William Wordsworth
&
Samuel Taylor
Coleridge
Contents:
- Wordsworth’s & Coleridge’s biographies
- Philosophical concepts
- Major works
William Wordsworth’s biography
William Wordsworth was a major English romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, helped launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their 1798 joint
publication, Lyrical Ballads.
The second of five children, Wordsworth was born on 7, Apritl,1770 in Cockermouth in
Cumberland. With the death of his mother in 1778, his father sent him to Hawkshead
Grammar School. In 1783 his father, who was a lawyer and the solicitor for the Earl of
Lonsdale, died. After their father’s death, the Wordsworth children were left under the
guardianship of their uncles. Although any aspects of his boyhood were positive, he
recalled bouts of loneliness and anxiety. It took him many ears to recover from the
death of his parents and his separation from his siblings. Wordsworth began attending
St. John’s College, Cambridge in 1787. In 1790, he visited Revolutionary France and
supported the Republican movement. The following year, he graduated from
Cambridge without distinction.
In November of 1791, Wordsworth returned to France and took a walking tour of
France that included the Alps and Italy. He fell in love with a French woman, Annette
Vallon, who in 1792 gave birth to their child, Caroline. Because of lack of money and
Britain’s tensions with France, he returned to England that year, but he supported
Vallon and his daughter as best he could in later life.
1793 saw Wordsworth’s first published poetry with the collections An Evening Walk and
Descriptive Sketches. He received a legacy of £900 from Raisley Calvert in 1795 so that he
could pursue writing poetry. That year, he also met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in
Somerset. The two poets quickly developed a close friendship. In 1797, Wordsworth
and his sister, Dorothy, moved to Somerset, just a few miles away from Coleridge’s
home in Nether Stowey. Together, Wordsworth and Coleridge produced Lyrical Ballads
(1798), an important work in the English Romantic movement.
The volume had neither the name of Wordsworth or Coleridge as author. One of
Wordsworth’s most famous poems, ‘Tintern Abbey’, was published in the work, along
with Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. The second edition, published in 1800,
had only Wordsworth listed as author. A third edition of Lyrical Ballads, published in
1802, contained more poems by Wordsworth, including a preface to the poems. This
Preface is considered a central work of Romantic literary theory.
Wordsworth, Dorothy, and Coleridge then travelled to Germany. During the harsh
winter of 1798-1799, Wordsworth lived with Dorothy in Goslar, and despite extreme
stress and loneliness, he began work on an autobiographical piece later titled The
Prelude. He and his sister moved back to England, now to Dove Cottage in Grasmere in
the Lake District, and this time with fellow poet Robert Southey nearby. Wordsworth,
Coleridge, and Southey came to be known as the ‘Lake Poets’. Through this period, many
of his poems revolve around themes of death, endurance, separation and grief.
In 1802, he and Dorothy travelled to France to visit Annette and Caroline. Later that
year, he married a childhood friend, Mary Hutchinson. Dorothy did not appreciate the
marriage at first, but lived with the couple and later grew close to Mary. The following
year, Mary gave birth to the first of five children, John.
Both Coleridge’s health and his relationship to Wordsworth began showing signs of
decay in 1804. That year Wordsworth befriended Robert Southey.
Two of his children, Thomas and Catherine, died in 1812. The following year, he moved
to Rydal Mount, Ambleside where he spent the rest of his life.
Dorothy suffered from severe illness in 1829 that rendered her invalid for the reminder
of her life. In 1835, Worsworth gave Annette and Caroline the money they needed for
support. The government awarded him a civil list pension amounting to £300 a year in
1842.
With the death in 1843 of Robert Southey, Wordsworth became Poet Laureate. William
Wordsworth in Rydal Mount in 1850.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s biography
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on October 21, 1772 in Ottery St. Mary in
Devonshire. His father, the Reverend John Coleridge, was a vicar. After the death of his
father in 1781, he was sent to Christ’s Hospital, a boarding school in London. In later
life, Coleridge idealised his father as a pious innocent, but his relationship with his
mother was difficult. His childhood was characterised by attention-seeking, which has
been linked with his dependent personality as an adult, and he was rarely allowed to
return home during his schooldays. From 1791 until 1974 Coleridge attended Jesus
College at the University of Cambridge. In 1792 he won the Browne Gold Medal for an
Ode that he wrote on the slave trade. In November, 1793, he left college and enlisted in
the royal dragoons, perhaps because of debt or because the girl he loved had rejected
him. His brothers arranged for his discharge a few months later and he was readmitted
to Jesus College, although he left Cambridge without a degree. At the university he was
introduced to political and theological ideas then considered radical, including those of
the poet Robert Southey. Coleridge joined Southey in a plan, soon abandoned, to find a
utopian communist-like society, called pantisocracy, in the wilderness of Pennsylvania.
