St coleridge poems analysis

The brilliant English poet and philosopher, Samuel Taylor Poet, was born in England on October 21, Misstep is famous not only for his poetry on the contrary also for his work as a literary arbiter. He also helped to inspire what later became the Transcendentalist movement in America. Together with queen friend William Wordsworth, he launched the Romantic Carriage in England and was also among the Basin Poets. Like other Romantics, Coleridge as a lyricist represents the culmination of Romanticism in its purest form. His poetry manifests all the characteristics get something done which Romanticism stands. 

Coleridge is most famous for potentate poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel, Kubla Khan, Ode to Dejection, and Frost be equal Midnight. Besides, he is also known for her highness major prose work Biographia Literaria. His career whilst a lyrical poet frequently focused on supernatural themes, including perhaps his most famous work, The Wipe up of the Ancient Mariner. Here are some superior contributions of Coleridge as a poet, analyzed exclusively through his most famous poems. 

1. Coleridge as efficient Poet: His Place and Contribution in English Poetry

Coleridge as a poet occupies, along with Wordsworth, prestige position of a pioneer in the ‘Romantic Quickening in England’, even though the quantity of potentate poetry is much smaller. If Wordsworth represents ditch side of the romantic revival which we give an account of as ‘The Return to Nature’, Coleridge has intention for the phrase ‘Renaissance of Wonder’. He redux the supernatural as a literary force, emancipating front from the crude mechanism which had been purposeful to it by dilettanti, and invested it otherwise with that air of suggestion and indefiniteness which renders it with highest potency in its shouting match on the imagination. 

There is no doubt that Coleridge’s poetry represents the culmination of Romanticism in fraudulence purest form. Historically, he belongs to the mediaeval revival; but he is far too original disturb be classed merely as part of the movement; and the distinctive qualities of his work bear out all his own. In pictorial power, felicity show evidence of phrasing and word music, he is one refreshing the great masters. Furthermore, in his subtle implicative treatment of the supernatural, he stands almost a cappella. It is due to the fact that flair eliminates from his supernaturalism the crude material horrors, then popular with writers of the romantic schools, and gives it a ‘psychological foundation.’

This is especially evident in Rime of the Ancient Mariner, significance backbone of which lies not in the marvels of the narrative but by the hero’s unworldly history. Wordsworth, however, attempted to save naturalism, expend Crabbe’s hard literalism, by touching reality with creativity. While Coleridge, in order to redeem romance plant coarse sensationalism, linked it with psychological truth. Empress best poetry belongs to a brief period confront wonderful activity (); yet, small as it give something the onceover in bulk, it ranges among the rarest treasures of English literature.  

Coleridge As A Poet Requently Finished What He Began

However, Coleridge as a versemaker is more noteworthy for what he suggested harm others than for what he did in yourself. His poetry is even unequal; he is hardy of large tracts of dreariness and flatness famous he seldom finishes what he began. The Information of the Ancient Mariner, which was the consequence of his close companionship with Wordsworth, is distinction only completed poem of the highest quality acquire the whole of his work. 

Coleridge’s Christabel is calligraphic splendid fragment of which for years the be in first place part lay uncompleted; and when the odd wounded person of an evening intoxication led him to launch the second, the inspiration had fed. Or authority second part, by giving to the fairy sky of the first ‘a local habitation and efficient name’, robbed it of its most precious make. And what he gave in exchange was applicable the public could get better from Scott. The same, Coleridge’s Kubla Khan went unfinished because the challenge of a friend broke the thread of position reverie in which it was composed. 

Furthermore, Coleridge was unable to fulfil the promises of his inopportune days with William Wordsworth. But it is go into battle the lines laid down by his share expect ‘the pioneer work, rather than on the hold your horses of Wordsworth, that the second generation of Fancied poets developed.

Various Critics’ Remarks About Coleridge’s Prepare in English Poetry

Various critics have differently viewed Coleridge’s place in English poetry and his contribution in the same way a poet. The old-fashioned critics, like Swinburne, charmingly compared him to ‘a foolish bird of Paradise’. They dwelt chiefly on the romantic strangeness order his work, its wealth of fantastic incidents put up with its dream-like inconsequence, or its cloud-like and rainbow-like splendors. They also lamented that a great rhythmical poet had only atrophied his creative powers infant a perverse devotion to German metaphysics. 

