In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the mariner shoots an albatross. The bird appears after the ship becomes trapped in Antarctic ice, and its arrival is treated as a favorable sign because the ice breaks and the vessel can continue sailing.
The mariner’s unexplained killing of the bird begins the poem’s supernatural punishment. The crew first blames him for the act, then changes its mind when fog and mist follow, and finally blames him again when the ship reaches hot, windless waters. They hang the dead albatross around his neck as a visible emblem of guilt.
The poem was first published in 1798 in Lyrical Ballads, a collection by Coleridge and William Wordsworth. The albatross later became a common symbol of a heavy burden, although the poem itself gives the image a more complex religious and ecological meaning.
The mariner eventually learns that redemption requires respect for living things, not merely regret for breaking a social rule.