In 1795 the two friends married sisters Sarah and Edith Fricker, but Coleridge’s
marriage proved unhappy. Southey departed for Portugal, but Coleridge remained in
England. In 1796 he published Poems on Various Subjects. In 1795 Coleridge met poet
William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. They became immediate friends. Around
1796, Coleridge started using opium as a pain reliever. His and Dorothy Wordsworth’s
notebooks record that he suffered from a variety of medical complains, including
toothache and facial neuralgia. There appears to have been no stigma associated with
taking opium then, but also little understanding of the physiological or psychological
aspects of addiction. The years 1797 and 1798, during which the friends lived in Nether
Stowey, Somerset, were among the most fruitful of Coleridge’s life. Besides the Ancient
Mariner, he composed the symbolic Kubla Khan, written- Coleridge himself claimed- as
a result of an opium dream.
During this period he also produce his much-praised ‘conversation’ poems
This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, Frost at Midnight, and Nightingale. In the
autumn of 1798 Coleridge and Wordsworth left for a stay in Germany;
Coleridge soon went his own way and spent much of his time in university
towns. During this period he became interested in German philosophy,
especially the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant. In 1800 he returned
to England and shortly thereafter settled with his family and friends at
Keswick in the Lake District of Cumberland to be near Grasmere, where
Wordsworth had moved. Soon, however, he was beset by marital problems,
illnesses, increased opium dependency, tensions with Wordsworth, and a lack
of confidence in his poetic powers, all of which fuelled the composition of
Dejection: An Ode and intensification of his philosophical studies. From 1804 to
1806, Coleridge lived in Malta and travelled in Sicily and Italy, in hope that
leaving Britain’s damp climate would improve his health and thus enable him
to reduce his consumption of opium. For while he had a civil-service job as
the Public Secretary of the British administration in Malta, assisting governor
Sir Alexander John Ball. Between 1808 and 1819 this ‘giant against dwarfs’, as
he was often considered by his contemporaries, gave a series of lectures in
London and Bristol- those on Shakespeare renewed interest in the playwright
as a model for contemporary writers.
In 1816 Coleridge, his addiction worsening, his spirits depressed, and his
family alienated, took residence in the home of the physician James Gillman,
in Highgate. In Gillman’s home he finished his major prose work, the
Biographia Literaria (1817), a volume composed of 25 chapters of
autobiographical notes and dissertations on various subjects, including some
incisive literary theory and criticism.
He died of heart failure in Highgate on July 25, 1834.
Philosophical concepts
The publication of Lyrical
Ballads in 1798 introduced
some new literary ideas.
Wordsworth and
Coleridge both had
strong, and sometimes
conflicting opinions
about what constituted
well-written poetry. Their
ideas were centred
around the origins of
poetry in the poet and the
role of poetry in the
world.
Wordsworth wrote a preface to Lyrical Ballads in which he puts forth his ideas about
poetry. His conception of poetry hinges on three major premises. Wordsworth asserts
that poetry is the language of the common man:
To this knowledge which all men carry about with them, and to these sympathies in
which without any other discipline than that of our daily life we are fitted to take
delight, the poet principally directs his attention.
Poetry should be understandable to anybody living in the world. Wordsworth eschews
the use of lofty, poetic diction, which in his mind is not related to the language of real
life. He sees poetry as acting like Nature, which touches all living things and inspires
and delights them. Wordsworth calls for poetry to be written in the language of the
"common man," and the subjects of the poems should also be accessible to all
individuals regardless of class or position. Wordsworth also makes the points that
"poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from
emotion recollected in tranquility". These two points form the basis for Wordsworth's
explanation of the process of writing poetry. First, some experience triggers a
transcendent moment, an instance of the sublime. The senses are overwhelmed by this
experience; the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" leaves an individual
incapable of articulating the true nature and beauty of the event. It is only when this
emotion is "recollected in tranquility" that the poet can assemble words to do the
instance justice. It is necessary for the poet to have a certain personal distance from the
event or experience being described that he can compose a poem that conveys to the
reader the same experience of sublimity. With this distance the poet can reconstruct the
"spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" the experience caused within himself.
