Monday, March 12, 2007

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

That was the poem I studied as part of English subject in my 9th standard. It was in Literature book of CBSE. The poem was very long and therefore only a part of it was included in the text book. It had an interesting story. Which goes here...

There was an old mariner sitting beside road. He stops a passing by man who is going to a wedding and starts telling his story. The story is about one of his journey. His ship starts from the harbour but after some time weather changes for the bad and his ship is moved south, and they all are struck in Antarctica with no wind to sail. After days of miseries an Albatross appears from nowhere. Albatross is a kind of bird. It brings with it south wind, which helps their ship move out of Antarctica. But suddenly mariner shoots the bird with his crossbow. Initially everyone praise mariner as it brings them some change of food and clears fog. But later on everyone starts blaming him for killing the bird who had brought good luck for them, and for some other unlucky happenings.

It came to my mind all of a sudden and I quickly googled to find more about the poem and found that it was authored by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1799-99.

The full text of the poem is available at:

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