About this audiobook
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the central figures of English Romanticism, is traditionally associated with William Wordsworth and the collaborative project of Lyrical Ballads (1798). Coleridge, educated at Cambridge and later a polymath of philosophy and theology, produced The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in the late 1790s as part of a broader shift toward plainspoken diction, heightened meditation, and imaginative synthesis. The poem is anchored in a frame narrative: a modern wedding-guest is compelled to listen to the mariner's tale, a device that blends oral tradition with elevated mystery. Composed in a ballad stanza—four lines with alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter—the work governs a lucid, chant-like rhythm that supports a tale steeped in the sublime and the supernatural. Its publication in 1798 places it at the dawn of Romantic experimentation, within a milieu of naval adventure, sea-visionary lore, and a growing preoccupation with nature as a moral and spiritual force. The excerpt provided, opening with the ancient mariner's injunction and moving through storm, albatross, and the spectre of Death, exemplifies Coleridge's blend of narrative realism, mythic symbol, and ethical inquiry that characterized early Romantic poetics and the broader program of Lyrical Ballads.
