Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, April 4th, 2025.

Today we have selections from Coleridge's greatest contribution to the lyrical ballads,

The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.

In the original 1798 edition, Wordsworth placed this poem at the very beginning of the collection.

But when rearranging the expanded contents of the 1802 edition, he, I think, rightly judged that it was too weird to be right up front.

And so he placed it at the end of Volume 1, giving new readers a chance to dip their toes into the new romantic style, Wordsworth and Coleridge,

before trying to wrestle with the strange, fantastical,

almost exclusively imaginative subject matter and content of the ancient mariner.

In the selections today, we will see evidence of this imaginative, fantastical, you might even say slightly horror-oriented

style and method that Coleridge is experimenting here that would prove to be an influence upon

maybe even a profound inspiration for great authors to come in the following generations.

And maybe most notably, Mary Shelley, who incorporated the ancient Mariner in very meaningful ways into her great novel, Frankenstein.

And this is well showcased in a scene from the middle of the poem

and which a ghostly ship sails past the craft,

the stranded craft of the ancient mariner.

And two terrifying figures play a game of dice for very high stakes.

And then we'll read the final passage from the ancient mariner,

which also then gives us a good idea of the moral concerns that for Coleridge

all of this is still aiming at.

This isn't fantasy and horror.

For the sake of fantasy and horror, there is a moral project for these romantic poets.

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