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
Kubla Khan these wonderful lines as the voice of Poesy itself." Critics at the end of the 19th century favoured the poem and placed it as one of Coleridge's best works. When discussing "Christabel", "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan", an anonymous reviewer in the October 1893 "The Church Quarterly Review" claimed, "In these poems Coleridge achieves a mastery of language and rhythm which is nowhere else conspicuously evident in him." In 1895, Andrew Lang reviewed the "Letters of Coleridge" in addition to Coleridge's "Kubla Khan", "Christabel" and "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", saying: "all these poems are 'miraculous;' all