Wordsworth’s collaborative partner was Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Coleridge wrote “The Rime of the

Ancient Mariner” as part of Lyrical Ballads as well, inspired by a book Wordsworth was reading
(Schmidt, iii). Coleridge was raised with more of a city life than Wordsworth, but he admired
Wordsworth as a poet and they became great friends. He had been a radical at one point and was
planning to establish an ideal democratic community in America, but when the scheme fell apart his
radicalism also waned. Coleridge, also considered to be a father of the Romantic movement
alongside Wordsworth, suffered from depression and therefore contributed the characteristic of the
brooding and melancholy to the movement as well. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” specifically
contributed to the suspension of disbelief, the tragic hero, the sinner, and a pantheistic philosophy
regarding Nature, and the supernatural.

In addition, industrialization meant that technology was advancing quickly and the entire physical
landscape was changing, driving the Romantics to often emphasize the importance of Nature and
the isolation of urbanism. In times of great change and confusion, many often turn to religion for
answers. The Romantics, however, had a complicated relationship with religion as well. Many
sought to understand the role of God even as they drifted from organized religion, wanting to
reconcile new feelings of rebellion and the comfort of Nature with old notions of Christ and
scripture. In “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and “Lines Written a Few
Miles Above Tintern Abbey” by William Wordsworth, both authors use religious allusions and a
pantheistic treatment of Nature as divine to explore their faith.

Coleridge also employed Biblical allusions in order to explore his own difficulties with religion, and
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” can be read as an allegory for religious sin. Coleridge was the son
of a Reverend but still a radical thinker for much of his life, leading to a cognitive dissonance that
parallels him with the Mariner. “His sense of guilt and isolation, so vividly embodied in The Ancient
Mariner, demanded the comfort of God’s forgiveness through the willing sacrifice of his Son, Jesus”
(Wedd, 67). Both Coleridge and the Mariner felt they lost their innocence and were cursed by this
loss. By shooting and killing the albatross, the Mariner has been eternally punished, much in same
way that Cain was cursed for betraying Abel or the original sin to which Wordsworth also alluded.
By failing to respect God/Nature’s rules, the Mariner has been cast out of his regular life on the
ocean and left in some kind of limbo or purgatory where he is doomed to walk the Earth for the rest
of his days and tell his story to all he meets. He even has to wear the Albatross after disaster begins
to fall upon the ship, in order to mark his sin and show his penance. Despite his curse, he still seeks
salvation in his prophet-like wanderings of spreading his story and the proof of God’s greatness.

The Mariner offers this advice: “He prayeth well, who loveth well/ Both man and bird and beast./ He
prayeth best, who loveth best/ All things both great and small;/ For the dear God who loveth us,/ He
made and loveth all” (Coleridge, lines 612-617). He seeks solace in the telling of his tale, reminding
his audience to not think themselves invincible and lose themselves in society: “O sweeter than the
marriage-feast,/ ‘Tis sweeter far to me,/ To walk together to the kirk/ With a goodly company” (lines
601-604). Coleridge is essentially warning his readers through his character of the Mariner that
despite all of the advancements in science, philosophy, and culture, God and Nature will both always
be all-powerful and omnipotent, and must still be respected.
Kathryn Walls of the Victoria University of Wellington argues that the Wedding Feast mentioned in
the end of the poem serves as a sort of Communion. She states that the Mariner has persuaded the
Guest that the sacred is more important than the secular, by reminding the Guest of God’s greatness
as well as his “representation of a church congregation as a convivial family gathering, incorporating
‘youths and maidens gay’, [which] tends to blur the very distinction between the sacred and the
secular that [he] sets out to underline” (Walls, 56). The contradiction between the Guest’s
insistence on making it to the Feast and then his ultimate refusal to go explicitly illustrate the effect
the Mariner’s story had on the Guest. At the time of Coleridge’s writings, it was believed that
communicants had to be worthy of the sacrament (58). Neither the Mariner nor the now
introspective Guest feel themselves worthy of this sacrament, and thus, neither end up attending
the Feast. Similarly, Coleridge himself might have felt at odds with religion given both scientific
progress and the torment he suffered from manic depression, and also felt unworthy of religious
ceremony.

The two texts compare in this confused treatment of religion, and Coleridge and Wordsworth both
seemed to treat Nature pantheistically. Both poems were also included in Lyrical Ballads, and were
therefore both important in galvanizing the Romantic movement in literature and setting standards
for the canon. Both speakers are intelligent and brooding, indicating the troubled emotional state of
the times with the disillusionment of the French Revolution and the loosening hold religion had on
people. Both speakers feel pained by the knowledge they have: “And till my ghastly tale is told,/ This
heart within me burns” (Coleridge, lines 584-585); “That time is past,/ And all its aching joys are now
no more,/ And all its dizzy raptures” (Wordsworth, lines 83-85). Perhaps, as in the Bible, they are
punished for knowing too much. It can be argued that the focus on Nature is in direct opposition to
the Industrial Revolution, suggesting that individuals were closer to the divine before life became
complicated with technological advancements.

