Poet’s Corner: Coleridge–Rime 5

18 March 2026

(12 September 2014) Last time we saw a strange, ‘supernatural’ ship approach the Mariner’s ship, still trapped without wind, the strange ship’s crew containing only two members: Death & Death in Life:

Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The nightmare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man’s blood with cold.

The naked hulk alongside came,
And the twain were casting dice;
‘The game is done! I’ve won! I’ve won! ‘
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.

In the woman’s description, the first two lines promise real beauty–red lips & golden hair–with ‘free looks’, meaning in more modern terms, she was a wanton! But then, the third line describes her skin as (a simile) ‘white as leprosy’, and then names her ‘the nightmare Life-in-Death’. We learn the two are casting dice, and the woman wins the game at which she ‘whistles thrice’–an ominous and magical number! What has she won, this Life-in-Death? We soon learn that she won the lives of the Mariner’s crew:

We listened and looked sideways up!
Fear at my heart, as at a cup,
My lifeblood seemed to sip!
The stars were dim, and thick the night,
The steersman’s face by his lamp gleamed white;
From the sails the dews did drip–
Till clomb above the eastern bar
The horned moon, with one bright star
Within the nether tip.

One after one, by the star-dogged moon,
Too quick for groan or sigh,
Each turned his face with ghastly pang,
And cursed me with his eye.

Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.

Their souls did from their bodies fly–
They fled to bliss or woe!
And every soul, it passed me by,
Like the whizz of my crossbow!’

The strange ship leaves, and the Mariner feels fear, sensing something bad is about to happen. Then a crescent moon climbs above the eastern horizon, with a bright star near one of its ‘points’, and the crew, all 200 of them, drop dead without a sound, although when their ‘souls’ leave their bodies, each passes close to the Mariner, sounding to him ‘like the whizz of [his] crossbow!’ Come back Friday for another installment of the Poet’s Corner to learn what now happens to the Mariner, trapped in a calm sea with all members of his crew dead. Good reading!