In "I wandered lonely as a cloud," Wordsworth uses the sonnet form to express his
ideas about poetry being the spontaneous overflow of emotion recollected in
tranquility:
For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
While Wordsworth's critical ideas obviously worked for his poetry, Coleridge differed
in his take on the art. Coleridge did not agree that poetry is the language of the common
man. He thought that lowering diction and content simply made it so that the poet had
a smaller vocabulary of both words and concepts to draw from. Coleridge focused
mainly on imagination as the key to poetry. He divided imagination into two main
components: primary and secondary imagination. In Biographia Literaria, one of his
significant theoretical works, he writes:
The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human
perception, and as a repetition in the finite of the eternal act of creation of the infinite I
AM. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, coexisting with the conscious
will, yet still identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in
degree, and in the mode of its operation.
It is the imagination involved in the poetry that produces a higher quality verse. The
primary imagination is a spontaneous creation of new ideas, and they are expressed
perfectly. The secondary imagination is mitigated by the conscious act of imagination;
therefore, it is hindered by not only imperfect creation, but also by imperfect expression.
To further subdivide the act of imagination, Coleridge introduces his concept of fancy.
Fancy is the lowest form of imagination. With fancy there is no creation involved; it is
simply a reconfiguration of existing ideas. Rather than composing a completely original
concept or description, the fanciful poet simply reorders concepts, putting them in a
new and, possibly, fresh relationship to each other.
Coleridge also writes that poetry "reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation
of opposite or discordant qualities". Through juxtaposition ideas, concepts,
and descriptions are made clear. The more imaginative the juxtaposition is, the
more exciting the poem becomes.
As with Wordsworth, Coleridge also combines his theoretical ideas in his
poetry. He abandons Wordsworth's notion of poetry for the common man, and
uses lofty language, poetic diction, and subject matter that is specialized.
While he still holds a reverence for Nature inherent to romantic literature, his
poems are not exclusively based around the natural. He makes use of primary
imagination in his work, because it is the kind of imagination he values most,
and avoids secondary imagination or fancy as much as possible. "Kubla Kahn"
illustrates his use of primary imagination:
In Xanadu did Kubla Kahn
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
The poem is the manifestation of a drug-induced vision. The lines have come
to Coleridge unbidden, and represents the creation of a previously nonexistent
setting. Coleridge also uses highly imaginative images to create juxtaposition
in the poem. He writes, "A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice!", and uses
this image twice in the poem.
Coleridge and Wordsworth valued artful poetry.
Both poets pay close attention to form and diction in their work, and create
poems that are independent units of thought.
Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner
-plot
-comment
Plot
Three young men are walking together to a wedding, when one of them is detained by a grizzled old sailor. The
young Wedding-Guest angrily demands that the Mariner let go of him, and the Mariner obeys. But the young
man is transfixed by the ancient Mariner's "glittering eye" and can do nothing but sit on a stone and listen to his
strange tale. The Mariner says that he sailed on a ship out of his native harbour--"below the kirk, below the hill, /
Below the lighthouse top"--and into a sunny and cheerful sea. Hearing bassoon music drifting from the direction
of the wedding, the Wedding-Guest imagines that the bride has entered the hall, but he is still helpless to tear
himself from the Mariner's story. The Mariner recalls that the voyage quickly darkened, as a giant storm rose up
in the sea and chased the ship southward. Quickly, the ship came to a frigid land "of mist and snow," where "ice,
mast-high, came floating by"; the ship was hemmed inside this maze of ice. But then the sailors encountered an
Albatross, a great sea bird. As it flew around the ship, the ice cracked and split, and a wind from the south
propelled the ship out of the frigid regions, into a foggy stretch of water. The Albatross followed behind it, a
symbol of good luck to the sailors. A pained look crosses the Mariner's face, and the Wedding-Guest asks him,
"Why look'st thou so?" The Mariner confesses that he shot and killed the Albatross with his crossbow.
At first, the other sailors were furious with the Mariner for having killed the bird that made the breezes blow.
