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Context

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Devon in 1772. His father, a clergyman,

moved his family to London when Coleridge was young, and it was there thatColeridge attended school (as he would later recall in poems such as “Frost at

Midnight”). He later attended Cambridge but left without completing his

studies. During the politically charged atmosphere of the late eighteenth

century—the French Revolution had sent shockwaves through Europe, and

England and France were at war—Coleridge made a name for himself both as

a political radical and as an important young poet; along with his friends

Robert Southey and William Wordsworth, he became one of the most

important writers in England. Collaborating with Wordsworth on the

revolutionary Lyrical Ballads of 1798, Coleridge helped to inaugurate the

Romantic era in England; as Wordsworth explained it in the 1802 preface to

the third edition of the work, the idea of poetry underlying Lyrical

Ballads turned the established conventions of poetry upside down: Privileging

natural speech over poetic ornament, simply stated themes over elaborate

symbolism, emotion over abstract thought, and the experience of natural

beauty over urban sophistication, the book paved the way for two generations

of poets, and stands as one of the milestones of European literature.

While Coleridge made important contributions to Lyrical Ballads, it was much

more Wordsworth’s project than Coleridge’s; thus, while it is possible to

understand Wordsworth’s poetic output in light of his preface to

the 1802 edition of the volume, the preface’s ideas should not be used to

analyze Coleridge’s work. Insofar as Wordsworth was the poet of nature, the

purity of childhood, and memory, Coleridge became the poet of imagination,

exploring the relationships between nature and the mind as it exists as a

separate entity. Poems such as “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Kubla

Khan” demonstrate Coleridge’s talent for concocting bizarre, unsettling stories

full of fantastic imagery and magic; in poems such as “Frost at Midnight” and“Dejection: An Ode,” he muses explicitly on the nature of the mind as it

interacts with the creative source of nature.

Coleridge married in 1795 and spent much of the next decade living near and

traveling with Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. In 1799, Coleridge met

Sara Hutchinson, with whom he fell deeply in love, forming an attachment that

was to last many years. Coleridge became an opium addict (it is thought that

“Kubla Khan” originated from an opium dream) and, in 1816, moved in with

the surgeon James Gillman in order to preserve his health. During the years

he lived with Gillman, Coleridge composed many of his important non-fiction



works, including the highly regarded Biographia Literaria. However, although

he continued to write until his death in 1834, Romanticism was always a

movement about youth, and today Coleridge is remembered primarily for the

poems he wrote while still in his twenties.Analysis

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s place in the canon of English poetry rests on a

comparatively small body of achievement: a few poems from the late 1790s

and early 1800s and his participation in the revolutionary publication

of Lyrical Balladsin 1797. Unlike Wordsworth, his work cannot be understood

through the lens of the 1802 preface to the second edition of that book;

though it does resemble Wordsworth’s in its idealization of nature and its

emphasis on human joy, Coleridge’s poems often favor musical effects over

the plainness of common speech. The intentional archaisms of “The Rime of

the Ancient Mariner” and the hypnotic drone of “Kubla Khan” do not imitate

common speech, creating instead a more strikingly stylized effect.

Further, Coleridge’s poems complicate the phenomena Wordsworth takes for

granted: the simple unity between the child and nature and the adult’s

reconnection with nature through memories of childhood; in poems such as

“Frost at Midnight,” Coleridge indicates the fragility of the child’s innocence by

relating his own urban childhood. In poems such as “Dejection: An Ode” and

“Nightingale,” he stresses the division between his own mind and the beauty

of the natural world. Finally, Coleridge often privileges weird tales and bizarre

imagery over the commonplace, rustic simplicities Wordsworth advocates; the

“thousand thousand slimy things” that crawl upon the rotting sea in the “Rime”

would be out of place in a Wordsworth poem.

If Wordsworth represents the central pillar of early Romanticism, Coleridge is

nevertheless an important structural support. His emphasis on the

imagination, its independence from the outside world and its creation of fantastic pictures such as those found in the “Rime,” exerted a profound

influence on later writers such as Shelley; his depiction of feelings of

alienation and numbness helped to define more sharply the Romantics’

idealized contrast between the emptiness of the city—where such feelings are

experienced—and the joys of nature. The heightened understanding of these

feelings also helped to shape the stereotype of the suffering Romantic genius,

often further characterized by drug addiction: this figure of the idealist, brilliant

yet tragically unable to attain his own ideals, is a major pose for Coleridge in

his poetry.



