Assess "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" as a ballad.

A ballad in literature is a narrative poem that usually
tells a dramatic story. Early ballads in English and Irish literature that were handed
down orally are folk ballads; their authors are unknown. Ballads that are composed as
literary works by identified authors are literary ballads. "The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner" is a literary ballad by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one that tells a very
enthralling story of supernatural events on a ship at
sea.

Traditionally, ballads are composed in four-line
stanzas. They follow a set pattern of
rhythm.

• The first and third lines are iambic
  tetrameter, meaning they follow a weak/strong pattern of rhythm; each line has four
  strong beats as the syllables of the words are
  pronounced.


• The second and fourth lines are iambic
  trimeter, meaning they follow the weak/strong pattern of rhythm, but each line has three
  strong beats.

Coleridge's poem follows this
ballad structure with few exceptions. Here is the poem's third stanza with the strong
beats underlined:

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(1) He holds him with his skinny
hand.

(2) "There was a ship," quoth
he.

(3) "Hold off! unhand me, graybeard
loon!"

(4) Eftsoons his hand dropped
he.

When you read the lines
aloud, it is easy to hear the rhythm in them, like beats on a drum: four beats in lines
1 and 3; 3 beats in lines 2 and 4.

Also, ballads have a
definite rhyme scheme with the second and fourth lines rhyming. In the stanza above, the
second and fourth lines both end in "he," but that counts! Other stanzas show perfect
rhymes in the second and fourth lines: three/me; kin/din; still/will,
for example, the pairs of rhymes from the first, second, and fourth stanzas
of the poem.

Coleridge's poem doesn't follow perfect ballad
structure. Some stanzas have six lines, but they do follow the same pattern of
alternating lines in the rhythm pattern. Overall, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is
an excellent example of a literary ballad: It tells a very dramatic story and closely
conforms to the patterns of rhyme and rhythm.

There is,
however, something unusual about it. It is an example of a lyrical ballad, a new
literary form created by Coleridge and English poet William Wordsworth. As a lyrical
ballad, the speaker (in this case the old mariner) expresses his feelings and shares his
thoughts as the story is told.