SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE was born October 21, 1772, the son of a vicar. When Coleridge was nine, his father died, and his mother sent him away to boarding school, often not allowing him to return home for holidays and vacations. As an adult, Coleridge would idealize his father, but his relationship with his mother would always be strained.
He attended Jesus College at Cambridge University, but never completed a degree, one time leaving school to join the military to escape a woman who had rejected him. While at university, Coleridge became friends with Robert Southey, and the two developed plans to establish a utopian commune in Pennsylvania. Coleridge and Southey married sisters Edith and Sarah Fricker, but Coleridge's marriage was never truly happy.
In 1793, Coleridge met and became instant friends with William Wordsworth. With Wordsworth, he wrote and published Lyrical Ballads. While Wordsworth contributed a greater number of poems to the work, Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner received the most attention.
Throughout their friendship and careers, Wordsworth would always be the more productive poet, while Coleridge's work would gain the notice of critics and readers.
Coleridge allegedly suffered from a number of physical ailments, including facial neuralgia, and in 1796, he started using opium as a pain reliever. He would become addicted to the narcotic, and this would eventually affect his career as a poet and his friendship with Wordsworth.
His intensifying opium addiction, an unhappy marriage, and a growing estrangement from Wordsworth all contributed to a period of depression, which included a severe lack of confidence in his own poetic ability. He gradually spent more and more time alone, studying philosophy and traveling the Continent. Although considered by many to be a “giant among dwarfs”, Coleridge never quite regained his confidence.
In 1816, his addiction worsening, his spirits depressed, and his family alienated, Coleridge took up residence in Highgate, the home of physician James Gillman. Here he finished his major prose work, the Biographia Literaria, twenty-five chapters of autobiographical notes and discussions on various subjects, including literary theory and criticism.
Coleridge died of heart failure in Highgate on July 25, 1834.
* * *
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in Seven Parts (From Lyrical Ballads)
Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum universitate. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit? et gradus et cognationes et discrimina et singulorum munera? Quid agunt? quae loca habitant? Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit ingenium humanum, nunquam attigit. Juvat, interea, non diffiteor, quandoque in animo, tanquam in tabulâ, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contemplari: ne mens assuefacta hodiernae vitae minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat in pusillas cogitationes. Sed veritati interea invigilandum est, modusque servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a nocte, distinguamus. – T. Burnet, Archaeol. Phil., p. 68
Argument
How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by Storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country.
"THE ANCIENT MARINER"
* * *
This statue was commissioned in 2002 by the
Watchet Market House Museum Society.
* * *
It was sculpted by Alan B. Herriot of Penicuik Scotland
and erected in 2003 as a tribute to Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
* * *
This renowned poet resided for some years at the nearby village
of Nether Stowey. In 1797, whilst on a walking tour, Coleridge
visited Watchet. On seeing the harbour he was inspired to
compose one of the best known poems in English literature,
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".
* * *
This statue was commissioned in 2002 by the
Watchet Market House Museum Society.
* * *
It was sculpted by Alan B. Herriot of Penicuik Scotland
and erected in 2003 as a tribute to Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
* * *
This renowned poet resided for some years at the nearby village
of Nether Stowey. In 1797, whilst on a walking tour, Coleridge
visited Watchet. On seeing the harbour he was inspired to
compose one of the best known poems in English literature,
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".
Part the First.
An ancient Mariner meeteth three gallants bidden to a wedding feast, and detaineth one.
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
“By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stoppest thou me?
“The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May'st hear the merry din.”
He holds him with his skinny hand,
“There was a ship,” quoth he.
“Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!”
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.
The Wedding-Guest is spell-bound by the eye of the old seafaring man, and constrained to hear his tale.
He holds him with his glittering eye—
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years child:
The Mariner hath his will.
The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the light-house top.
The Mariner tells how the ship sailed southward with a good wind and fair weather, till it reached the Line.
The Sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.
Higher and higher every day,
Till over the mast at noon—
The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,
For he heard the loud bassoon.
The Wedding-Guest heareth the bridal music; but the Mariner continueth his tale.
The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;
Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.
The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
The ship drawn by a storm toward the South Pole.
And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o'ertaking wings,
And chased south along.
With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward aye we fled.
And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
The land of ice, and of fearful sounds, where no living thing was to be seen.
And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken—
The ice was all between.
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!
Till a great sea-bird, called the Albatross, came through the snow-fog, and was received with great joy and hospitality.
At length did cross an Albatross:
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.
It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!
And lo! the Albatross proveth a bird of good omen, and followeth the ship as it returned northward through fog and floating ice.
And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariners' hollo!
In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white Moon-shine.
The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen.
“God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—
Why look'st thou so?”—With my cross-bow
I shot the Albatross.
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