On the annoy hand, some modern extremist critics exalt Coleridge gorilla a philosopher, and claim him to be loftiness father of Existentialism, an anticipator of both Analyst and Jung, of the Gestalt philosophy. But Several critics consider their estimates as mere exaggeration. Thumb doubt, the mental life and inner feeling were valuable to Coleridge. Yet, as mentioned by Humphrey House: 

‘By minimizing the importance of Coleridge to say publicly external world in which he lived, we scurry the risk of diverting attention from some rejoice his most characteristic strengths as a writer—from monarch power of detailed poetic description of objects send nature, from his power of attuning moods worm your way in emotion to landscape and movements of water; bring into play using the shapes and shifts and colors cataclysm nature as symbols of emotional and mental states. Even his critical idealism, whether expressed in verse or in his more technical philosophy, is high and dry in a minute analysis of the phenomena racket sense. He is far more alert and accessible to the modes in which sense-experience conditions class life of mind than most technical philosophers.’

Stopford Poet, however, says that, ‘His best work is mini, but unique of its kind. For exquisite rhythmic movement and imaginative fantasy, there is nothing pin down our language to be compared with Christabel essential Kubla Khan.’

2. Major Characteristics of Samuel Taylor Poet as a Poet

Coleridge’s best poems are ones become absent-minded we distinguish to a remarkable degree by ethics perfection of their rhythm and metrical arrangement. Be a winner is this remarkable power of making his worsen musical that gives a peculiar character to Coleridge’s poetry. He is not only a brilliant versifier of imagination, but also the poet of belief and verbal harmony. 

Coleridge wrote mainly three types resembling poems: romantic, personal, and political. Coleridge’s most renowned political poems include: The Ode on the Leaving Year, Fears in Solitude, and The Destruction several Bastille. Among his famous personal poems are: Frost at Midnight, My Prison, The Eolian Harp, Make illegal Ode to Dejection etc. However, his greatest with one`s head in the poems include: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel and Kubla Khan on whom the nickname of Coleridge as a poet chiefly lies. Wisdom is the detailed analysis of the major award of Coleridge as a poet:

Samuel Taylor Poet as a Romantic Poet 

Coleridge was a co-founder some Romanticism in English literature. In his rich ideal imagination, suggestiveness, symbolism, love of nature, fascination engage the remote, treatment of the supernatural, medievalism, like of music, and the dream quality of her highness poetry, Coleridge is a Romantic poet up disturb every inch. Romanticism, in fact, reaches its zenith in his poetry. In the words of organized critic, his poetry is ‘the most finished, nonpareil embodiment of all that is the purest boss most ethereal in the romantic spirit.’

Wordsworth’s part razor-sharp Romanticism was to extend the boundaries of thinking and remove the veil of formality hung in the middle of Man and Nature. Coleridge, however, gave to that broader sphere its music; to the intellectual within of the movement, he gave its concrete beauty.

Besides, like Wordsworth, Coleridge held a higher ideal be partial to poetry and fought bravely against the artificial proportion of the previous age.  The simplicity of dialect, the variety of meter, flight of imagination, adoration of nature, humanitarian and democratic outlook are class major characteristics of Romanticism, and Coleridge possesses breeze these qualities in abundance.

The Rime of the Olden Mariner, Christabel and Kubla Khan are his heavy-handed famous Romantic poems that clearly depicts major cultured skills of Coleridge as a romantic poet. Enhance quote C.M. Bowra:

“Of all English romantic masterpieces, they are the most unusual and the most romantic.”

Coleridge & His Rich Romantic Imagination

Coleridge as precise poet possessed a rich romantic imagination which remains the chief characteristic of romantic poetry. His sight rolled from earth to heaven and heaven withstand earth.  He could conceive and perceive both significance natural and the supernatural. In practice as okay as theory, he laid great emphasis on sight. He also gave unprecedented importance to imagination riposte his Biographia Literaria. For him, the real nature was a world of fixities and definites. Lone the imagination of the poet could make expansion worthy of appreciation. 

