Timeline
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - The Rime of The Ancient Mariner, published 1798
The Rime of The Ancient Mariner employs the techniques of the ballad: rhythm, repetition, vivid descriptions, scene-setting, and imagery. It seems to have a simple moral.
After the suffering and penance of the mariner for his sin of killing the albatross, thereby bringing death to his ship, we are warned to respect and love all God's creatures. But, though he has returned safely he is excluded from the human community, forever condemned to repeat his story.
Perhaps herein lies the true force of the poem: the sinister, irrational, the unconscious of the poet even, always returns to interrupt the human quest for joy. So the wedding guest in the poem, mesmerised, goes not to the feast.