An old sailor stops a wedding guest in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's classic poem of a curse at sea, read slowly for sleep.
The Mariner has a story he cannot keep inside. Years ago his ship sailed south into a world of ice and fog, blown off course into strange, empty waters. Then an albatross appeared and flew with the ship for days, and the sailors took it as a good sign — until the Mariner, for no reason he can explain, shot the bird down with his crossbow.
From that moment, the voyage turns into a nightmare. The wind dies. The ship sits still on a painted ocean under a hot copper sun, and the crew pays for the Mariner's act one by one. Ghostly figures move across the water, and the Mariner is left alone among the dead, the albatross hung around his neck like a stone. His only way home is to see the world differently, to notice beauty even in the sea snakes gliding beside the ship, and find some kind of grace.
It's a strange, hypnotic tale of guilt, penance, and the natural world, part ghost story and part fever dream, and one of the best-known works of English Romantic poetry. It suits listeners who love old sea legends, gothic ballads, and stories about a debt that has to be paid.
The poem's old rhythm and rhyme wash over you like a tide, verse by quiet verse, until the Mariner's long voyage carries you off. Elizabeth Grace keeps it slow and gentle throughout.
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