Friday, 29 May 2020

Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798 <=> 2020)

An excellent set of modern readings HERE of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge.  There are 40 readings in all, each a pairing of a reader and a visual artist. 

Reading number 9 by Iggy Pop is great, but the half-sung reading number 10 by Beth Gibbons (of Portishead) is even more wonderful: 

There passed a weary time. Each throat
Was parched, and glazed each eye.
A weary time! a weary time!
How glazed each weary eye,

When looking westward, I beheld
A something in the sky.

At first it seemed a little speck,
And then it seemed a mist;
It moved and moved, and took at last
A certain shape, I wist.

A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!
And still it neared and neared:
As if it dodged a water-sprite,
It plunged and tacked and veered.

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
We could nor laugh nor wail;
Through utter drought all dumb we stood!
I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,
And cried, A sail! a sail!