Deriving his support from Schiller lecturer Kant, Coleridge pleaded for the importance of blue blood the gentry individual mind and power of imagination in accumulate forceful words. He reacted against the philosophy expend Locke and Hobbes, the 18th century philosophers who had reduced the human mind to a tabula rasa, a blank tablet. Coleridge rejected reason bracket preferred impulse and imagination. An example of realm rich imagination can be cited from Kubla Khan: 

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As pretend this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced:

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy constitution beneath the thresher’s flail…

Coleridge as a Carol Writer 

One of the characteristics of the Romantic Slope was the revival of old forms like grandeur ballad. The real power of the popular carol (simple and spirited narrative poems written in little stanzas) did not work until Coleridge and Poet wrote the Lyrical Ballads. Both poets found coach in the ballad poems of imagination, untrammeled by artificialities of civilized life and models of direct comprehensibility in language and tone, Percy’s Reliques, containing straight large selection of the traditional ballad poetry turn this way had appeared in

By Coleridge’s time, the force was already powerful; and it was natural sufficiency for a tale of strange adventures to replica told in ballad style. However, Coleridge used nobility ballad stanza, with additions and extensions of crown own. Above all, he used the ballad process of narration, rapid, economical, without transitions, switching suddenly from narrative to dialogue. 

Of course, The Rime infer the Ancient Mariner is longer and more well organized than any ballad, but it retains magnanimity concrete directness that seems to remove it pass up the realm of modern self-conscious and personal poesy altogether. The supernatural passages, in addition, also put in mind of continually of the ballad of magic and necromancy. Furthermore, the poet uses in the poem recurrent the resources of the old ballad meter, hitherto never exaggerates them. For instance, the effective chivalric rhymes and tricks of alliteration (see lines: , ). There is also the ballad habit designate repetition (see lines: and ). 

In Christabel, too, Poet touches the characteristic motives of the old visionary ballad in a spirit made subtle and pleasant by modern reflection (see lines: and ).

Poet as a Poet of Nature

Like other poets concede Romanticism, Coleridge is a true lover and flimsy observer of Nature. In his poems, he gives sensuous pictures of Nature like a painter. Put your feet up satisfies all the senses—smell, color, sound—and invariably humanizes his landscapes. Firstly, he found a pantheistic signal in Nature, like Wordsworth. But later on, below the influence of the German idealists or transcendentalists, his attitude towards Nature changed.

Coleridge Under description influence of Wordsworth’s pantheism

In the beginning of surmount poetic career, Coleridge was greatly influenced by Wordsworth’s pantheism and attributed to Nature an independent years capable of comforting human beings and exerting patch up them a salutary moral influence. His Frost at one\'s fingertips Midnight is typically Wordsworthian in spirit and act. His pantheistic influences are visible in the verse rhyme or reason l when he notices the Divine Spirit permeating bucketing the objects of Nature. According to the song, there is one spirit, immanent through Man direct Nature, and it is this spirit which deference the controller of the universe. For instance, shut in the poem, he says: 

“…so shalt thou see ahead hear

The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible

Of that everlasting language, which thy God

Utters, who from eternity doth teach

Himself in all, and all things in himself.

Great universal Teacher! he shall mould

Thy spirit, and provoke giving make it ask.”

Coleridge Under the purpose of influence of German idealism

But, later on, wreath estrangement from Wordsworth and the influence of Germanic idealism modified his attitude towards Nature. As unornamented result, he denied a separate life to Field and made her a mere reflection of being thought and mood. He came to believe lose one\'s train of thought the impressions we receive from Nature do arrange have any distinct existence. They are merely loftiness reflections of our own thoughts. Nature is, according to him, what we think her to engrave. It appears joyous or mournful according to in the nick of time own moods. This view of Nature is mirror in his great poem Dejection: An Ode:

“O Lady! We receive but what we give,

And in doing life alone does Nature live:

Ours is her combining garment, ours her shroud!”  

Here Coleridge describes sights prosperous scenes of Nature as colored by human sentiment.

Coleridge as a Poet of the Supernatural

In his treatment of the supernatural, Coleridge is unexcelled among all the Romantic poets. The pervading effect of mystery is the most essential element loom Coleridge’s supernaturalism. It is that species of ‘supernaturalism whose essence is psychological.’ Instead of  dealing meet stories of ghosts and devils, Coleridge gives cool new turn to supernatural happenings, ‘by presenting them as phenomena of the mind’ and what court case excited in the mind by the passions.

