The Rime of the Ancient Mariner autobiographical portrait of Coleridge himself, comparing the mariner's loneliness with Coleridge's own feelings of loneliness expressed in his letters and journals. In addition to being referred to in several other notable works, due to the popularity of the poem the phrase "albatross around one's neck" has become an English language idiom referring to "a heavy burden of guilt that becomes an obstacle to success". Monty Python's "Albatross Sketch" in which an irascible movie-theatre refreshment vendor tries to sell a single albatross from a tray around his neck, is a parody of Coleridge's description of the Mariner. The phrase "Water, water,
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and begins to sink. The man is then seen adrift in a Lusitania lifeboat only to be picked up decades later by the SS "Andrea Doria". The Rime of the Ancient Mariner The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (originally The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere) is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–98 and published in 1798 in the first edition of "Lyrical Ballads". Some modern editions use a revised version printed in 1817 that featured a gloss. Along with other poems in "Lyrical Ballads", it is often considered a signal shift to