His portrayal of the mind as it moves, whether in silence (“Frost at Midnight”)

or in frenzy (“Kubla Khan”) also helped to define the intimate emotionalism of

Romanticism; while much of poetry is constituted of emotion recollected in

tranquility, the origin of Coleridge’s poems often seems to be emotionrecollected in emotion. But (unlike Wordsworth, it could be argued) Coleridge

maintains not only an emotional intensity but also a legitimate intellectual

presence throughout his oeuvre and applies constant philosophical pressure

to his ideas. In his later years, Coleridge worked a great deal on metaphysics

and politics, and a philosophical consciousness infuses much of his verse—

particularly poems such as “The Nightingale” and “Dejection: An Ode,” in

which the relationship between mind and nature is defined via the specific

rejection of fallacious versions of it. The mind, to Coleridge, cannot take its

feeling from nature and cannot falsely imbue nature with its own feeling;

rather, the mind must be so suffused with its own joy that it opens up to the

real, independent, “immortal” joy of nature.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes

The Transformative Power of the Imagination

Coleridge believed that a strong, active imagination could become a vehicle

for transcending unpleasant circumstances. Many of his poems are powered

exclusively by imaginative flights, wherein the speaker temporarily abandons

his immediate surroundings, exchanging them for an entirely new and

completely fabricated experience. Using the imagination in this way is both

empowering and surprising because it encourages a total and complete

disrespect for the confines of time and place. These mental and emotional

jumps are often well rewarded. Perhaps Coleridge’s most famous use of

imagination occurs in “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” (1797), in which the

speaker employs a keen poetic mind that allows him to take part in a journey

that he cannot physically make. When he “returns” to the bower, after having

imagined himself on a fantastic stroll through the countryside, the speaker

discovers, as a reward, plenty of things to enjoy from inside the bower itself,

including the leaves, the trees, and the shadows. The power of imagination

transforms the prison into a perfectly pleasant spot.

The Interplay of Philosophy, Piety, and Poetry



Coleridge used his poetry to explore conflicting issues in philosophy and

religious piety. Some critics argue that Coleridge’s interest in philosophy was

simply his attempt to understand the imaginative and intellectual impulses that

fueled his poetry. To support the claim that his imaginative and intellectualforces were, in fact, organic and derived from the natural world, Coleridge

linked them to God, spirituality, and worship. In his work, however, poetry,

philosophy, and piety clashed, creating friction and disorder for Coleridge,

both on and off the page. In “The Eolian Harp” (1795), Coleridge struggles to

reconcile the three forces. Here, the speaker’s philosophical tendencies,

particularly the belief that an “intellectual breeze” (47) brushes by and inhabits

all living things with consciousness, collide with those of his orthodox wife,

who disapproves of his unconventional ideas and urges him to Christ. While

his wife lies untroubled, the speaker agonizes over his spiritual conflict,

caught between Christianity and a unique, individual spirituality that equates

nature with God. The poem ends by discounting the pantheist spirit, and the

speaker concludes by privileging God and Christ over nature and praising

them for having healed him from the spiritual wounds inflicted by these

unorthodox views.

Nature and the Development of the Individual

Coleridge, Wordsworth, and other romantic poets praised the unencumbered,

imaginative soul of youth, finding images in nature with which to describe it.

According to their formulation, experiencing nature was an integral part of the

development of a complete soul and sense of personhood. The death of his

father forced Coleridge to attend school in London, far away from the rural

idylls of his youth, and he lamented the missed opportunities of his sheltered,

city-bound adolescence in many poems, including “Frost at Midnight” (1798).

Here, the speaker sits quietly by a fire, musing on his life, while his infant son

sleeps nearby. He recalls his boarding school days, during which he would

both daydream and lull himself to sleep by remembering his home far awayfrom the city, and he tells his son that he shall never be removed from nature,

the way the speaker once was. Unlike the speaker, the son shall experience

the seasons and shall learn about God by discovering the beauty and bounty

of the natural world. The son shall be given the opportunity to develop a

relationship with God and with nature, an opportunity denied to both the

speaker and Coleridge himself. For Coleridge, nature had the capacity to

teach joy, love, freedom, and piety, crucial characteristics for a worthy,

developed individual.



nearly all of his poems. The son of an Anglican vicar, Coleridge vacillated

from supporting to criticizing Christian tenets and the Church of England.

