or if I should come back to you as worn and woful as the “Ancient Mariner?” You will smile at my allusion; but I will disclose a secret. I have often attributed my attachment to, my passionate enthusiasm for, the dangerous mysteries of the ocean, to that production of the most imaginative of modern poets. There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand. I am practically industrious—pains-taking;—a workman to execute with perseverance and labour:—but besides this, there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore. But to return to dearer considerations.
In this addition to the 1831 edition, Shelley explicitly refers to her poetic source, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Walton muses wistfully on the "dangerous mysteries" of the ocean, proposing their similarity to poetry like Coleridge's, and citing them as the root of his own profound yearnings for the dangerous and sublime discoveries of exploration.


