The Rime of the Ancient Mariner stage of the mariner's curse is lifted after he appreciates the sea creatures swimming in the water. Despite his cursing them as "slimy things" earlier in the poem, he suddenly sees their true beauty and blesses them ("a spring of love gush'd from my heart, and I bless'd them unaware"); suddenly, as he manages to pray, the albatross falls from his neck and his guilt is partially expiated. The bodies of the crew, possessed by good spirits, rise again and help steer the ship. In a trance, the mariner hears two spirits discussing his voyage and penance, and learns that
Samuel Hearne Hearne's death of dropsy in November 1792 at the age of 47. On 1 July 1767 he chiselled his name on smooth, glaciated stone at Sloop's Cove near Fort Prince of Wales where it remains today. One of Wales's pupils, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, made a brief notebook entry where he mentioned Hearne's book. Hearne may have been one of the inspirations for the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Hearne's journals and maps were proven correct by Sir John Franklin when he verified the discovery of the massacre at Bloody Falls during his own Coppermine Expedition of 1819-1822. He