The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to row. The pilot's boy goes crazy and laughs, thinking the mariner is the devil, and cries, "The Devil knows how to row". As penance for shooting the albatross, the mariner, driven by guilt, is forced to wander the earth, telling his story over and over, and teaching a lesson to those he meets: After relaying the story, the mariner leaves, and the wedding guest returns home, and wakes the next morning "a sadder and a wiser man". The poem received mixed reviews from critics, and Coleridge was once told by the publisher that most of the book's sales were
Henry Nelson Coleridge Henry Nelson Coleridge Henry Nelson Coleridge (25 October 1798 – 26 January 1843) was an editor of the works of his uncle Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His father was Colonel James Coleridge, of Ottery St. Mary. He was born on 25 October 1798. He was educated at Eton and at King's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow. In 1825, he accompanied his uncle, William Hart Coleridge, the bishop of Barbados, to the West Indies, and described his excursion in a bright and lively little book, "Six Months in the West Indies in 1825," published anonymously in the following year.