Part v of The rime of the ancient mariner

PowerPoint Presentation

The Rime of the Ancient MarinerWritten by Samuel Taylor ColeridgePresented by team blue - green

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Part 5The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is written in loose, short ballad stanzas usually either four or six lines long but occasionally as many as nine lines long. The meter is also somewhat loose, but odd lines are generally tetra meter, while even lines are generally tri meter. The rhymes generally alternate in an A B A B or A B A B A B scheme, though there are again many exceptions.

The main idea of this poem is a moral message, warning against thoughtless and foolhardy actions such as the one the Mariner performs in shooting the albatross. The albatross had done the Mariner no harm at all; in fact it seems it had helped to guide his ship, so that his wanton killing of it appears even more inexcusable.The poem shows the terrible consequences of such a foolish and cruel act, when the Mariner loses his crew and finds himself alone and doomed to wander the earth, telling people like the young Wedding Guest his woeful story and warning them to always think before they act.A subsidiary theme of the poem is that one should respect nature and all living things. The Mariner never gives any reason for shooting the albatross; it seems as if he does so simply because he has the power to do so.

Introduction

Stanzas 67-70Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,Beloved from pole to pole!To Mary Queen the praise be given!She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,That slid into my soul.

The silly buckets on the deck,That had so long remained,I dreamt that they were filled with dew;And when I awoke, it rained.

My lips were wet, my throat was cold,My garments all were dank;Sure I had drunken in my dreams,And still my body drank.

I moved, and could not feel my limbs:I was so lightalmostI thought that I had died in sleep,And was a blessed ghost.

Stanzas 67-70SummaryNot only can he pray again, but he can also sleep again. Exhausted from all the endless cursing and dying of thirst, he falls asleep. He credits Mary, the mother of Christ, for this sleep.Naturally, he dreams about drinking water. But his dream actually comes true: it rains when he wakes up. Sailors are really good at collecting rainwater from their sails and in buckets, and the Mariner has all the water he needs.(In reality, a severely dehydrated person like that would probably die from drinking too much water too fast, but we won't quibble with Coleridge on this one.)He feels as light as if he had died and was now a ghost. But a happy ghost

Stanzas 71-74And soon I heard a roaring wind:It did not come anear;But with its sound it shook the sails,That were so thin and sere.

The upper air burst into life!And a hundred fire-flags sheen,To and fro they were hurried about!And to and fro, and in and out,The wan stars danced between.

And the coming wind did roar more loud,And the sails did sigh like sedge,And the rain poured down from one black cloud;The Moon was at its edge.

The thick black cloud was cleft, and stillThe Moon was at its side:Like waters shot from some high crag,The lightning fell with never a jag,A river steep and wide.

Stanzas 71-74SummaryNow that the curse has been lifted, more good news follows. He hears a loud wind in the distance. Thesoundof the wind rattles the dried out sails. But it's important to remember that the wind hasn't reached the ship yet.He sees new activity in the sky. More stars return, and he sees things he calls "fire-flags." We have to think he's either talking about weird lightning flashes but without clouds to block the stars or the Aurora (in this case, the Southern Lights).He sees a black cloud, the partial moon and lightning falling in perfectly vertical fashion. We're not sure exactly what's going on, except that these are wild descriptions.

Stanzas 75-80The loud wind never reached the ship,Yet now the ship moved on!Beneath the lightning and the MoonThe dead men gave a groan.

They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;It had been strange, even in a dream,To have seen those dead men rise.

The helmsman steered, the ship moved on;Yet never a breeze up-blew;The mariners all 'gan work the ropes,Where they were wont to do;They raised their limbs like lifeless toolsWe were a ghastly crew.

The body of my brother's sonStood by me, knee to knee:The body and I pulled at one rope,But he said nought to me.

'I fear thee, ancient Mariner!'Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest!'Twas not those souls that fled in pain,Which to their corses came again,But a troop of spirits blest:

Stanzas 75-80SummaryOK, so what was the point of the wind if it "never reached the ship"? The wind was supposed make the ship sail again, but it does no good at a distance. Except if you have a mysterious force moving your ship: score!The dead sailors rise up amid the thunder and lightning. They look like zombies and don't say a word. But they all do the jobs they are supposed to do, helping to sail the ship.The Mariner goes with the flow, and he basically says, "I don't care if these people are just bodies with no souls, as long as we get moving again, I'll help out."The Wedding Guest interrupts the story again. He's not the bravest Wedding Guest we've ever heard of. He's afraid that the Mariner is now telling a zombie story.The Mariner reassures the frightened Wedding Guest that the bodies of the sailors were possessed not by their original owners, but by a bunch of good spirits, like angels. That helps !The Mariner continues his story.He knew that spirits were angels because, when dawn comes, they all escape from the bodies and break out into song.

Stanzas 81-85For when it dawnedthey dropped their arms,And clustered round the mast;Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths,And from their bodies passed.

Around, around, flew each sweet sound,Then darted to the Sun;Slowly the sounds came back again,Now mixed, now one by one.

Sometimes a-dropping from the skyI heard the sky-lark sing;Sometimes all little birds that are,How they seemed to fill the sea and airWith their sweet jargoning!

And now 'twas like all instruments,Now like a lonely flute;And now it is an angel's song,That makes the heavens be mute.

It ceased; yet still the sails made onA pleasant noise till noon,A noise like of a hidden brookIn the leafy month of June,That to the sleeping woods all nightSingeth a quiet tune.

Stanzas 81-85SummaryThe spirits float around the ship and sing like birds. They are like an entire symphony of voices. They stop singing after dawn, but the sails continue to make a pleasant sound like a stream following through a forest.The ship keeps moving, but there's no wind. The Mariner is sticking with his theory that someone or something is moving the boat from underneath the ocean.

Stanzas 86-93Till noon we quietly sailed on,Yet never a breeze did breathe:Slowly and smoothly went the ship,Moved onward from beneath.

Under the keel nine fathom deep,From the land of mist and snow,The spirit slid: and it was heThat made the ship to go.The sails at noon left off their tune,And the ship stood still also.

The Sun, right up above the mast,Had fixed her to the ocean:But in a minute she 'gan stir,With a short uneasy motionBackwards and forwards half her lengthWith a short uneasy motion.

Then like a pawing horse let go,She made a sudden bound:It flung the blood into my head,And I fell down in a swound.

How long in that same fit I lay,I have not to declare;But ere my living life returned,I heard and in my soul discernedTwo voices in the air.

'Is it he?' quoth one, 'Is this the man?By him who died on cross,With his cruel bow he laid full lowThe harmless Albatross.

The spirit who bideth by himselfIn the land of mist and snow,He loved the bird that loved the manWho shot him with his bow.'

The other was a softer voice,As soft as honey-dew:Quoth he, 'The man hath penance done,And penance more will do.'

Stanzas 86-92SummaryThe Mariner explains his theory in more detail. The same spirit "nine fathoms deep" that earlier caused such problems near the Arctic has now decided to play nice and guide the ship up to the equator. At noon the sun is again directly above the mast, which means that we're back at the equator.The ship stops and remains motionless for a bit. Then, all of a sudden, the ship takes off as if someone has just released a really fast horse.The force of this movement knocks out the Mariner, and he loses consciousness. While in a stupor, he hears two mysterious voices talking. We're back in supernatural territory, here.One of the voices wants to know if the Mariner is the guy who shot the nice albatross. He sounds judgmental.The other voice sounds gentler and says that the Mariner has done a lot of penance for his mistake, and he'll do more penance in the future.

The EndThank You

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