Rime of the Ancient Mariner Assignment

I will be looking at lines – and explain on its significance within the rest of the poem while commenting on its use of language and form.

These stanzas contain the moral and the meaning of the Mariner’s story.  Love leads us closer to each other, to the rest of creation and to God.  The Mariner’s Nightmare begins with a killing.  The killing goes unexplained but whatever his motive was it’s unimportant.   What is important is the fact that he actively caused a death.  Actions are the basis of judgment in this poem. ‘He [the mariner] is passive, in guilt and remorse…but he acts blindly’ (Coleridge: Poet and Philosopher p194).  Forgiveness, however, does not require action but only love, even an unconscious love ‘A spring of love gushed from my heart,/ And I blessed them unaware:’.  For Coleridge when man does wrong his mind must be receptive, and prepared, for forgiveness before he can be forgiven.  In the end the Mariner is in action with his enlightened experience telling others this most important of messages, he is no longer passively on board a ship carrying him like a twig in a river but he is on foot walking to person to person with purpose and responsibility.

  

This is not some much as a story but a lecture by an ancient lecturer whose message is love.  Since Coleridge himself was a lecturer it is not too hard to imagine that it is he, the man of extraordinary visions and deep compassion, is the ancient lecturer of the poem ‘to teach, by his own example, love and reverence to all things that God made and loveth’.

Coleridge also does some exploration using the Ballard form as his vessel of exploration.  Unlike the ballads he was trying to imitate the ending is a moment of insightful understanding mostly absent in those old mysterious tragedies.  From this terrible experience some arguable good has come out of it.  The moral is simple to comprehend, and it is told in plain language, but it is also with great depth as it has no instructions to how one should love and pray well and best but leaves that exploration to the Wedding-Guest, and, by extension, to us for our own adventures. 

   

The four lines repeat the same meaning, and with the same corresponding stresses, but with a variation; as has been done throughout the poem and true to the ballad form.  The main difference is one is love for all animals and the other all types of animals; the first makes the point and the second underlines it.  All of creation we should love; man, bird, beast, great and small.  It is interesting to note that Love and Prayer are both mention the same number of times in the poem, which works themematically as love and prayer are so closely linked.  Prayer is communication with God and if one has love, prompted by beauty and compassion, then one is one with The One.  Or to put it another way: ‘Love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind’ Matthew 22:37.

   

The moral is old and well known but Coleridge gives this golden rule a dark and urgent setting.  Well aware of slavery and shuddering at how humans are treated Coleridge could have thought that Love for humanity guided and sustained by Prayer was in urgent need in order to get out of the morally dark ocean that England was sailing on.  Easy is it then to read this poem as the state of Coleridge’s mind and preoccupations of that year; political motivations mixed with powerful imagination, also meditations on God, opium fuelled nightmares combined with a weighty feeling of responsibility (and guilty anxiety) to spread a message of visionary love in a world of blind actions.  

   

The Mariner may have been forgiven but he personally still has the pressing need to tale his terrible story to others so that they may have in mind the importance of Love and Prayer and the Marriage between the two.

Bibliography

Edward E. Bostetter, ‘The Nightmare World of The Ancient Mariner’, Studies in Romanticism 1.4 (1962), 241-54  This is an essay that questions Robert Penn Warren’s interpretation of the poem.  I found this very interesting as it gives a subtler interpretation to the poem’s images and their meanings and also wonders why critics have been happy with the ‘conclusive’ ending, something that I had not thought of.  

De Quincey Thomas, ‘Samuel Taylor Coleridge’, in Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets, ed. By David Wright (Penguin Books Ltd: Hazell Watson and Viney Ltd, 1970) A first-hand biographical/critical discussion of the lives and works of poets such as Wordsworth, Southey and Coleridge and probably the best we have.  This goes into great detail about Coleridge’s political and philosophical views and is a vivid account of the man.  

Slaningar, L. G. ‘Coleridge: Poet and Philosopher’, in The Pelican Guide to English Literature, ed. By Boris Ford (Penguin Books Limited: Hazell Watson and Viney Ltd,1957) 186-206   The fifth book in a series of seven books about English Literature.  This has been very useful as it gives a condensed biography outlining the esstiential criticism concerning Coleridge.    

Ulmer, William A. ‘Necessary Evils: Unitarian Theodicy in ‘The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere’  Studies in Romanticism, (2004) 327-56.

A critical essay of The Ancient Mariner in view of Coleridge’s own specifically Unitarian outlook on life.  An important essay when considering how little detail Coleridge’s beliefs are noted in other critical essay.