Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I found Samuel Coleridge’s poetry different from William Wordsworth’s. His poetry seemed to have more of the supernatural in it, rather than the ordinary. I like that in his poetry he tended to focus more on ordinary reactions, but with supernatural events. Wordsworth, on the other hand, seemed to focus on writing about the regular common man in his writings.

I really enjoyed reading “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Even though the poem was quite lengthy compared to other works we have already read, it flowed nicely and told a compelling story. Just as the Mariner’s story was supposed to compel the wedding guest to keep listening, the story also compels the reader to keep reading to find out more. The reader craves the end of the tale and has a strong desire to learn more about this Mariner and who he is exactly. While reading the poem, it seems apparent that the Mariner is not only speaking to the wedding guest, but also the reader. At the end of the poem, the Mariner gives the moral of his tale to the wedding guest:

“He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all” (340-341).

Here he seems to be telling the wedding guest and the reader most importantly, to take care of nature because all of the creatures in nature are God’s creatures. This poem was written at a time when the industrial revolution was going on and nature was becoming less and less significant in society. Coleridge could have been warning society in this poem to take care of God’s creatures. When the Mariner in the poem kills the Albatross impulsively, he spends the rest of the tale paying for his action and seeking forgiveness. He is also imprisoned with his past as he is forced to retell his tale to who he is supposed to tell it to and who is supposed to hear it. What struck me in this poem is the amount of guilt the Mariner had and the quantity of punishment which fell on him after he killed the Albatross. Death took his entire crew and he was left alone. I think that Coleridge did intend for there to be more moral to this tale other than to just love God’s creatures. His punishment seemed far too severe for just killing a bird. In a sense, I think he leaves a lot of it up to the reader to interpret the moral to be whatever he or she wants it to be. At the end of the tale, the wedding guest is left “a sadder and wiser man.” Interestingly, the poem does not say exactly how the wedding guest interprets this tale from the Mainer. It only says that he is wiser from it. In a sense, the wedding guest can even more represent the reader in this way. The reader can assume that the wedding guest is feeling the same way that he or she is since Coleridge leaves so much up in the air.