The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Cover: The Albatross, from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1876), wood engraving by Gustave Doré (1832-1883) · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (artist died 1883)
A sailor stops a wedding guest to tell how, becalmed on a polar sea, he killed the albatross that had guided his ship, and how his shipmates died and the dead men rose to work the rigging. The poem is in seven parts and ends on the moral that he prayeth best who loveth best.
Summary written with Claude Sonnet 5.5.