to call the story silly.

Page 265 (Are those her ribs through which the Sun)

Coleridge used the sun, moon, and stars as a great dream uses them
when the sleeping imagination is obscurely threatened with illness.
All through The Ancient Mariner we see them like apparitions. It
is a pity that he followed the pranks also of a dream when he
impossibly placed a star WITHIN the tip of the crescent.

Page 266 (I feer thee, ancient Mariner!)

The likeness of "the ribbed sea sand" is said to be the one passage
actually composed by Wordsworth,--who according to the first plan
should have written The Ancient Mariner with Coleridge--"and
perhaps the most beautiful passage in the poem," adds one critic
after another. It is no more than a good likeness, and has nothing
whatever of the indescribable Coleridge quality.

Coleridge reveals, throughout this poem, an exaltation of the
senses, which is the most poetical thing that can befall a simple
poet. It is necessary only to refer, for sight, to the stanza on
"the moving Moon" at the bottom of page 267; for hearing, to the
supernatural stanzas on page 271; and, for touch, to the line -

"And still my body drank."


ROSE AYLMER