But when the fog lifted soon afterward, the sailors decided that the bird had actually brought not the breezes but
the fog; they now congratulated the Mariner on his deed. The wind pushed the ship into a silent sea where the
sailors were quickly stranded; the winds died down, and the ship was "As idle as a painted ship / Upon a
painted ocean." The ocean thickened, and the men had no water to drink; as if the sea were rotting, slimy
creatures crawled out of it and walked across the surface. At night, the water burned green, blue, and white with
death fire. Some of the sailors dreamed that a spirit, nine fathoms deep, followed them beneath the ship from the
land of mist and snow. The sailors blamed the Mariner for their plight and hung the corpse of the Albatross
around his neck like a cross.
A weary time passed; the sailors became so parched, their mouths so dry, that they were unable to speak. But
one day, gazing westward, the Mariner saw a tiny speck on the horizon. It resolved into a ship, moving toward
them. Too dry-mouthed to speak out and inform the other sailors, the Mariner bit down on his arm; sucking the
blood, he was able to moisten his tongue enough to cry out, "A sail! a sail!" The sailors smiled, believing they
were saved. But as the ship neared, they saw that it was a ghostly, skeletal hull of a ship and that its crew
included two figures: Death and the Night-mare Life-in-Death, who takes the form of a pale woman with golden
locks and red lips, and "thicks man's blood with cold." Death and Life-in-Death began to throw dice, and the
woman won, whereupon she whistled three times, causing the sun to sink to the horizon, the stars to instantly
emerge. As the moon rose, chased by a single star, the sailors dropped dead one by one--all except the Mariner,
whom each sailor cursed "with his eye" before dying. The souls of the dead men leapt from their bodies and
rushed by the Mariner.
The Wedding-Guest declares that he fears the Mariner, with his glittering eye and his
skinny hand. The Mariner reassures the Wedding-Guest that there is no need for
dread; he was not among the men who died, and he is a living man, not a ghost.
Alone on the ship, surrounded by two hundred corpses, the Mariner was
surrounded by the slimy sea and the slimy creatures that crawled across its surface.
He tried to pray but was deterred by a "wicked whisper" that made his heart "as dry
as dust." He closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of the dead men, each of who
glared at him with the malice of their final curse. For seven days and seven nights
the Mariner endured the sight, and yet he was unable to die. At last the moon rose,
casting the great shadow of the ship across the waters; where the ship's shadow
touched the waters, they burned red. The great water snakes moved through the
silvery moonlight, glittering; blue, green, and black, the snakes coiled and swam and
became beautiful in the Mariner's eyes. He blessed the beautiful creatures in his
heart; at that moment, he found himself able to pray, and the corpse of the Albatross
fell from his neck, sinking "like lead into the sea." The Mariner continues telling his
story to the Wedding-Guest. Free of the curse of the Albatross, the Mariner was able
to sleep, and as he did so, the rains came, drenching him. The moon broke through
the clouds, and a host of spirits entered the dead men's bodies, which began to move
about and perform their old sailors' tasks. The ship was propelled forward as the
Mariner joined in the work. The Wedding-Guest declares again that he is afraid of
the Mariner, but the Mariner tells him that the men's bodies were inhabited by
blessed spirits, not cursed souls. At dawn, the bodies clustered around the mast, and
sweet sounds rose up from their mouths--the sounds of the spirits leaving their
bodies. The spirits flew around the ship, singing. The ship continued to surge
forward until noon, driven by the spirit from the land of mist and snow, nine
fathoms deep in the sea. At noon, however, the ship stopped, then began to move
backward and forward as if it were trapped in a tug of war. Finally, it broke free, and
the Mariner fell to the deck with the jolt of sudden acceleration. He heard two
disembodied voices in the air; one asked if he was the man who had killed the
Albatross, and the other declared softly that he had done penance for his crime and
would do more penance before all was rectified.
In dialogue, the two voices discussed the situation. The moon overpowered the sea,
they said, and enabled the ship to move; an angelic power moved the ship northward
at an astonishingly rapid pace. When the Mariner awoke from his trance, he saw the
dead men standing together, looking at him. But a breeze rose up and propelled the
ship back to its native country, back to the Mariner's home; he recognized the kirk, the
hill, and the lighthouse. As they neared the bay, seraphs--figures made of pure light-stepped out of the corpses of the sailors, which fell to the deck. Each seraph waved at
the Mariner, who was powerfully moved. Soon, he heard the sound of oars; the Pilot,
the Pilot's son, and the holy Hermit were rowing out toward him. The Mariner hoped
that the Hermit could shrive (absolve) him of his sin, washing the blood of the
Albatross off his soul.
