The Rime of the Ancient Mariner of mist and snow"; the south wind that had initially led them from the land of ice now sends the ship into uncharted waters near the equator, where it is becalmed. The sailors change their minds again and blame the mariner for the torment of their thirst. In anger, the crew forces the mariner to wear the dead albatross about his neck, perhaps to illustrate the burden he must suffer from killing it, or perhaps as a sign of regret: Eventually, the ship encounters a ghostly hulk. On board are Death (a skeleton) and the "Night-mare Life-in-Death", a deathly-pale woman,
The Bone Church King says, by such Robert Browning narrative poems as "My Last Duchess". (Another Browning piece, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came", famously inspired King's self-described magnum opus, his "Dark Tower" series.) The poem's narrative style, of a man relating to a stranger the details of a macabre journey, has invited comparisons with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the plot of whose poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" follows a similar thread. The fearsome jungle setting and wildlife, on the other hand, has been compared to some of the poems and stories of Rudyard Kipling. The Bone Church "The Bone Church"