Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Coleridges life
Samuel Taylor Coleridge( born 21 October 1772 25 July 1834)
was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher who, with his
friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the
Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets.
He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and
Kubla Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria.
His critical work, especially on Shakespeare, was highly influential,
and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to Englishspeaking culture. Coleridge coined many familiar words and
phrases, including suspension of disbelief. He was a major influence
on Emerson and American transcendentalism.
Throughout his adult life Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety
and depression; it has been speculated that he hadbipolar disorder,
which had not been defined during his lifetime.[1] He was physically
unhealthy, which may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever
and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for these conditions
with laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction.

Poetry

Coleridge is probably best known for his long poems,

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel. Even those who have
never read the Rime have come under its influence: its words have given
the English language the metaphor of analbatross around one's neck, the
quotation of "water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink" (almost always
rendered as "but not a drop to drink"), and the phrase "a sadder and a wiser
man" (again, usually rendered as "a sadder but wiser man"). The phrase "All
creatures great and small" may have been inspired by The Rime: "He
prayeth best, who loveth best;/ All things both great and small;/ For the dear
God who loveth us;/ He made and loveth all." Christabel is known for its
musical rhythm, language, and its Gothic tale.
Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream, A Fragment, although shorter, is also
widely known. Both Kubla Khan and Christabelhave an additional
"Romantic" aura because they were never finished. Stopford Brooke
characterised both poems as having no rival due to their "exquisite metrical
movement" and "imaginative phrasing." Kubla Khan was the inspiration for
the song Xanadu, written by Neil Peart of Rush for their 1977 album
A Farewell to Kings.

Frost at Midnight

Frost at Midnight is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in February 1798.

Part of the conversation poems, the poem discusses Coleridge's childhood
experience in a negative manner and emphasizes the need to be raised in the
countryside. The poem expresses hope that Coleridge's son, Hartley, would be able
to experience a childhood that his father could not and become a true "child of
nature". The view of nature within the poem has a strong Christian element in that
Coleridge believed that nature represents a physical presence of God's word and that
the poem is steeped in Coleridge's understanding of Neoplatonism. Frost at
Midnight has been well received by critics, and is seen as the best of the
conversation poems. Within the poem, the narrator expresses his hope that his child,
Hartley Coleridge, will experience a life connected to nature as represented by
features typical of the Lake District, which Coleridge in common with other
Lake Poets revered. This is similar to what Coleridge's friend William Wordsworth
does with the narrator of Tintern Abbey, a poem composed later that year. Many of
the feelings of the narrator for his child are connected to Coleridge's sonnet "To a
Friend Who Asked, How I Felt When the Nurse Presented My Infant to Me".The ideas
about nature in This Lime-Tree Bower are transformed into the basis for an education,
and Hartley is to learn through nature in an innocent way. Unlike Wordsworth's
nature, Coleridge's has a Christian presence and nature is a physical presence of
God's word. Coleridge's understanding of God is Neoplatonic and emphasizes a need
to experience the divine knowledge.
Like many of the conversation poems, Frost at Midnight touches on Coleridge's idea
of "One Life", which connects mankind to nature and to God. Touching on themes that
come up in The Eolian Harp, Religious Musings, and other poems, the poem
produces the image of a life that the narrator's child will experience in the countryside.
The boy would become a "child of nature" and raised free of the constraints found in
philosophical systems produced by those like William Godwin.

The Nightingale: A Conversation

Poem

The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem is a poem written by

Samuel Taylor Coleridge in April 1798. Originally included in the joint collection of
poems called Lyrical Ballads, the poem disputes the traditional idea that nightingales
are connected to the idea of melancholy. Instead, the nightingale represents to
Coleridge the experience of nature. Midway through the poem, the narrator stops
discussing the nightingale in order to describe a mysterious female and a gothic
scene. After the narrator is returned to his original train of thought by the nightingale's
song, the narrator recalls a moment when he took his crying son out to see the moon,
which immediately filled the child with joy. Critics have found the poem either decent
with little complaint or as one of his better poems containing beautiful lines.

