Poetry
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Read it in the Library After Dark Or read it as plain textA sailor shoots an albatross for no particular reason and is made, by the ship and the sea and possibly the universe itself, to understand exactly what that carelessness cost. He tells the story now to strangers at weddings, compulsively, because telling it is the only penance available to him. Coleridge wrote the guilt more vividly than the crime, which is rather the correct proportion.
The librarian
- Reading time
- About 15 minutes
- Where to find it
- The Evening Room
- Edition
- Project Gutenberg, eBook #151. In the public domain in the United States.