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
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"