A man trying to go to a wedding meets another man. It’s the ancient Mariner, who collars the Guest and proceeds to tell him an absolutely cracking story. Then what happened – Death and a thousand thousand crawly things came out playing ghostly dice? Hold off unhand me greybeard loon, too right. The events are memorable, and the language lovely: “The Sun’s rim dips; the stars rush out: / At one stride comes the dark;” (though I notice with interest that this verse is an improvement, added in to later editions).
I like the way it foreshadows Melville’s 1851 Moby-Dick, too, with a sailor who has encountered a white creature seeing his ship go down with all companions into a whirlpool, while he alone bobs up to tell the tale. And the Mariner’s story demonstrates the power of storytelling: the Guest misses the ceremony; he’s been educated, informed and entertained; he ends up “A sadder and a wiser man.” If the Mariner’s adventure can wreak that on the Wedding-Guest, what might it do to us readers, too? A good story broadcasts or expands, on and on; it has an afterlife, as though radioactive.
Included in Lyrical Ballads, J. and A. Arch, 1798 and The Complete Poems, Penguin Classics, 1997. Available online here
A Personal Anthology 