The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere

Samuel Taylor Coleridge tells a story of a long sea voyage through this poem. I found it to be very exciting and interesting. There are so many aspects to chose from the poem and I wasn't sure what to write about, but I came across a picture on the internet which is especially related to the first part of the poem. It is a statue in England which actually portrays the Ancyent Marinere which shows how well known Coleridge's poems are. In the statue, the Ancyent Marinere is holding the bird that he shot in line 80. "Why look'st thou so?-with my Cross-bow I shot the Albatross." The Albatross (bird) is significant in the poem because it did in fact help the sailors find their way out of Antarctica after some strong winds and bad weather. You can see how much happiness and excitement the bird brought the sailors and this represents the value that nature holds. When the marinere shot the bird, he killed a part of nature, and even though it was just one element of nature, there was still sorrow, gloom, and misery that came with it's death. Once again, the importance of the bird (or nature) was emphasized when the sailors had the marinere wear the albatross around his neck as a punishment for killing it. So what it basically comes down to is that the bird (the albatross) is a representation of nature and its importance is emphasized by the crew on the ship.