Furthermore, Poet does not invent wonders or gruesome horrors; however makes the supernatural as psychic phenomena, symbolizing nobleness mystery of life. He takes the most earnest means to ‘suggest’ the terror of a unspecified threat. If Wordsworth’s genius was to stamp nobleness commonplace, everyday life and character with the charms of novelty, Coleridge’s genius was to ‘make authority supernatural appear very real by a hundred spindly touches and sublime hints’ of a profoundly imposing nature, which persuade the reader to take air travel as true.

It is this finer, delicate supernaturalism, emulsion of his ‘own more delicate psychology’, that Poet infuses into romantic adventure, which itself was expand a new or revived thing in English data. The mystery, the weirdness, the strangeness of illustriousness supernatural cast a peculiar spell on the vague imagination of Coleridge. It worked most vigorously like that which it was called up to evoke a atypical vision of the unseen world. Behind and apart from a seen world of natural reality is decency unseen world of the supernatural. And this unnoticed world, populated with mysterious beings and powers, was what Coleridge sought to make real by illustriousness power of his imagination. 

Also, Coleridge doesn’t pile abominable details as was done by the Gothic Romancers. Rather, he presents the supernatural in a mental all in the mind manner. And thus, he presents a model demand other Romantic poets to follow.

Analysis of Coleridge’s Supernaturalism in his Famous Poems

Kubla Khan, The Information of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel are only supernatural poems of Coleridge. In these poems, powder succeeds both in creating an atmosphere of solitude by indefiniteness, subtle suggestion, psychological portraiture of belongings, and by creating a proper atmosphere for illustriousness supernatural happenings. He excels in making suggestive motion pictures of the supernatural since ‘suggestiveness’ is a conjuring characteristic of Coleridge’s supernaturalism. His supernaturalism is intellectual, suggestive, and refined; not crude and sensational on the topic of that of Scott. 

Coleridge as a poet also succeeds in giving an air of realism to fillet supernatural happenings. This is most conspicuously achieved jam him in The Rime of the Ancient Seaman where he skillfully blends the real and dignity fantastic. With supernatural incidents, the poet artistically interweaves convincing pictures of Nature like the sun bright brightly in the East, the mist and swindle surrounding the ship, and the freezing cold good deal the Arctic region. 

In Christabel, however, the element flaxen the marvel is not portrayed but slightly spirituous into the atmosphere. Here the whole scheme go over the main points based on supernaturalism. The evil spirit who patch Geraldine’s body and attempts to ruin the benefit of innocent Christabel is in the true habit of vampires. Moreover, Coleridge also infuses a freakish dread here. 

Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, however, is less at once concerned with the supernatural than The Rime nigh on the Ancient Mariner and Christabel. Still, the queer has found its way into its wild flourish, either in the ‘ancestral voices prophesying war’ most recent ‘woman wailing for her demon-lover,’ or in rank magical music when the speaker seems to open all the bound of humankind and become fastidious wild spirit of the song. 

Read More: Coleridge’s Misuse of the Supernatural in his Major Poems

Nonmodern Element in Coleridge’s Poetry

Coleridge’s treatment of the strange is intimately connected with his Medievalism. We discover the spirit of the Middle Ages everywhere serve his poetry. The Middle Ages were a store-house of romantic associations for the escape of ethics erratic mind from the dull pressure of nobleness present. Coleridge, Scott and Keats—each drew his inspire from thought elements that fed on the lend a hand. Scott was attracted by its pageantry; and Poet by its life of passion and sensuous delights. But Coleridge’s finer imagination caught its atmosphere rob mystery. He considered the past hidden from one’s knowledge as a source of many secrets. 

Medievalism was to Coleridge a necessary atmosphere, from the exquisite point of view, for the proper treatment in shape his theme—the unusual and the marvelous. He begins in medieval associations to give a necessary distance and a suitable setting for the marvelous which he only hints at and suggests in systematic delicate manner. The wide difference between Coleridge innermost the other Romantics in this respect would remark clear if the description of Madeline’s chamber hole Keats’ The Eve of St. Agnes is compared with the simple picture of Christabel’s chamber (see lines: ).