Despite his criticisms, Coleridge remained defiantly supportive of prayer,

praising it in his notebooks and repeatedly referencing it in his poems. Heonce told the novelist Thomas de Quincey that prayer demanded such close

attention that it was the one of the hardest actions of which human hearts

were capable. The conclusion to Part 1 of Christabel portrays Christabel in

prayer, “a lovely sight to see” (279). In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the

mariner is stripped of his ability to speak as part of his extreme punishment

and, consequently, left incapable of praying. “The Pains of Sleep” (1803)

contrasts the speaker at restful prayer, in which he prays silently, with the

speaker at passionate prayer, in which he battles imaginary demons to pray

aloud. In the sad poem, “Epitaph” (1833), Coleridge composes an epitaph for

himself, which urges people to pray for him after he dies. Rather than

recommend a manner or method of prayer, Coleridge’s poems reflect a wide

variety, which emphasizes his belief in the importance of individuality.

Symbols

The Sun

Coleridge believed that symbolic language was the only acceptable way of

expressing deep religious truths and consistently employed the sun as asymbol of God. In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Coleridge compares the

sun to “God’s own head” (97) and, later, attributes the first phase of the

mariner’s punishment to the sun, as it dehydrates the crew. All told, this poem

contains eleven references to the sun, many of which signify the Christian

conception of a wrathful, vengeful God. Bad, troubling things happen to the

crew during the day, while smooth sailing and calm weather occur at night, by

the light of the moon. Frequently, the sun stands in for God’s influence and

power, as well as a symbol of his authority. The setting sun spurs

philosophical musings, as in “The Eolian Harp,” and the dancing rays of

sunlight represent a pinnacle of nature’s beauty, as in “This Lime-Tree Bower

My Prison.”

The Moon

Like the sun, the moon often symbolizes God, but the moon has more positive

connotations than the sun. In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the sun and

the moon represent two sides of the Christian God: the sun represents the

angry, wrathful God, whereas the moon represents the benevolent, repentant

God. All told, the moon appears fourteen times in “The Rime of the Ancient



Mariner,” and generally favorable things occur during night, in contrast to the

horrors that occur during the day. For example, the mariner’s curse lifts and

he returns home by moonlight. “Dejection: An Ode” (1802) begins with an

epitaph about the new moon and goes on to describe the beauty of a moonlitnight, contrasting its beauty with the speaker’s sorrowful soul. Similarly, “Frost

at Midnight” also praises the moon as it illuminates icicles on a winter evening

and spurs the speaker to great thought.

Dreams and Dreaming

Coleridge explores dreams and dreaming in his poetry to communicate the

power of the imagination, as well as the inaccessible clarity of vision. “Kubla

Khan” is subtitled “A Vision in a Dream.” According to Coleridge, he fell asleep

while reading and dreamed of a marvelous pleasure palace for the next fewhours. Upon awakening, he began transcribing the dream-vision but was soon

called away; when he returned, he wrote out the fragments that now comprise

“Kubla Khan.” Some critics doubt Coleridge’s story, attributing it to an attempt

at increasing the poem’s dramatic effect. Nevertheless, the poem speaks to

the imaginative possibilities of the subconscious. Dreams usually have a

pleasurable connotation, as in “Frost at Midnight.” There, the speaker, lonely

and insomniac as a child at boarding school, comforts himself by imagining

and then dreaming of his rural home. In his real life, however, Coleridge

suffered from nightmares so terrible that sometimes his own screams would

wake him, a phenomenon he details in “The Pains of Sleep.” Opium probably

gave Coleridge a sense of well-being that allowed him to sleep without the

threat of nightmares.

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Parts I-IV

Summary

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 harbor—”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 icecracked 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, theMariner 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.”

Form

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is written in loose, short ballad stanzas

usually either four or six lines long but, occasionally, as many as nine lines

long. The meter is also somewhat loose, but odd lines are generally

tetrameter, while even lines are generally trimeter. (There are exceptions: In a

five-line stanza, for instance, lines one, three, and four are likely to have four

accented syllables—tetrameter—while lines two and five have three accented

syllables.) The rhymes generally alternate in an ABAB or ABABAB scheme,

though again there are many exceptions; the nine-line stanza in Part III, for

instance, rhymes AABCCBDDB. Many stanzas include couplets in this way—

five-line stanzas, for example, are rhymed ABCCB, often with an internal

rhyme in the first line, or ABAAB, without the internal rhyme.

Commentary

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is unique among Coleridge’s important

works— unique in its intentionally archaic language (“Eftsoons his hand drops

he”), 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 (intended by Coleridge, no doubt) that the “Rime” is a ballad of

ancient times (like “Sir Patrick Spence,” which appears in “Dejection: AnOde”), 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. For instance, in Part II, we find a

note regarding the spirit that followed the ship nine fathoms deep: “one of the

invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels;

concerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic

Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus, may be consulted.” What might

Coleridge mean by introducing such figures as “the Platonic

Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus,” into the poem, as marginalia, and by

implying that the verse itself should be interpreted through him?

