Page 252 - DENG201_ENGLISH_II

English - II

Notes 5. Read the following passages carefully and explain them:
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath, nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Explanation: These lines have been taken from Coleridge’s famous ballad ‘The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner’. The ballad according to Coleridge is based on a dream of his friend Mr. Crick shank. It was
composed during a walking tour with Wordsworth and Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy. Wordsworth
himself contributed a few lines and some suggestions.
The ballad tells a story of sin, punishment, penance and redemption. It tells us how a ship sailed to
the Equator, how an Albatross hovered over it bringing hope and good cheer to the sailors, how an
old Mariner thought lessly killed it with his crossbow, how the old Mariner had to suffer for his
crime and to obtain absolution after very hard penance.
The bulk of the story is told through the Mariner’s point of view. The Mariner narrates the most
significant and agonising incident of his life. Overcome by a terrible urge, the Mariner stops a guest
going to a wedding celebration and tells him the story. He tells him how his ship was driven by a
storm towards the South Pole. The ship was struggling through a sea full of ice when an Albatross
descended from the foggy sky. The men welcomed it as a good omen, as if it is ‘s Christian soul’. The
bird cheered them up. But on an impulse, the Mariner shot it down with his crossbow.
The men at first cursed the Mariner for killing the bird of good omen. But when they the weather as
fine as before they said that the Mariner had done nothing wrong by killing the bird. They thus
become a party to the crime. The ship moves on but suddenly the Mariners find themselves in a calm
and silent sea. The breeze stops blowing. The sails drop down and the ship stands still. Only the
voices of the crew break the silence of the sea. The given lines tell us of the maddening stillness and
silence of the ship and the sea.
Day after day their ship stood still. There was not the slightest movement, not even a breath of
moving air. The ship stood as a painted ship in a picture of an ocean.
6. Read the following passages carefully and explain them:
The fair breeze biew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.
Explanation: These lines are from Coleridge’s famous Ballad ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’.
Coleridge based this Ballad on a dream of one of his friends and composed it in the company of
Wordsworth.
In this Ballad the poet tells the story of a Mariner who implusively shot a kind innocent Albatross.
He had to suffer a great deal on account of this. Only after hard penance he is set free from the burden of sin.
The story of the Mariner begins with a ship which sets sail for the Equator. It is driven by a storm
towards the South Pole. While struggling through fog and ice it is greeted by a friendly Albatross. It
presence comforts the crew of the ship. The Mariner (the narrator of the story) implusively kills the
Albatross. The ship moves swiftly and steadily for sometimes but suddenly finds itself in a silent and
calm sea. The lines given above give an account of this.
For sometimes the breeze blows and the ship forges ahead with form rising at it wake. It leaves a
furrow of foam behind it suddenly the ship enters into a ‘silent sea’. Its free motion is suddenly
arrested. The Mariners seem to be the first to ever enter into such a region.

246 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY