Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Was born in Devonshire in 1772
When he was still young he suffered from chronic rheumatism.
That time good medicines did not exist, so doctors used to prescribe opium to ease his bodily pains.
Later he became drug addicted.
In 1798 he wrote THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER which is considered the
MANIFESTO OF THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC MOVEMENT
The message of this ballad seems to be an allegory of the life of the soul in its passage from crime, through punishment, to redemption.
IN THE FIRST PART
the mariner stops a wedding guest and talks about the storm which pushed him and his crew to the equator and the polar regions.
The mariner killed an albatross without a motif this is why he is punished
(Nature is very important for the Romantics and if men destroy it, Nature punishes them.
IN THE SECOND PART
the Mariner is punished for what he has done. After his crime the world is dead and terrible: the ship has stopped to move and sailors are tortured by thirst, and the only moving things are slimy creatures in the sea