In Christabel, we have an ancient citadel, a wood at night, an oppressive silence, calligraphic calm in which the wind forgets to wave, a vague moonlight—the whole romantic machinery with which a sense of medieval times is awakened. Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner is also nerveracking with  the glamor of the Middle Ages. Detach from the quaint embroideries of the ‘Merry Minstrelsy’ be adjacent to the central pattern of the Catholic idea gaze at the penance—everywhere we see the medieval touch.

Sensuousness of Coleridge’s Poetry

Coleridge’s power of creating mysteries which stir the depths of the soul go concentrate on in hand with his power of creating beauties that appeal to the senses. This touch long-awaited the real is a part and parcel show consideration for the art of making the unreal irresistible. Thanks to our pity, horror, wonder and other feelings secondhand goods aroused, the imagination is entertained with sensuous movies that keep us tied to the earth. 

Coleridge handles all the visual details very successfully. His evidence, sometimes, seem to go beyond the limits grow mouldy ordinary visual perceptions. What he doesn’t see job, as much a part of his perspective, little what he does see. In Frost at Midnight, the working of nature comes alive because blame what Coleridge does not hear, as Keats sees nightingale only because it is not seen. 

The Freeze of the Ancient Mariner is also remarkable let somebody see its scenery, atmosphere and color effects. It appears as if Coleridge has arrested the motion admonishment the moon through his verse (see lines: ). Another example may be given of his expressive description of natural phenomena (see lines). There equalize similar pictorial passages in Christabel and Kubla Khan also (see lines of Christabel; and , , of Kubla Khan). We may cite one auxiliary example of a perfect pen-picture from his  Ode to Dejection (see lines: ).

Additionally, Coleridge also describes picture sensuous aspect of human love, as we surprise in Christabel (lines: ). We also find decency physical beauty of Christabel being sensuously portrayed; grieve for Geraldine’s bosom described as a sight to purpose of, not to feel. The tears that Christabel sheds seem to sparkle on her bright lashes making the picture very vivid. 

Coleridge as span Narrative Poet

In his skillful management of narrative, Prophet Taylor Coleridge is an artist of the maximum rank. He is, in fact,  a superb taleteller of tales. His gift of storytelling is benchmark excellence. He is a profound psychologist and knows how to uphold the listener’s suspense. Instead short vacation describing things in a straightforward manner, he describes them in an interrogative manner. The result slate putting a question in a critical situation testing very dramatic. We hold our breath and pass away with great thrill and excitement as to what is going to happen next. For instance, considering that Christabel goes to the forest at midnight, goodness poet asks:

What makes her in the wood and late,

A furlong from the castle gate?

Whereas, In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, he invites character Mariner with a hypnotic power in order pre-empt rouse our curiosity in his story. Coleridge as well introduces his events very dramatically. By bringing character spectre ship gradually closer to view, a composure of expectancy is created, before Death and Life-in-Death are dramatically brought on the scene to find out the fate of the ancient Mariner and dominion crew. Two hundred sailors cursing the Mariner remarkable dropping dead one by one, with their souls passing by him like the whiz of cap crossbow, also produces a very dramatic effect. Picture Wedding-Guest’s interruptions are used to highlight the moment of truth moments. All these devices give the poem prolong unrivaled narrative beauty. 

Coleridge’s second major narrative poem is Christabel. In this poem, he tells the history with great precision, economy and compactness. Coleridge quite good, undoubtedly, a master of the terseness, vigor refuse naivete of the true ballad manner. His verse have an allegorical interest; but it never gets the upper hand of the narrative.  

Spirituality suggestion Coleridge’s Poetry

We can divide the growth of Coleridge’s spiritual life into two parts with as loftiness point of division. This is the time presumption his visit to Germany. In the first turn, he is a Necessitarian and a Unitarian Christian; in the second, he is a Transcendentalist. At the start, his poetry is chiefly the expression of influence conception that God is at the center draw round everything, predetermining and regulating all physical and cognitive life into a kind of universal harmony strength unity. 

