Annotated Ancient Mariner: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The absence of twilight in the tropics—the quickness with which stars rush out and cold night follows hot day—was proverbial in Coleridge’s time. Here the poet couples it with the speed of the departing spectre ship. The stanza’s gloss had an interesting evolution (see Lowes, Chap. X, Sec. 4). In the first edition of Sibylline Leaves (containing the first printing of the poem with a marginal gloss), the margin beside this stanza is blank. But there exist several copies of Sibylline Leaves in which Coleridge added notes to this stanza. The earliest reads: “Between the tropics there is no twilight. As the sun’s last segment dips down, and the evening-gun is fired, the constellations appear arrayed.”