Poet’s Corner: Coleridge–Rime 12

8 April 2026

(14 November 2014) We left the Coleridge’s Mariner last week, learning that, although he has done some penance for his “Hellish deed,” he has more penance coming. As we move on to the next part of Coleridge’s poem, we hear two voices, which is really an extension of the voices who told us that the Mariner has to suffer more for his crimes; the first voice asks, “What makes that ship [the Mariner’s] drive on so fast? / What is the ocean doing?” to which the second voice replies without ever answering the question, so the first voice asks again what makes the ship go, and the second again avoids answering the question. As readers, we are left wondering what has really happened to the ship and the Mariner, a question asked by readers since the original poem was published as the first poem in “The Lyrical Ballads.” Wordsworth, and many others, pressured Coleridge into answering these many questions raised by the poem; thus, the poem was divided into seven parts, with added material including a set of ‘marginal notes’ to aid reader’s understanding. So when the first voice repeats its question about what drives the ship, we read the following in the margin:

The Mariner hath been cast into a trance ; for the angelic power causeth the vessel to drive northward faster than human life could endure.

And then, just before the Mariner wakes:

The supernatural motion is retarded ; the Mariner awakes, and his penance begins anew.

In these editorial asides, we learn the meaning of the earlier lines, “It [the motion of the ship forward] flung the blood into my head, / And I fell down in a swound.” The supernatural speed of the angelic driven ship is too much for the Mariner, so we are told that, in order to preserve his life for his further penance, the Mariner faints, the ship speeds on its way toward home, and then reaches its home port in record time–a device familiar to all those who like Science Fiction! Come back for the further strange adventures of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner. Good reading!