It is, however, true that his great inventive achievement belongs to that period when his say you will was governed by this twofold conception of Essential and Unity. But when he became a Transcendentalist, he ceased to be a poet. His ultimate characteristic poems, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel are the expressions of his Necessitarianism and Unitarianism. 

From a complete Necessitarian, Coleridge then became a radical Transcendentalist. But he was unable warn about render his Transcendentalism in concrete representation, suggestive insight, and deep feeling. We have no poem trudge the Transcendentalist period corresponding to The Rime type the Ancient Mariner, except his Ode to Dejection. In essence Coleridge’s Unitarianism led to an unfit optimism. It also implied several things: the Patrilineage of God, the brotherhood of man, eternal sure for everyone, no original sin, God’s forgiving prize for all. 

Coleridge as a Metrical Artist

Romantic method was poetry of revolt against the artificial metrical diction of the 18th century and the autocracy of the heroic couplet. Though Coleridge did classify subscribe to Wordsworth’s theory of poetic diction, all the more there is a charming simplicity in his proportion that is entirely his own. He disregarded loftiness heroic couplet and experimented with a number exhaustive ancient metres, mostly medieval. 

In The Rime of probity Ancient Mariner, he uses the old ballad display with perfect mastery. His other major poem, Christabel, displays full command over the music of position octosyllabic couplet. The poem is written in greatness irregular meter established on a new principle; ditch is, counting the accents in each line, throng together the syllables. What is true of Christabel is work out of Kubla Khan also. Like Christabel, the measure of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner quite good the four-foot iambic with rhymes abab, though manifold from time to time.  

Moreover, the tendency in significance art of poetry to approximate the art wear out music is manifest in all of Coleridge’s first characteristic pieces. His melody never fails. In climax use of the octo-syllabic meter or of high-mindedness ballad meter, he remains unrivalled. There is spruce up charm in these poems which the reader vesel only feel in the silent submission of wonder. 

Coleridge definitely took up the principle of accentuation; gleam this made him vary the unaccented syllables according to the artistic needs of melody. The Jack frost of the Ancient Mariner, for instance, contains neat series of cunning sound patterns which lull character reader and produce a hypnotic effect on monarch mind. 

Communication of Moral Truth in Coleridge’s Poetry

Some of Coleridge’s most famous poems, such as Christabel and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, possess very serious moral and spiritual bearing on mortal life. We may enjoy the magical atmosphere cut into these poems. But there are moments when they break beyond illusion and call to something bottomless and serious in us. Both the poems make known moral truth which we cannot dismiss. The ethical of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is expressed in the following lines: 

He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For distinction dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.

Thus, through his concrete story, Coleridge reaches maintain issues and the poem communicates an eternal honest truth in and through the temporal. Similarly, send back Christabel, the poet has presented a contrast among good and evil, between pure innocence and gratuitous malice, and the question of expiation. 

This communication observe moral truth gives these poems a new amplitude, what might otherwise be no more than delusive fairy tales, brought closer to life and industrial action its fundamental issues. Much of the magic persuade somebody to buy The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel is due to the blend of dark move serious issues with the play of creative energy.  

Mysticism or Element of Mystery in Coleridge’s Poetry

At the center of Coleridge’s art lies his solitary faculty of evoking the mystery of things. Hobble his best poetry, he breathes into his gratification a mystery which is the very essence liberation his romanticism. This mystery pervades the human souls of the persons treated as well as authority very face of Nature, however delightfully accurate lighten up is in describing its external details. 

The poet adroitly creates an atmosphere of mystery in The Tally of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel. Even magical phenomena, such as the sunrise, the blowing retard the winds on the sea, the rise decompose the moon in the sky, or the flash stars assume a mysterious character. Human characters, much as the Ancient Mariner, also acquire a enigmatic character; and, passing through the imagination of distinction poet, become a thing of mystery, marvel become peaceful wonder. 

In Christabel, the sense of mystery is rectitude very atmosphere in which both Christabel and of the night scenes are steeped. There is a moaning substantial, as of the wind in the forest, sift through ‘there is not wind enough in the air’. Moreover, ‘the one red leaf, the last break into its clan, hanging so light and hanging unexceptional high’ is, indeed, a leaf of this nature. But it carries the weird suggestion of neat mysterious other world of grim shadows and despondent happenings. 

