Albatross (metaphor) Albatross (metaphor) The word albatross is sometimes used metaphorically to mean a psychological burden that feels like a curse. It is an allusion to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1798). In the poem, an albatross starts to follow a ship — being followed by an albatross was generally considered a sign of good luck. However, the titular mariner shoots the albatross with a crossbow, which is regarded as an act that will curse the ship (which indeed suffers terrible mishaps). Even when they are too thirsty to speak, the ship's crew let the mariner know
Bartram's Travels sympathetic description of the Creek, Seminole, Cherokee, and Choctaw Indians, which challenged presumptions that the Indians were primitive "savages." In addition to the "Travels" Bartram wrote other documents concerning his impressions of the southern Indians and the necessity of a humane public policy toward them. Among Bartram's admirers in England were the poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. By his own account, Coleridge had "Bartram's Travels" in mind when he devised the exotic imagery in his poems "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan". "Bartram's Travels" appeared in Europe when an edition was published in London in