Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834)

In memory of my father

My father died a month ago. He was 86. It is 54 years since he read me The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. My father enjoyed reading to children and he read well, a skill which he passed on to me. I don’t remember which edition we read from; I do remember being gripped by the vividness of the imagery the words conjured up in my minds’ eye – a vividness that has prompted the many illustrated editions of Coleridge's story of the ancient mariner.

My father would pause every now and then, sometimes to explain to my six year old self what was going on, sometimes to enable us both to savour the poetry:

And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice mast high came floating by
As green as emerald.


This passage is picked up in the frontispiece to the 1994 Folio Society edition, which is beautifully bound in plum silk moiré, printed on Albatross Wove of pale azure iand llustrated with wood engravings by Garrick Palmer. I treasure it.

In his  introduction to the Folio edition Richard Holmes suggests three possible lines of interpretation of the poem: religious or sacramental; aesthetic; or a ‘Green Parable’ - a  vision of how nature can revenge herself. To me it’s a children’s story, and in the way of all good children’s stories, one which speaks most profoundly to adults.

Without my father’s introduction to Coleridge, would I have come to poetry? Yes. But it was a brilliant introduction. Thank you dad.