The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Structural Critique Essay

Within the poem considered his most famous work, Samuel Taylor Coleridge uses an abundance of literary devices to contribute to the effect of the poem. â€Å"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner† contains many elements, each of which enhances the way the poem conveys meaning. The extensive use of alliteration, varying metrical patterns, internal and external rhyme, anaphora, caesura, enjambment, and inversion add to the complexity of the structure and the overall meaning of â€Å"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,† which could be interpreted as love for all living things. â€Å"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner† is set up in the form of a ballad with seven parts. The poem follows many traditional conventions of ballads; it is a narrative as opposed to a†¦show more content†¦The internal rhyme helps the reader to accent the syllables which contribute to this mimesis. In part one, when the mariner begins to tell his tale to the wedding guest, he says â€Å"the ship was cheer’d, the harbour clear’d/ Merrily did we drop/Below the kirk, below the hill/below the lighthouse top† (21-25). The stress on â€Å"cheer’d† and â€Å"clear’d† helps the reader feel the meter of the poem. This pattern continues even when the meter changes from quatrains to sixains. In lines 48 and 49, the mariner tells the wedding guest â€Å"the ship drove fast, loud roared the blast/the southward aye we fled (48-49). The accenting of fast and blast place the stress where it belongs, which without the use of internal rhyme may not be evident. The tendency is often to accent â€Å"drove† and â€Å"roared† in the line, but the specific use of internal rhyme, in this case, places the stress accurately for the reader. Coleridge’s use of internal rhyme not only aids in the correct accenting of syllables, but it also ties in with the poet’s use of inversion. There are several instances where sentences are inverted to keep the pattern of internal rhyme intact. Line 26, had it not been inverted, would read: out of the sea he came; however, for the purpose in keeping the rhyme scheme, and maintaining the mimesis of ocean waves, Coleridge inverts the sentence so it reads â€Å"out of the sea came he† (26). The same line is seen inverted