Likely Coleridge’s most well known poem, rereading ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ for the first time since I studied it in year 8 of high school was an enlightening experience. It’s a pretty good poem about a mariner who tells a wedding guest about how he shot an albatross and thus brought a curse onto his whole crew which he repents for and rediscovers religion in order to survive. I remember my teacher had us act out this poem and I was cast as the albatross and ran around the classroom far too many times to ‘circle the boat’, how this even worked though and how we spent so many weeks on the poem I cannot fathom. 

Being less nostalgic now, some of Coleridge’s lyric here is really beautiful, it has an ominous and supernatural feel to it throughout which is fun. In dealing with themes of sin and repentance there is a lot of religious allegory which is interesting though I can’t help but feel got overly preachy at points.