread the ships came through].
Gerrit de Veer (describing Barents' voyage, in Purchas) says:
"the fourteenth, it was faire weather, with a good South Wind, and then the Ice began to drive from the Land, whereby wee were in good hope to have an open water."Road to Xanadu, p. 149
... an atmospheric effect observed, e.g., by David Crantz in his "History of Greenland":
"luminous circles are oftener seen [in Greenland] than anywhere, which are formed by the frost-smoke."
The original incident comes from Shelvocke's "Voyage round the World...", which Wordsworth was reading when he, Dorothy and Coleridge first discussed the Mariner on their walk in November 1797. It goes like this:
" In short, one would think it impossible that any living thing could subsist in so rigid a climate; and, indeed, we all observed, that we had not had the sight of one fish of any kind, since we were come to the Southward of the streights of le Mair, nor one sea-bird, except
" In short, one would think it impossible that any living thing could subsist in so rigid a climate; and, indeed, we all observed, that we had not had the sight of one fish of any kind, since we were come to the Southward of the streights of le Mair, nor one sea-bird, except
The Ancient Mariner first appeared in 1798, in "Lyrical Ballads", a collaboration between Coleridge and Wordsworth which they published anonymously ... they feared their reputations as "dangerous democrats" would prejudice the poems if they published them under their own names ... via Joseph Cottle - the Bristol Unitarian and radical, and lifelong supporter of Coleridge.
Coleridge revised it over many years. The present text is pretty much the one Coleridge published (under his own name) in 1817, in "Sybilline Leaves".
Coleridge condensed this passage into one stanza in 1817 from
two more flippant or burlesque ones in the
1798 version.
1798 version.
But still he holds the wedding guest--
There was a ship, quoth he--
'Nay, if thou'st got a laughsome tale,
'Marinere, come with me.'
He holds him with his skinny hand--
Quoth he, there was a Ship--
Now get thee hence thou greybeard Loon!
Or my Staff shall make thee skip.
This stanza is charged with tantalizing hints of the reading, thinking and
observation that preceded it.
It is known that Coleridge had been devouring the late-mediaeval "Romaunt of the Rose", Spenser's "Faerie Queene", and much of Chaucer.
It is known that Coleridge had been devouring the late-mediaeval "Romaunt of the Rose", Spenser's "Faerie Queene", and much of Chaucer.
The 1798 version has just two quite bland, standard-length stanzas here:
Listen, Stranger! Storm and Wind,
A Wind and Tempest strong!
For days and weeks it play'd us freaks--
Like chaff we drove along.
Listen, Stranger! Mist and Snow,
And it grew wondrous cauld;
And Ice Mast-high came floating by
As green as Emerauld.
The descriptions of the ice seem uncannily accurate, considering that Coleridge had never seen sea-ice when he wrote this. John Livingston Lowes discovered that almost every word can be traced to the exhaustive study Coleridge made of original accounts of polar exploration. These included "Purchas His Pilgrimage" (the major compilation of explorer's tales, including those of Magellan, Hawkins and Barents - 1616. His friend Robert Southey owned a copy); and two of Wordsworth's books: Shelvocke's "Voyage round the World by way of the Great South Sea" (which contains the seminal Albatross incident) and a 1694 book containing accounts of the Arctic by Frederick Martens of Hamburg, and the English explorers Sir John Narborough and Captain Wood.
The Albatross came from Shelvocke's "Voyage round the World...", via Wordsworth, who had been reading it "a day or two before" (as he told Miss Fenwick in 1843). He also suggested that it was protected by "the tutelary spirits of these regions [who] take upon them to avenge the crime".
John Livingston Lowes shows that Coleridge was already immersed in the literature of "tutelary spirits" through his reading - which included obscure works by Iamblichus, Proclus, Porphyrius, Julian and Plotinus, and "[Thomas] Taylor the English Pagan". (Road to Xanadu, p. 231 et passim)
Richard Holmes ("Coleridge" -1989, p. 139) further believes the image crystallized Coleridge's ideas about the sacredness of "hospitality" (referred to twice in the glosses here).