Water, water, everywhere
There was a time in American History (or Unitedstatesian, as you say) when almost every schoolchild could recite parts of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Find four stanzas that strike you as particularly quotable. What situations in contemporary life would you apply the lines to?
The sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.
This stanza can be used by someone at the sea who presenced the drowning of someone else.
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was allaround;
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swoind!
This can be used by people living in very cold places like in alaska. Maybe used by some men dedicated to transport things in big trucks over the ice.
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.
This stanza can be used in contemporary life by anyone feeling alone and depressed. It also shows some who is holding a grudge because no one really helped him or her.
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest !
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
This can be used as a farewell to someone that is dying.
Coleridge once said that he would have preferred to write The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as a work of “pure imagination”. He believed that it had “too much” of a moral, and that the moral was stated too openly. Do you agree or disagree with Coleridge about the message in this poem? Why?
An ancient Mariner meets three Gallants bidden to a wedding-feast, and detained one. The Wedding-Guest is spell-bound by the eye of the old seafaring man, and constrained to hear his tale. The Mariner tells how the ship sailed southward with a good wind and fair weather, till it reached the Line. The Wedding-Guest heareth the bridal music ; but the Mariner continueth his tale. The ship driven by a storm toward the south pole. The land of ice, and of fearful sounds where no living thing was to be seen. Till a great sea-bird, called the Albatross, came through the snow-fog, and was received with great joy and hospitality. The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen. At the end of the tale the mariner is cursed to tell the story everyday for the rest of his life. The message of this tale was really hard to understand for me because I didn’t read the poem in class, but with what I undertood I may say that I agree with the message because it teaches a lesson and shows how actions are always followed by reactions, these could be good or bad, in this case bad.
This ballad is famous for its use of vivid figurative language and memorable sound devices. Find examples of especially effective examples of simile, metaphor, personification, alliteration, assonance and internal rhyme (one of each).
Simile
The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she
Metaphor
The Sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he !
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.
Personification
Almost upon the western wave
Rested the broad bright Sun
Alliteration
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink ;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
Assonance
The repeating ‘a’ vowel sound in ‘Alone, alone, all, all alone’.
Internal Rhyme
In the four-line stanzas, the second and fourth lines usually rhyme.
In the five- and six-line stanzas, the second or third line usually rhymes with the final line.
The meter alternates between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter.
