Three men are on their way to a wedding when one of them is stopped by an old man with a “long grey beard and […] glittering eye” (1): this is the Ancient Mariner. The Mariner ignores the Wedding Guest’s pleas to let him carry on to the party and begins his tale. The Wedding Guest chooses to stay, as he becomes drawn in by the old man and his story.

The Mariner’s tale tells of his time at sea, when he was a younger man, and how his ship and his crew members sailed southward. The Wedding Guest can hear happy sounds coming from the party and tries, once more, to get away, but finds he is too fascinated by the old man’s tale: “The wedding-guest he beat his breast, / Yet he cannot chuse but hear: / And thus spake on that ancyent Man, / The bright-eyed Marinere” (3).

The Mariner tells the Wedding Guest of the conditions in which he and his shipmates found themselves when a storm left them stranded at the South Pole. They were surrounded by ice, mist, and snow, and the only noise they can hear is the sound of the ice cracking.