In dialogue, the two voices discussed the situation. The moon overpowered the sea,
they said, and enabled the ship to move; an angelic power moved the ship northward
at an astonishingly rapid pace. When the Mariner awoke from his trance, he saw the
dead men standing together, looking at him. But a breeze rose up and propelled the
ship back to its native country, back to the Mariner's home; he recognized the kirk, the
hill, and the lighthouse. As they neared the bay, seraphs--figures made of pure light-stepped out of the corpses of the sailors, which fell to the deck. Each seraph waved at
the Mariner, who was powerfully moved. Soon, he heard the sound of oars; the Pilot,
the Pilot's son, and the holy Hermit were rowing out toward him. The Mariner hoped
that the Hermit could shrive (absolve) him of his sin, washing the blood of the
Albatross off his soul.
The church doors burst open, and the wedding party streams outside. The Mariner
declares to the Wedding-Guest that he who loves all God's creatures leads a happier,
better life; he then takes his leave. The Wedding-Guest walks away from the party,
stunned, and awakes the next morning "a sadder and a wiser man."
Comments
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is
unique among Coleridge's important
works-- unique in its intentionally
archaic language, its length, its
bizarre moral narrative, its strange
scholarly notes printed in small type
in the margins, its thematic
ambiguity, and the long Latin
epigraph that begins it, concerning
the multitude of unclassifiable
"invisible creatures" that inhabit the
world. Its peculiarities make it quite
atypical of its era; it has little in
common with other Romantic works.
Rather, the scholarly notes, the
epigraph, and the archaic language
combine to produce the impression
that the "Rime" is a ballad of ancient
times, reprinted with explanatory
notes for a new audience.
But the explanatory notes complicate, rather than clarify, the poem as a
whole; while there are times that they explain some unarticulated action,
there are also times that they interpret the material of the poem in a way that
seems at odds with, or irrelevant to, the poem itself. first segment of the
poem takes the Mariner through the worst of his trials and shows, in action,
the lesson that will be explicitly articulated in the second segment. The
Mariner kills the Albatross in bad faith, subjecting himself to the hostility of
the forces that govern the universe (the very un-Christian-seeming spirit
beneath the sea and the horrible Life-in-Death). It is unclear how these
forces are meant to relate to one another--whether the Life-in-Death is in
league with the submerged spirit or whether their simultaneous appearance
is simply a coincidence.
After earning his curse, the Mariner is able to gain access to the favour of
God--able to regain his ability to pray--only by realizing that the monsters
around him are beautiful in God's eyes and that he should love them as he
should have loved the Albatross. This second segment of the "Rime"
concludes the Mariner's narrative; here he meets the host of seraph-like
spirits who (rather grotesquely) rescue his ship by entering the corpses of
the fallen sailors, and it is here that he earns his moral salvation through his
confession to the Hermit and the subsequent confessions he must continue
to make throughout his life--including this one, to the Wedding-Guest. This
second segment lacks much of the bizarre imagistic intensity found in the
first section, and the supernatural powers even begin to seem sympathetic
(the submerged spirit from the land of mist and snow is now called "the
lonesome spirit" in a side note). The more gruesome elements still surface
occasionally.
The Nightingale
After twilight, the speaker, the speaker's friend, and
the friend's sister sit and rest on an "old mossy
bridge," beneath which a stream flows silently.
Hearing a nightingale's song, the speaker remembers
that the nightingale has been called a "melancholy
bird" and thinks that such an assignation is ridiculous:
While a melancholy human being might feel that a
natural object expresses his present mood, nature
itself cannot be melancholy. The speaker regrets that
so many poets have written about the "melancholy"
song of the nightingale, when they would have been
better off putting aside their pens and simply listening
to this natural music. The speaker tells his
companions that they are not like those "youths and
maidens most poetical," for to them, nature's voices
are full of love and joy. He says that he knows of a
neglected grove near a huge castle, which is visited by
more nightingales than he has ever heard in his life; at
night, they layer the air with harmony. He says that a
"most gentle Maid" has been known to walk through
the glade. Sometimes, the moon passes behind a
cloud, and the nightingales grow quiet, but then it
comes out again, and they burst forth into song.