This turn toward Nature that is evident in both poems, with Nature being an all-powerful almost
magical creature: “In nature and the language of the sense,/ The anchor of my purest thoughts, the
nurse,/ The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul/ Of all my moral being” (Wordsworth, lines
108-111); “And now the storm-blast came, and he/ Was tyrannous and strong:/ He struck with his
o’ertaking wings,/ And chased us south along” (Coleridge, lines 41-44). In this movement to be
closer to Nature, both speakers also turn away from society, preferring isolation: “This soul hath
been/ Alone on a wide wide sea:/ So lonely ‘twas, that God himself/ Scarce seemed there to be”
(Coleridge, lines 597-600); “Once again/ Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,/ That on a wild
secluded scene impress/ Thoughts of more deep seclusion” (Wordsworth, lines 4-7). Both speakers
are wanderers who seem to be looking for themselves rather than looking for specific answers to
their troubled emotional states. They both have grown and aged with experience, yet still long for
their innocent youth. This experience is so important and impressing to them that they both must
retell their tales to relieve some of the pressure this knowledge is expressing on them.

Certainly, the Romantics “confronted in their own lives and expressed in their writing the basic
spiritual experiences and theoretical problems of a religious view of the world” (Wedd, 70). “The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” are prime
examples of this religious struggle. The Romantic Era was one filled with science and social progress
which seemed to contradict previously held religious ideas. Even so, Coleridge and Wordsworth
both seemed to acknowledge a belief in some kind of deeper spiritual reality: “All which we behold/
Is full of blessings” (Wordsworth, lines 133-134); “For the dear God who loveth us,/ He made and
loveth all” (Coleridge, lines 616-617).

Coleridge was one of the founders of the Romantic movement, a literary movement that developed
in the early 19th century in response to the Age of Enlightenment. Enlightenment philosophy
esteemed reason above all else, and flourished in the 18th century, as well as contributed to the
budding Industrial Revolution and the ways that growing industry and technology seemed to shift
the balance in man’s relationship with nature. Romantics valued emotion over reason, and they
glorified and appreciated nature. Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner fits into the Romantic
tradition. The poem begins at the wedding feast, with the Wedding Guest observing and enjoying a
quintessentially civilized setting in which nature is subdued. But when the Ancient Mariner imposes
himself on the Wedding Guest and tells his story, the scene (and the Wedding Guest as audience)
shift from comfortable civilization into nature, in this case aboard a ship sailing across the globe. Cast
into the world, the Mariner must contend with nature in the form of violent storms and the
dangerous sea, and he must survive the perils of the natural world. In this light, the Mariner’s killing
of the albatross can be seen as an attempt to master nature, to assert the power of man over the
power of nature.

But the poem presents nature as more powerful, awe inspiring, and terrifying than man can
comprehend. And, further, the poem depicts any attempt to master nature as pointless. Nature is
simply too powerful, as is evident when the sudden lack of wind strands the ship in desolate waters,
and the Mariner and sailors begin to die of thirst. The poem demonstrates that contending with,
merely surviving, or attempting to master nature are the wrong ways for humankind to approach the
natural world.

The poem, though, does not only portray nature as a kind of passive elemental force that is too
powerful for men to conquer. Instead, the poem conceives of nature as being an expression of the
spiritual world. This relationship between nature and the spiritual world explains the terrible and
supernatural reaction that the Mariner and his shipmates must face after he kills the albatross.
Nature, as the poem has it, is God’s creation, and therefore when a person interacts with nature
they also interact with the spiritual world. And so, when the Mariner attempts to master or control
nature (such as by killing the albatross), it is an affront not just to nature, but to the spiritual world
and to God as well. Harming nature, then, is a moral failing. It is a sin. Such sins lead to punishment,
and the punishment comes as a combination of the natural and the spiritual: it is supernatural. This
supernatural punishment is expressed when elemental spirits arise and drag or halt the Mariner’s
ship, and by the haunting Death and Life-In-Death who harvest human souls.
It is only when the Mariner learns to live with and value the natural world, as he does when he sees
the beauty in the Water Snakes that, it seems likely, he previously would have despised, does the
punishment against him ease. The poem, then, casts the appreciation and valuing of nature, the act
of embracing Romanticism, not just as important in and of itself, but as above all a spiritual, religious
necessity.