The poem highlights a basic truth about morality, which is that penance is, simply put, not enjoyable. We don’t like to voluntarily undertake it because it seems an unnecessary burden. If we ask for forgiveness for our wrongs, and if we’re truly forgiven, why do we have to do penance for our actions? Coleridge’s poem shows us the reason: Penance is both binding and liberating. In fact, only in being bound to our own actions through penance can we be freed from them.
Published in the first edition of “Lyrical Ballads,” “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is largely the first-person narrative of the mariner as told to a wedding guest. The mariner stops one of three wedding guests to tell him the events that followed his killing of an albatross.
The poem is split into seven parts, and the mariner endures a seven-day torment in the poem. The number echoes the seven days of creation. Not only is the poem a tale of a man made anew, but it also deals with man’s communion with the rest of creation.
The Burden of Sin
As the mariner begins his tale, he recounts how the crew found themselves sailing through a storm, surrounded by an endless expanse of ice: “Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken— / The ice was all between.” An albatross not only breaks through the deathly frigidity as a sign of life, but also seems to bring with it a wind that carries the ship through the fog:At length did cross an Albatross, Thorough the fog it came; As if it had been a Christian soul, We hailed it in God’s name.
The crew feeds and plays with the albatross, even noting that it perches on the mast or shroud for vespers and comes to their call. The albatross is not only a symbol of perfect innocence but a seeming guide through the storm. However, with no explanation for his decision, the mariner suddenly shoots the albatross.There is a threefold death in the albatross; most obviously, it is the death of an innocent creature, but it also points to the killing of Christ as the crew forces the mariner to wear the albatross around his neck in place of a cross. To this point, the death of the albatross is also the spiritual death of the mariner himself, and he is both physically and spiritually weighed down by the burden of his sin.
We often hear that the opposite of love is not hatred but rather indifference. The mariner demonstrates himself lacking in love through his senseless act. Though not deliberately malicious, his act is careless, and the later events of the poem painfully guide his soul through the process of learning to love.
The very deep did rot: O Christ! That ever this should be! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea.
About, about, in reel and rout The death-fires danced at night; The water, like a witch’s oils, Burnt green, and blue and white.
In these lines, we see nature as a participant in the horror of the supernatural reality of the event. Those same aspects of nature, like the sea and the creatures within it, which are later seen as beautiful, are now mirroring the rot of sin.The souls did from their bodies fly,— They fled to bliss or woe! And every soul, it passed me by, Like the whizz of my cross-bow!
For seven days and nights, the mariner endures living death and perfect solitude, and he is unable to pray. He contemplates the beauty of the human lives of the crew; he closes his eyes to the ugly reality of the corpses on the ship and the equally dead sea before him. He says:An orphan’s curse would drag to hell A spirit from on high; But oh! more horrible than that Is the curse in a dead man’s eye! Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, And yet I could not die.
Finally, he turns his gaze to the water snakes in the ship’s shadow and admires their rich colors and the way their movements catch the light in a streak of flame. His heart’s unconscious movement to admiration and praise of creation unlocks his soul’s capacity to pray. The mariner has discovered that prayer is impossible without love and the recognition of goodness, which is inherent in praise. So deeply is the natural beauty impressed upon him that he is led to exclaim:O happy living things! no tongue Their beauty might declare: A spring of love gushed from my heart, And I blessed them unaware: Sure my kind saint took pity on me, And I blessed them unaware.
Breaking the charmed, unnatural still of the water, the snakes’ movement prompts the heart’s movement as a “spring of love,” and the water metaphor unifies the mariner with the creatures before him. Reintegrated into the creation he had sinned against, the mariner also is reunited with the Creator. In the same moment that he is able to pray, the albatross falls from his neck and sinks into the sea.
Love Without Measure
As the ship is manned by the lifeless crew, it begins to move again. The mariner is like the crew; even though the albatross is no longer around his neck, he is not yet fully alive. He hears the voices of two spirits, one of whom says, “The man hath penance done, /And penance more will do.'” Finally, the ship comes within sight of the mariner’s native land, and he prays: “O let me be awake, my God! / Or let me sleep alway.”This prayer for all or nothing counters the mariner’s half-waking, half-sleeping state. It also counters the previous state between life and death on the ship. The prayer is the antithesis of the initial lukewarm indifference, neither love nor hate, that led the mariner to kill the albatross.
When the ship goes down, the mariner is saved by a boat with three people: the Pilot, the Pilot’s son, and the Hermit, whom he admires for his holiness and proximity to nature. It is to the Hermit that the mariner first tells his tale; his telling comes out in agony and leaves him free on its conclusion. Now and again, his heart burns with a need to tell the tale to another and won’t rest until the tale is done.
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.
If the measure of love is to love without measure, then there is no such thing as loving by halves. Similarly, it is impossible to measure out an amount that will atone for sin. No finite amount of atonement perfectly compensates for an offense against a God who is infinitely good. For this reason, the mariner, like all of us, cannot have a genuine conversion without being spurred on by love to devote the rest of his life to the counteraction of his evil deed.There is no rule that demands that the mariner tell his tale repeatedly, but love compels him to do so out of concern for his fellow creatures. Understanding the consequences of his own mistake, he can be a more effective witness in turning others from a similar route.
Not everyone needs to hear the tale. He stops one of three, and the wedding guest is arrested by a particular gleam in the mariner’s eye that does not arrest the others. Pulled from the ordinary course of his life, the wedding guest graciously listens to the tale just as the mariner graciously tells it. The wedding guest is left “a sadder and a wiser man” upon rising the next day.
Following his return to land, the mariner is continually offered opportunities to atone for his sin; these are clearly marked as channels of grace and ways in which God is at work in his life. He is saved from the ship by three people, and at the start of the poem, he is compelled to stop one of three.
Both the opening and close of the poem, or the first and most recent tellings of his tale, carry the symbolism of the Trinity. Perfect union with God, however, is not possible in this life; while he is restored to grace, the mariner must spend the rest of his life working to mirror God on earth, loving others as He loves them.
The penance of retelling his tale does not mean he cannot escape from his sin. Rather, it liberates him by binding him to the deed. Through the retelling, the deed assumes a redemptive nature. His penance mirrors the sin—in killing a creature out of indifference, he will now spend his life, out of love for others, inspiring others to love well.
