Since then, he periodically feels a great agony that can be relieved only by telling his story again. At the end, the wedding party comes out of the church, but the wedding guest, finally released form the Mariner's hold, finds he has no heart for the celebration. A sadder and a wiser man. The tale's mysteriousness perplexed many readers, so in later editions Coleridge added a set of explanatory marginal notes. But even these notes do not fully explain the significance of each force or spirit in the story.
Some readers track the appearance of the sun and moon as symbols of evil and good.