The speaker bids "a short farewell" to his companions
and to the nightingale but says that were the bird to
sing again now, he would still stay to listen. Even his
infant child, he says, loves the sound and is often
soothed by the moonlight. The speaker hopes his son
will learn to associate night time with joy. Then, he
again bids farewell to his friends and the nightingale.
One of the several Conversation Poems written by Coleridge during the last
part of the 1790s is "The Nightingale“. In it, Coleridge again visits the
characteristically Wordsworthian themes of childhood and its relationship to
nature. The success of "The Nightingale" depends on its evocation of a
dramatic setting--in this case, the mossy bridge where the speaker and his
friends (clearly modelled on Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy) rest and the
grove where the nightingales sing. The poem utilizes a language of immediacy
("And hark! the Nightingale begins its song!") to create their scenes, and relies
on a central metaphor--in this case, the nightingale and its song--to impart
their ideas about nature. The poem's conclusion witnesses the speaker turning
his discussion to his young son and expressing his desire to see the child grow
up among the objects of nature, which will install an essential joy in him. In
fact, "The Nightingale" celebrates the melodious, expressive song of the
nightingale.
The most important thematic idea of this poem is that nature should not be
described as an embodiment of human feelings--that is, the fact that a
melancholy man seems to recognize his own feelings in the song of the
nightingale does not mean that the nightingale's song is melancholy.
"Philomela's pity-pleading strains" (a reference to the Greek myth that
describes the nightingale as a transformed maiden) is not, for Coleridge, an
accurate way to describe the nightingale's song; instead, nature has its own
"immortality," and to project human feeling onto that immortality is to
"profane" it.
Nature is essentially joyous and should inspire joy; it must not be made to
serve simply as a screen upon which all of human feelings are indiscriminately
projected. It is this lesson that Coleridge hopes to install in his child; those
poets who describe the nightingale as melancholy have yet to learn it.
Kubla Khan
Plot
The speaker describes the "stately pleasure-dome" built in Xanadu
according to the decree of Kubla Khan, in the place where Alph, the sacred
river, ran "through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea."
Walls and towers were raised around "twice five miles of fertile ground,"
filled with beautiful gardens and forests. A "deep romantic chasm" slanted
down a green hill, occasionally spewing forth a violent and powerful burst
of water, so great that it flung boulders up with it "like rebounding hail."
The river ran five miles through the woods, finally sinking "in tumult to a
lifeless ocean." Amid that tumult, in the place "as holy and enchanted / As
e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted / By woman wailing to her
demon-lover," Kubla heard "ancestral voices" bringing prophesies of war.
The pleasure-dome's shadow floated on the waves, where the mingled
sounds of the fountain and the caves could be heard. "It was a miracle of
rare device," the speaker says, "A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!"
The speaker says that he once saw a "damsel with a dulcimer," an
Abyssinian maid who played her dulcimer and sang "of Mount Abora." He
says that if he could revive "her symphony and song" within him, he would
rebuild the pleasure-dome out of music, and all who heard him would cry
"Beware!" of "His flashing eyes, his floating hair!" The hearers would circle
him thrice and close their eyes with "holy dread," knowing that he had
tasted honeydew, "and drunk the milk of Paradise."
Along with "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "Kubla Khan" is one of Coleridge's most famous
and enduring poems. The story of its composition is also one of the most famous in the history of
English poetry. As the poet explains in the short preface to this poem, he had fallen asleep after
taking "an anodyne" prescribed "in consequence of a slight disposition" (this is a euphemism for
opium, to which Coleridge was known to be addicted). Before falling asleep, he had been reading a
story in which Kubla Khan commanded the building of a new palace; Coleridge claims that while
he slept, he had a fantastic vision and composed simultaneously--while sleeping--some two or three
hundred lines of poetry, "if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up
before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any
sensation or conscious effort."
