( full title , The Rime of the Ancient Mariner )
a long poem (1798) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge . In it an old sailor tells a wedding guest how he once shot an albatross (= a large sea bird considered lucky by sailors). His friends hung the bird around his neck as a punishment. They all died of thirst, and he was left alive to tell his story to anyone who would listen. The best-known lines from the poem are these:
Water, water, everywhere
Nor any drop to drink.