" The
poet died at Highgate in 1834, at the age of sixty-two.
Coleridge was a many-sided genius, and perhaps the world has benefited
as largely by his powers as a thinker as by his gift for poetry. He
did much both by talking and writing to broaden English thought, and
his keen and suggestive criticism of other authors, of Shakespeare
especially, has been of high value to lovers of literature. As a poet
he is distinguished for the rare quality of his imagination and the
wonderful music of his verse.
ARGUMENT OF THE ANCIENT MARINER
The argument, or plot, of the poem is as follows:[*]
Three guests were on their way to a wedding, when one of them--the
bridegroom's nearest relative--was stopped by a Mariner with long gray
beard and glittering eye, who constrained him to listen to his story.
The Mariner once set sail in a ship bound southward. After crossing
the equator the vessel was driven by strong winds toward the south
pole, and was finally hemmed in by icebergs. An albatross which
appeared at this time brought good luck: the ice split and the ship
sailed northward. The Mariner, for no apparent reason, shot the bird
of good omen. At first his comrades declared that he had done a
hellish deed, but when the fog cleared away they justified him,
believing that the fog had been brought by the bird.
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