THIS is National Poetry Day and the theme is water.

Here is a melodramatic scene from Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The mariner has shot the friendly albatross and now his ship sails alone in the vast Pacific.

from THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,

The furrow followed free;

We were the first that ever burst

Into that silent sea.

Down dropped the breeze, the sails dropped down,

'Twas sad as sad could be;

And we did speak only to break

The silence of the sea.

All in a hot and copper sky,

The bloody Sun, at noon,

Right up above the mast did stand,

No bigger than the Moon.

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, everywhere,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.