Read-along
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
The sailor who shot an albatross and paid for it across seven nights.
- Next cohort
- Next cohort 13 November
- Length
- Length 7 days
Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote this in 1797 as the first poem in the Lyrical Ballads, disguised as an old sea ballad with a scholarly gloss in the margins. A sailor shoots an albatross for no reason he can name, and the poem spends seven parts on the aftermath. The curse, the becalming, the spectral ship, the dead crew with their accusing eyes, and at last the moment the Mariner blesses the water-snakes and does not know why, and the curse begins to lift. One part a day for seven days. The penance is the whole point.
Read one big book alongside other readers, a day at a time. Cohorts set off on the date above.
The first button needs the app on this device; the second gets it there.
Day by day
- Day 1. Part ISamuel Taylor Coleridge, 5 min
- Day 2. Part IISamuel Taylor Coleridge, 5 min
- Day 3. Part IIISamuel Taylor Coleridge, 5 min
- Day 4. Part IVSamuel Taylor Coleridge, 5 min
- Day 5. Part VSamuel Taylor Coleridge, 5 min
- Day 6. Part VISamuel Taylor Coleridge, 5 min
- Day 7. Part VIISamuel Taylor Coleridge, 5 min