Waking after about three hours, the poet seized a pen and began writing furiously; however, after
copying down the first three stanzas of his dreamt poem--the first three stanzas of the current poem
as we know it--he was interrupted by a "person on business from Porlock," who detained him for an
hour. After this interruption, he was unable to recall the rest of the vision or the poetry he had
composed in his opium dream. It is thought that the final stanza of the poem, thematasing the idea
of the lost vision through the figure of the "damsel with a dulcimer" and the milk of Paradise, was
written post-interruption. The mysterious person from Porlock is one of the most notorious and
enigmatic figures in Coleridge's biography; no one knows who he was or why he disturbed the poet
or what he wanted or, indeed, whether any of Coleridge's story is actually true. But the person from
Porlock has become a metaphor for the malicious interruptions the world throws in the way of
inspiration and genius, and "Kubla Khan," strange and ambiguous as it is, has become what is
perhaps the definitive statement on the obstruction and thwarting of the visionary genius.
Regrettably, the story of the poem's composition, while thematically rich in and of itself, often
overshadows the poem proper, which is one of Coleridge's most haunting and beautiful. The first
three stanzas are products of pure imagination: The pleasure-dome of Kubla Khan is not a useful
metaphor for anything in particular (though in the context of the poem's history, it becomes a
metaphor for the unbuilt monument of imagination); however, it is a fantastically prodigious
descriptive act.
The fourth stanza states the theme of the poem as a whole (though "Kubla Khan" is almost
impossible to consider as a unified whole, as its parts are so sharply divided). The speaker says that
he once had a vision of the damsel singing of Mount Abora; this vision becomes a metaphor for
Coleridge's vision of the 300-hundred-line masterpiece he never completed. The speaker insists that
if he could only "revive" within him "her symphony and song," he would recreate the pleasuredome out of music and words, and take on the persona of the magician or visionary.
Works of William Wordsworth
Tintern Abbey
-Plot
-Comment
Plot
The full title of this poem is "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on
Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798." It opens with the
speaker's declaration that five years have passed since he last visited this location,
encountered its tranquil, rustic scenery, and heard the murmuring waters of the
river. He recites the objects he sees again, and describes their effect upon him: the
"steep and lofty cliffs" impress upon him "thoughts of more deep seclusion"; he leans
against the dark sycamore tree and looks at the cottage-grounds and the orchard
trees, whose fruit is still unripe. He sees the "wreaths of smoke" rising up from
cottage chimneys between the trees, and imagines that they might rise from "vagrant
dwellers in the houseless woods," or from the cave of a hermit in the deep forest.
The speaker then describes how his memory of these "beauteous forms" has worked
upon him in his absence from them: when he was alone, or in crowded towns and
cities, they provided him with "sensations sweet, / Felt in the blood, and felt along
the heart." The memory of the woods and cottages offered "tranquil restoration" to
his mind, and even affected him when he was not aware of the memory, influencing
his deeds of kindness and love. He further credits the memory of the scene with
offering him access to that mental and spiritual state in which the burden of the
world is lightened, in which he becomes a "living soul" with a view into "the life of
things." The speaker then says that his belief that the memory of the woods has
affected him so strongly may be "vain"--but if it is, he has still turned to the memory
often in times of "fretful stir."
Even in the present moment, the memory of his past experiences in these
surroundings floats over his present view of them, and he feels bittersweet joy in
reviving them. He thinks happily, too, that his present experience will provide many
happy memories for future years.
The speaker acknowledges that he is different now from how he was in those longago times, when, as a boy, he "bounded o'er the mountains" and through the streams.
In those days, he says, nature made up his whole world: waterfalls, mountains, and
woods gave shape to his passions, his appetites, and his love. That time is now past,
he says, but he does not mourn it, for though he cannot resume his old relationship
with nature, he has been amply compensated by a new set of more mature gifts; for
instance, he can now "look on nature, not as in the hour / Of thoughtless youth; but
hearing oftentimes / The still, sad music of humanity." And he can now sense the
presence of something far more subtle, powerful, and fundamental in the light of the
setting suns, the ocean, the air itself, and even in the mind of man; this energy seems
to him "a motion and a spirit that impels / All thinking thoughts.... / And rolls
through all things." For that reason, he says, he still loves nature, still loves
mountains and pastures and woods, for they anchor his purest thoughts and guard
the heart and soul of his "moral being."
The speaker says that even if he did not feel this way or understand these things, he
would still be in good spirits on this day, for he is in the company of his "dear, dear
(d) Sister," who is also his "dear, dear Friend," and in whose voice and manner he
observes his former self, and beholds "what I was once." He offers a prayer to nature
that he might continue to do so for a little while, knowing, as he says, that "Nature
never did betray / The heart that loved her," but leads rather "from joy to joy."