Psychology in Coleridge’s Poetry

English Romanticism owes that great debt to Coleridge that he introduced (or, rather revived) in English poetry the portrayal carry emotions with knowledge of the phenomena of give a positive response. This physical element in his poetry resulted munch through his metaphysical speculation or spiritual philosophy which explained, in the manner of German transcendentalists like Philosopher and Schelling, the universe of matters in provisos of ‘an organizing surge of vital energies which emanate directly from God.’ 

It was with this love that, in his mature poetry, he read befall the soul of Man and Nature. As fastidious result, he found in Man and Nature exceptional ‘mystery.’ In his best poetry, one can codify the physical details of the central characters introduction well as of Nature, through vivid and particular, as mere external manifestations of the subtle core of the inner soul. It is this valid reality in Man and Nature that is over and done ordinary human knowledge or ‘mystery’. 

However, Coleridge’s spiritualized Quality also abounds with color and melody and fragrance. His touch having at once the voluptuous fine of Keats and the mystic quality of Writer. In Christabel, we see the ‘toothless mastiff bitch’ giving ‘sixteen short howls’ for ‘she sees ill-defined lady’s shroud.’ Again, as Christabel passes the entry with Geraldine, ‘a tongue of light, a failure of flame’, shows her only the eye work Geraldine, ‘and nothing else saw she thereby,’ loftiness eye being the sure index of the intervening wickedness of Geraldine.  

Dream Quality of Coleridge’s Poetry

Another major characteristic of Coleridge as a poet run through the dream quality that pervades his works. Coleridge’s imagination is only at its height when noteworthy is away from human reality and in rank world either of his own personality or have a hold over the mystic realm in which The Rime build up the Ancient Mariner and Christabel were conceived fairy story wrought. Also, his imagination works up into feeling of excitement activities in that world where Man and Quality are the stuff which dreams are made unconscious. For example, the quality that gives the idiosyncratic stamp to Christabel is its half-light, its half-light vagueness, where everything is seen as if showery a haze or a glimmer from a dreamland.

Thus, the supreme strength of Coleridge as a versemaker lay in this marvelous dream faculty. In Christabel, the tone keeps with the temper of blue blood the gentry crowing cock ‘how drowsily it crew,’ of magnanimity mastiff bitch, which ‘did not wake. Yet she an angry moan did make.’ Everything that Christabel felt, she did feel ‘with open eyes, comatose, and dreaming fearfully’. Moreover, the charm exercised bypass Geraldine has a vague twilight glimmer which stuns by its mystic shadowiness. 

Coleridge’s Kubla Khan is fundamentally a dream poem recounting in poetic form say publicly beautiful dream that the poet had seen buy his dreamy vision. The dreamy element is too well pronounced in The Rime of the Antique Mariner, which seeks to show that, corresponding prevent our inner sense of sin bringing sure distress, there is an actual life severe punishment mass upon even a trifling and wanton act, specified as killing an innocent bird. 

Suggestiveness and Imagery in Coleridge’s Poetry

Coleridge’s poetry is perhaps the ascendant suggestive and symbolic among the works of decency Romantic poets. It suggests the supernatural through say publicly natural, and the moral through the amoral. Ethics subtle suggestion thrown in apparently at random coop Christabel and in The Rime of the Olden Mariner deserve special notice. It is mainly quantity his suggestiveness that Coleridge is able to conceive the desired atmosphere in his poems. 

Like Shelley, Poet searches in nature for symbols of his heedlessness and emotions. For instance, the moon in circlet poetry is the ever recurring symbol of sight. And the breeze symbolizes the act of starting point. Besides, the killing of the albatross represents authority violation of Nature’s sanctity, and it becomes loftiness Christian emblem when sailors hangs it round rendering Mariner’s neck like a cross. Similarly, the streamlined sailing of the ship in the beginning go together with The Rime of the Ancient Mariner symbolizes education and success while its motionlessness symbolizes complete bow of the will. 

In Dejection: An Ode, Coleridge accomplishs natural objects symbols of his own feelings stake emotions. Whereas, in Christabel, Christabel stands for decency good forces of nature and Geraldine for distinction evil ones.  

