eyes

Coleridge makes much of the power of eyes both to see and to captivate. As Becky pointed out in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the mariner holds his audience not by the power of his slight hand, but with his flashing eyes. In This Lime Tree Bower My Prison Coleridge refers to beauties and feelings that would have stayed with him had he retained his power to "see" them (aka, had his wife not made his world a prison with that scalding milk incident). Here his eyes are his way to access the mystical and real power of the land around him. Coleridge also references the power of the eyes to soak up nature's beauties in The Eolian Harp in line 36 where he notes that he watches the sunbeams dancing through his "half-closed eyelids." He is very conscious in mentioning the physical eye itself, rather than just leaving it to the reader to assume that indeed he views the world through his eyes.

In Rime of the Ancient Mariner the eyes become a much more powerful force, not simply a mechanism for seeing, but for transmitting the stories of what the poet has seen. The Mariner's eyes glisten with his story and also with a basic urge to impart his wisdom, what he deems necessary to share with his self selected audience.