Melville Talks to Coleridge

As any member of my family will tell you, I am often stupid. So it's taken me till chapter 51 in Moby-Dick to realize that I'm reading an alternative version of Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. To wit:

from Moby-Dick (1851):

Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and thither before us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable sea-ravens. And every morning, perched on our stays, rows of these birds were seen; and in spite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp, as though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing appointed to desolation, and therefore fit roosting place for their homeless selves. And heaved and heaved, still unresting heaved the black sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience; and the great mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had bred.

from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1797-98):

At length did cross an Albatross,

Thorough the fog it came;

As if it had been a Christian soul,

We hailed it in God's name.

It ate the food it ne'er had eat,

And round and round it flew.

The ice did split with a thunder-fit;

The helmsman steered us through!

And a good south wind sprung up behind;

The Albatross did follow,

And every day, for food or play,

Came to the mariners' hollo!

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,

It perched for vespers nine;

Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,

Glimmered the white Moon-shine.

Even the first lines of these works seem to speak to each--"Call me Ishmael." "It is an Ancient Mariner" . . . perhaps Ishmael is a Youthful Mariner; perhaps Ahab is the Ancient; perhaps the white whale and the albatross are metaphorical kindred.

No doubt the scholars figured this all out long ago, but I'm not so quick.