With some others of like mind they formed a little society, which they called the Pantisocracy, from Greek words meaning all-equal-rule.  They decided that they should all marry and then emigrate to the banks of the Susquehanna (chosen, it has been said, because of its beautiful name), and there form a little Utopia.  Property was to be in common, each man laboring on the land two hours a day in order to provide food for the company.  But the fine scheme came to nothing, for meanwhile none of the company had enough money to pay for his passage to the banks of the beautiful-sounding river.  Coleridge and Southey, however, carried out part of the program.  They both married, their wives being sisters.

Coleridge, about the same time as he married, published a volume of poems.  But as this did not bring him wealth he then tried various other ways of making a living.  He began a weekly paper which ceased after a few numbers, he lectured on history, and preached in various Unitarian chapels.  Then after a time he settled at Nether Stowey, where he was living when he met Wordsworth.

The two poets, as has been said, at once became friends, Coleridge having a deep and whole-hearted admiration for Wordworth’s genius.  “I speak with heartfelt sincerity,” he says, “and I think unblinded judgment, when I tell you that I feel a little man by his side.”

The two friends had many walks and talks together, shaping their ideas of what poetry should be.  They at length decided to publish a book together to be called Lyrical Ballads.

In this book there was published the poem which of all that Coleridge write is the best known, The Ancient Mariner.  It tells how this old old sailor stops a guest who is going to a wedding, and bids him hear a tale.  The wedding guest does not wish to stay, but the old man holds him with his skinny hand—­

    “He holds him with his glittering eye—­
        The Wedding Guest stood still,
    And listens like three years’ child: 
        The Mariner hath his will.”

He hath his will, and tells how the ship sailed forth gayly, and how it met after a time with storms, and cold, and fog, until at last it was all beset with ice.  Then when to the sailors all hope seemed lost, an albatross came sailing through the fog.  With joy they hailed it, the only living thing in that wilderness of ice.  They fed it with delight—­

    “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!”

Then on they gladly sailed, the albatross following, until one day the Ancient Mariner, in a mad moment, shot the beautiful bird.  In punishment for this deed terrible disasters fell upon that ship and its crew.  Under a blazing sun, in a hot and slimy sea filled with creeping, crawling things, they were becalmed—­

    “Day after day, day after day,
        We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
    As idle as a painted ship
        Upon a painted ocean.”