Nature's power over the mind that seeks her out is such that it renders that mind
impervious to "evil tongues," "rash judgments," and "the sneers of selfish men,"
instilling instead a "cheerful faith" that the world is full of blessings. The speaker
then encourages the moon to shine upon his sister, and the wind to blow against her,
and he says to her that in later years, when she is sad or fearful, the memory of this
experience will help to heal her. And if he himself is dead, she can remember the love
with which he worshipped nature. In that case, too, she will remember what the
woods meant to the speaker, the way in which, after so many years of absence, they
became more dear to him--both for themselves and for the fact that she is in them.
Comment
The subject of "Tintern Abbey" is memory--specifically, childhood memories of
communion with natural beauty. Both generally and specifically, this subject is hugely
important in Wordsworth's work. "Tintern Abbey" is the young Wordsworth's first great
statement of his principle theme: that the memory of pure communion with nature in
childhood works upon the mind even in adulthood, when access to that pure
communion has been lost, and that the maturity of mind present in adulthood offers
compensation for the loss of that communion--specifically, the ability to "look on nature"
and hear "human music"; that is, to see nature with an eye toward its relationship to
human life. In his youth, the poet says, he was thoughtless in his unity with the woods
and the river; now, five years since his last viewing of the scene, he is no longer
thoughtless, but acutely aware of everything the scene has to offer him. Additionally, the
presence of his sister gives him a view of himself as he imagines himself to have been as
a youth. Happily, he knows that this current experience will provide both of them with
future memories, just as his past experience has provided him with the memories that
flicker across his present sight as he travels in the woods. "Tintern Abbey" is a
monologue, imaginatively spoken by a single speaker to himself, referencing the specific
objects of its imaginary scene, and occasionally addressing others--once the spirit of
nature, occasionally the speaker's sister. The language of the poem is striking for its
simplicity; the young poet is in no way concerned with ostentation. He is instead
concerned with speaking from the heart in a plainspoken manner. The poem's imagery is
largely confined to the natural world in which he moves, though there are some
castings-out for metaphors ranging from the nautical (the memory is "the anchor" of the
poet's "purest thought") to the architectural (the mind is a "mansion" of memory). The
poem also has a subtle strain of religious sentiment; though the actual form of the Abbey
does not appear in the poem, the idea of the abbey--of a place consecrated to the spirit-suffuses the scene, as though the forest and the fields were themselves the speaker's
abbey. This idea is reinforced by the speaker's description of the power he feels in the
setting sun and in the mind of man, which consciously links the ideas of God, nature,
and the human mind.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
The speaker says that,
wandering like a cloud
floating above hills and
valleys, he encountered a
field of daffodils beside a
lake. The dancing, fluttering
flowers stretched endlessly
along the shore, and though
the waves of the lake danced
beside the flowers, the
daffodils outdid the water in
glee. The speaker says that a
poet could not help but be
happy in such a joyful
company of flowers. He says
that he stared and stared, but
did not realize what wealth
the scene would bring him.
For now, whenever he feels
"vacant" or "pensive," the
memory flashes upon "that
inward eye / That is the bliss
of solitude," and his heart
fills with pleasure, "and
dances with the daffodils."
Comment
This simple poem, one of the loveliest and most famous in the
Wordsworth canon, revisits the familiar subjects of nature and
memory, this time with a particularly (simple) spare, musical
eloquence. The plot is extremely simple, depicting the poet's
wandering and his discovery of a field of daffodils by a lake,
the memory of which pleases him and comforts him when he is
lonely, bored, or restless. The characterization of the sudden
occurrence of a memory--the daffodils "flash upon the inward
eye / Which is the bliss of solitude"--is psychologically acute,
but the poem's main brilliance lies in the reverse personification
of its early stanzas. The speaker is metaphorically compared to
a natural object, a cloud--"I wandered lonely as a cloud / That
floats on high...", and the daffodils are continually personified
as human beings, dancing and "tossing their heads" in "a
crowd, a host." This technique implies an inherent unity
between man and nature, making it one of Wordsworth's most
basic and effective methods for instilling in the reader the
feeling the poet so often describes himself as experiencing.