Poet’s Corner: Coleridge–Rime 15

15 April 2026

(5 December 2014) Last time, we saw the Mariner’s joy as he finally reached his home port, and we likened his sentiments to our own joy at returning home after an absence. This week, we see that Mariner gazing on his home, adoring every detail. When he turns from this view to look at the deck of his ship, he sees another strange and shocking sight:

Each corse [corpse] lay flat, lifeless and flat,
And, by the holy rood!
A man all light, a seraph man,
On every corse there stood.

This seraph band, each waved his hand:
It was a heavenly sight!
They stood as signals to the land,
Each one a lovely light;

This seraph band, each waved his hand,
No voice did they impart –
No voice; but oh! the silence sank
Like music on my heart.

Again, events take another strange turn (hardly a surprise in this weird tale!), and the Mariner sees that his dead and formerly animated crew are now all lying on the deck, lifeless and motionless, but over every corpse stands an angel, which we assume were animating the bodies of the dead crew. However, their work is now done, the Mariner is returned home, and so the angels, whose wordless singing had so impressed him, now leave him, with a wave that must have been friendly, plunging him into a silence that was “[l]ike music on [his] heart”–silence as music, which is a pleasing sound to the Mariner. This leads one to wonder why silence would be as pleasing to the Mariner as angelic music, and what the Mariner was hearing before this lovely silence fell? We can only guess that it must have had something to do with his ‘hellish deed,’ perpetrated against the innocent albatross–perhaps accusing voices, or the death screams of the innocent bird, which certainly could have been part of his punishment. Come back Thursday for a further strange turn in Coleridge’s masterwork! Good reading.