Love According to Coleridge and Shelley

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

In Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," Coleridge uses the tale of an old sailor to reveal what love is all about. In this story, The Mariner and his crew travel around the world and then head back to England.

Coleridge begins the story as an old sailor approaches three young men headed for a wedding celebration and talks one of them into listening to his story. The young man resists this interruption at first but is soon intrigued by the tale.

The old man tells him of his adventures on a ship with his crew. When the crew was sailing, a strong force pulled them in the direction of the South Pole, a "land of ice, and of fearful sounds, where no living thing was to be seen," and the crew was helpless...
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