The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is one of the acknowledged classics of English Literature.  At the time he wrote it, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1798) had not yet begun on a sea voyage and he had never seen an albatross (when Coleridge eventually made a sea voyage, he saw only a single wild duck on the water and dismissed the experience with some scorn!).  In his own words, the poem was a work of 'pure imagination'.

The beginning of the poem is well known.  An old man waylays a young guest rushing to a wedding and makes him listen to a long fantastic tale about a tragic voyage of discovery.  Although an albatross is central to the narrative, it is mentioned in only 13 of the 141 verses that tell the albatross story.

And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald. (13)

The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound! (15)

At length did cross an Albatross,
Through the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name. (16)

It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew,
The ice did split with thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through! (17)

And a good south wind sprung up behind:
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariners' hollo! (18)

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white Moon-shine. (19)

"God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus! -
Why look'st thou so?" - With my cross-bow
I shot the Albatross. (20)

And I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work 'em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah wretch! Said they, the bird to slay,
That made the breeze to blow! (23)

Nor dim nor red, like God's own head,
The glorious Sun uprist:
Then all averred, I had killed the bird
That brought the fog and mist.
'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,
That bring the fog and mist. (24)

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea. (25)

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
'Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea! (26)

All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon
Right up about the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon. (27)

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion,
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean. (28)

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink,
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink. (29)

Ah! well-a-day!  What evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung. (34)

At the time the poem was written, the Southern Ocean was still largely unknown, the realm of explorers, sealers and merchant venturers.  Accounts of contemporary and early voyages were popular reading.  The epic circumnavigations of Captain Cook were recent events; ships had sailed Antarctic seas but no one had yet reached the icy continent.  Curious seabirds figured frequently in published journals and fed the imagination of creative artists.

From:  Tickell, W.L.N., Albatrosses, Pica Press: East Sussex, 2000