This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison

"This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison" is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

during 1797. The poem discusses a time in which Coleridge was forced to stay
beneath a lime tree while his friends were able to enjoy the countryside. Within the
poem, Coleridge is able to connect to his friend's experience and enjoy nature
through him, which keeps the lime tree from being a mental prison in addition to a
physical one. This Lime-Tree Bower continues the "Conversation poems" theme of
"One Life", a unity between the human and the divine in nature. The poem links
Coleridge's surroundings under the lime tree to the Quantocks where the
Wordsworths, Lamb, and Fricker were out walking. Although they are all separated,
Coleridge connects to his distant friends by their mutual experience and appreciation
of nature. As the poem ends, the friends share together the same view about
completion and life.
The poem uses the image of loneliness and solitude throughout. The narrator is
forced to stay behind, but he is glad that his friends, especially Lamb, are able to
enjoy the walk. The narrator is able to relax and be accepting of his situation and of
nature, and the experience shows that his prison condition is perfectly tolerable
because it is physical and not mental.The image of the solitary bee is used to
represent the poet continuing his work in a world overcome by peace and harmony.
The final moments of the poem contain a religious element and works like an evening
prayer.

The Eolian Harp

The Eolian Harp is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1795 and
published in his 1796 poetry collection. It is one of the early conversation poems and
discusses Coleridge's anticipation of a marriage with Sara Fricker along with the
pleasure of conjugal love. However, The Eolian Harp is not a love poem and instead
focuses on man's relationship with nature. The central images of the poem is an
Aeolian harp, an item that represents both order and wildness in nature. Along with
the harp is a series of oppositional ideas that are reconciled with each other. The
Eolian Harp also contains a discussion on "One Life", Coleridge's idea that humanity
and nature are united along with his desire to try to find the divine within nature. The
poem was well received for both its discussion of nature and its aesthetic qualities.
The poem discusses love, sex, and marriage, but it is not done in the form of a love
poem. Instead, it compares love with an Aeolian harp, which is a symbol of poetry. In
terms of the relationship described, the desire expressed during an engagement with
Fricker is described as innocent. Also, the anticipation of the conjugal union is free of
any potential disappointment or any guilt that would result in sex outside of marriage.
As such, there is a thematic connection with the poem "Lines Written at Shurton
Bars" written on the same subject around the same time.

Christabel

Christabel is a poem about the conflict between good and evil. Christabel is good; Geraldine is
evil. Geraldine has appeared at the castle with the obvious intention of drawing Christabel into
evil, perhaps, it is implied, through a sexual seduction.
Early in the poem, the forces on both sides of the conflict are clearly lined up. Christabel has her
faith, as expressed in her prayers to God and to the Virgin Mary. Moreover, she has a spiritual
guardian in her dead mother as well as an earthly guardian in her beloved father.
Although Geraldine does not actually call upon satanic powers, it is clear that she has their skills.
Like the biblical serpent, she is a deceiver. She can invent plausible lies; she can feign goodness;
and, as Coleridges projected continuation suggests, she can appear in any guise, even that of
another living person.
The reason that Geraldine is so successful in deceiving Christabel and Sir Leoline is that she
appeals to the very vulnerability of virtue. Because she has been taught to be compassionate
toward others, Christabel pities Geraldine. The fact that Geraldine seems to be another girl of
high rank, almost a second self, makes Christabels action even more predictable.
Sir Leoline, too, is made vulnerable by the seeming helplessness of a daughter so much like his
own; however, his greatest weakness is his devotion to the code of chivalry. A knight is bound by
hospitality; he cannot honorably cast out a guest and certainly not if she is a helpless damsel who
has put herself under his protection.
Even in the fragment of Christabel which was published there are hints that while recognizing the
power of evil, Coleridge did not intend for it to win. Despite the spell placed upon her, Christabel
feels an increasing revulsion toward Geraldine; Bracy believes his dream, warning of evil; and
certainly Sir Leoline will eventually once more be governed by his love for Christabel. In the
conclusion, just as in Coleridges The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), nature will be justified;
the woods, as well as the castle, will be rescued from evil by the power of good.