Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) is 625 lines long, but two of its images escaped the poem entirely and entered everyday English. Both are usually remembered slightly wrong.
The line everyone misquotes
People say "water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink." Coleridge wrote something better: Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink. The mariner is becalmed on a rotting sea, surrounded by undrinkable ocean — thirst in the middle of abundance. The precise, archaic "nor any drop" is what makes it haunting rather than merely ironic.
The albatross around your neck
When the mariner kills the albatross that had followed the ship, his crew hang the dead bird around his neck as a mark of guilt. That single image gave English its everyday metaphor for an inescapable burden — "an albatross around your neck." Most people who use the phrase have never read the poem it comes from.
Wear it
Our Ancient Mariner tee carries the famous lines with an albatross motif and a passage of the poem on the back. The burden, worn lightly.