The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by ST Coleridge This poem is didactic in nature that is a moral tale.

It is a narrative poem chronically the fate of an aged sailor who has forfeited his immortal soul because of a gratuitous act of violence. The first two lines, It is an Ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three, is delivered by the omniscient narrator, thereafter the voices change from that of the wedding guest, By thy long grey beard... back to the narrator and finally the mariner s story unfolds as he becomes the persona. This is an allegorical tale just as the Life of Pi. This story, however, is a reflection of the fall of man and the destruction of goodness symbolised in the Christ figure of the innocent albatross. At length did cross as Albatross...As if it had been a Christian soul. The mariner s personal fall from grace occurs when with my crossbow I shot the albatross. The mariner s punishment has no end. His fate was decided by Life in Death...who thinks man s blood with cold. She won the soul of the mariner as the twain were casting dice.