In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Coleridge writes about a sailor who brings a story to life while speaking to a wedding guest. An ancient mariner tells of his brutal journey across the Pacific Ocean to the South Pole. Coleridge suffers from loneliness, due to his lifelong need for love and sustenance; similarly, during the Sailor's story, his loneliness manifests itself when he remains alone at sea, due to the loss of his crew. Having a disastrous addiction to opium and laudanum, Coleridge, in collaboration with Worth, writes this complicated, difficult to understand, but attractive poem, which becomes the first poem in the 1798 edition of Lyrical Ballads. The Mariner's mood reverses during the literary ballad, a song-like poem that tells a story, which may be the result of Coleridge's horrible addiction. Using the senses of sight, feeling, and hearing as the mariner tells his story to a wedding guest in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge demonstrates the use of many sensory details as the ancient mariner speaks to a guest to the wedding. Coleridge shows the meaning ...