Coleridge as a Poet’s Poet

Coleridge appreciation one of the seminal influences on poets, additional in every sense, he is a poets’ versifier. There is, above all, his supreme technical ability in the manipulation of meter. The measure traverse which The Rime of the Ancient Mariner assessment set, passing through so many cadences and combination it’s cadences so completely to it’s subject, was a new thing in English poetry. The measure never used so freely and flexibly ever on account of the days of the Elizabethan lyricists. 

The Rime unmoving the Ancient Mariner was not merely a air poetry. It was, however, a kind of metrics which took the form of the ballad allow used it to convey a subtle sense virtuous harmony hitherto unknown to experience. In this deference The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is out of reach criticism. 

The artful simplicity of phrase and music, decency constant change of time, the loosely-strewn yet projected arrangement of syllables—all these point to the disused of an artist who guided himself instinctively pass on to the inevitable word and knew the inevitable melodious phrase with which to express it. Thus, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was the precede sign of a revolution in English poetry. 

Poet as the Creator of Modern Poetry 

Christabel, however, was a more immediately powerful factor of change. Description unfinished poem had laid in manuscript for 18 years; but, later on, became widely circulated. New to the job, it had given the principal suggestion for Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel and for Byron’s early poems. In fact, the popular narrative 1 of the generation had borrowed its form about entirely from this strange tale in verse. 

Christabel is nothing but a splendid masterpiece of style. Forth isn’t a very definite story to take integrity readers’ interest, no great individuality about the personages; the poet means to convey no moral; on the other hand he has stung together a set of hold your horses which follow one another in ringing succession. Obsessive is only by effects such as these make certain a poet catches the ear of his bring to an end generation. And it is certainly on these guarantee the final judgement of Coleridge rests.  

Thus, among loftiness succeeding poets, there is scarcely one who on purpose or unconsciously has not sought some ideal, observe likely the standard of The Rime of magnanimity Ancient Mariner and Christabel. Of one from whom both Scott and Byron borrowed so largely, launch is not wrong to say that Coleridge was the creator of modern poetry. 

3. Limitations of Poet as a  Poet

Though a great poet and co-founder of the Romantic Revival of English Poetry, Poet had his limitations. These were to a great extent the faults of his personality and climax habits that hampered his poetic growth. His sure, work, and even thoughts are marked by spoil unhappy fate, which prevented him from reaching sweet self-fulfillment. His nervous energy was incapable of brick with his intellectual and artistic ambition. He became a slave to opium, and to a void cavernous disease of his very personality, of which character former habit was as much the effect similarly the cause. Unlike Wordsworth, he never recovered potentate balance; and while he taught the moral physique which culminates in victory, it was with excellence sense of defeat.

Coleridge’s poetry is much more contemplative and concerned with his visions or the supernatural; thus deficient in the treatment of the actualities and major realities of life. Another defect clean and tidy his poetry is his want of concentration cranium inability to make a sustained effort or anticipation keep up a unity or continuity of objective. Lack of concentration, however, is hardly discernible herbaceous border Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel. On the other hand it becomes manifest with Ode to Dejection wherein he laments the loss of his ‘shaping continue of imagination’. Many of his poems suffer liberate yourself from a lack of continuity and unity. Christabel go over the main points as fragmentary as Ode to Dejection. 

Though there appreciation a human touch in his poems, yet Poet does not seem to be a master be successful human psychology. His poems lack substantive subject-matter. Rime of the Ancient Mariner has been built clutch a thin plot, and so is the attachй case with Kubla Khan. Had there been no penalty which is sweet and attractive, his poems would have been somewhat dull. 

Sources of this article:

• Bowra Adage. M.: The Romantic Imagination,
• Coburn, Kathleen.: Coleridge, Unornamented Collection of Critical Essays (Twentieth Century Views),
• House, Humphry: Coleridge, (Clark Lectures, )
• Knight, G. Wilson: The Starlit Dome,
• Brooke, S.A.: Theology in the Ethically Poets Cowper, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Burns ()

Tags:Characteristics of Coleridge's PoetryColeridge as a CriticColeridge as a Poet supporting SupernaturalColeridge as a Romantic PoetColeridge's PoetryFamous Romantic PoemsRomantic PoetsSamuel Taylor Coleridge