The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Mariner up on the mast in a storm. One of the wood-engraved illustrations by Gustave Doré of the poem.
Original title	The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere
Written	1797–98
First published in	Lyrical Ballads
Country	Great Britain
Language	English
Subject(s)	fate, doom, seafaring, superstition
Form	Ballad
Meter	iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter
Rhyme scheme	abcb
Publisher	J. & A. Arch
Publication date	1798
Media type	print
Lines	625
Full text
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner at Wikisource

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (originally The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere) is the longest major poem by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–98 and published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. Some modern editions use a revised version printed in 1817 that featured a gloss.^[1] It is often considered a signal shift to modern poetry and the beginning of British Romantic literature.^[2]

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798 edition)

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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner recounts the experiences of a sailor who has returned from a long sea voyage. The mariner stops a man who is on his way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The Wedding-Guest's reaction turns from amusement to impatience to fear to fascination as the mariner's story progresses, as can be seen in the language style; Coleridge uses narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create a sense of danger, the supernatural, or serenity, depending on the mood in different parts of the poem.