The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

An old sailor stops a wedding guest and holds him with a glittering eye, compelling him to hear a tale of guilt and haunted penance. On a voyage into the southern seas the mariner shoots an albatross, and the wanton killing brings down a curse that strands his ship, kills his crew, and forces him through a long ordeal of suffering and slow redemption. Coleridge wrote this hypnotic ballad for the 1798 Lyrical Ballads, the volume that helped launch English Romanticism, and its images of the becalmed ship and the dead bird hung round the mariner’s neck have passed into the language. Read it here in full. Free to download as a PDF or EPUB.