This is a question that has puzzled scholars since the first publication of the

poem in this form. (Interestingly, the original version of the “Rime,” in

the 1797 edition of Lyrical Ballads, did not include the side notes.) There iscertainly an element of humor in Coleridge’s scholarly glosses—a bit of

parody aimed at the writers of serious glosses of this type; such phrases as

“Platonic Constantinopolitan” seem consciously silly. It can be argued that the

glosses are simply an amusing irrelevancy designed to make the poem seem

archaic and that the truly important text is the poem itself—in its complicated,

often Christian symbolism, in its moral lesson (that “all creatures great and

small” were created by God and should be loved, from the Albatross to the

slimy snakes in the rotting ocean) and in its characters.

If one accepts this argument, one is faced with the task of discovering the key

to Coleridge’s symbolism: what does the Albatross represent, what do the

spirits represent, and so forth. Critics have made many ingenious attempts to

do just that and have found in the “Rime” a number of interesting readings,

ranging from Christian parable to political allegory. But these interpretations

are dampened by the fact that none of them (with the possible exception of

the Christian reading, much of which is certainly intended by the poem)

seems essential to the story itself. One can accept these interpretations of the

poem only if one disregards the glosses almost completely.



A more interesting, though still questionable, reading of the poem maintains

that Coleridge intended it as a commentary on the ways in which people

interpret the lessons of the past and the ways in which the past is, to a large

extent, simply unknowable. By filling his archaic ballad with elaboratesymbolism that cannot be deciphered in any single, definitive way and then

framing that symbolism with side notes that pick at it and offer a highly

theoretical spiritual-scientific interpretation of its classifications, Coleridge

creates tension between the ambiguous poem and the unambiguous-but-

ridiculous notes, exposing a gulf between the “old” poem and the “new”

attempt to understand it. The message would be that, though certain moral

lessons from the past are still comprehensible—”he liveth best who loveth

best” is not hard to understand— other aspects of its narratives are less easily

grasped.

In any event, this 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 favor 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. In the final three books of the poem, the Mariner’s

encounter with a Hermit will spell out this message explicitly, and the reader

will learn why the Mariner has stopped the Wedding-Guest to tell him this

story.

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Parts V-VII

Summary

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 themast, 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 theyneared 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 Hermit, a holy man who lived in the woods and loved to talk to mariners

from strange lands, had encouraged the Pilot and his son not to be afraid and

to row out to the ship. But as they reached the Mariner’s ship, it sank in a

sudden whirlpool, leaving the Mariner afloat and the Pilot’s rowboat spinning

in the wake. The Mariner was loaded aboard the Pilot’s ship, and the Pilot’s

boy, mad with terror, laughed hysterically and declared that the devil knows

how to row. On land, the Mariner begged the Hermit to shrive him, and the

Hermit bade the Mariner tell his tale. Once it was told, the Mariner was free

from the agony of his guilt. However, the guilt returned over time and

persisted until the Mariner traveled to a new place and told his tale again. The



moment he comes upon the man to whom he is destined to tell his tale, he

knows it, and he has no choice but to relate the story then and there to his

appointed audience; the Wedding-Guest is one such person.

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.”

Form

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is written in loose, short ballad stanzasusually either four or six lines long but occasionally as many as nine lines

long. The meter is also somewhat loose, but odd lines are generally

tetrameter, while even lines are generally trimeter. (There are exceptions: In a

five-line stanza, for instance, lines one, three, and four are likely to have four

accented syllables—tetrameter—while lines two and five have three accented

syllables.) The rhymes generally alternate in an ABAB or ABABAB scheme,

though there are again many exceptions; the nine-line stanza in Part III, for

instance, rhymes AABCCBDDB. Many stanzas include couplets in this way—

five-line stanzas, for example, are rhymed ABCCB, often with an internal

rhyme in the first line, or ABAAB, without the internal rhyme.

Commentary

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, however; the sinking of the ship and the

insanity of the Pilot’s son could have come from a dramatic, gritty tale such

as Moby- Dick, and the seraphs of the previous scene evoke such fantastical

works as Paradise Lost.



The figurative arrangement of this poem is complicated: one speaker

pronounces judgments like “A sadder and a wiser man / He rose the morrow

morn”; the side notes are presumably written by a scholar, separate from this

first speaker; independent of these two voices is the Mariner, whose wordsmake up most of the poem; the Wedding-Guest also speaks directly.

Moreover, the various time frames combine rather intricately. Coleridge adds

to this complexity at the start of Part VI, when he introduces a short dramatic

dialogue to indicate the conversation between the two disembodied voices.

This technique, again, influenced later writers, such as Melville, who often

used dramatic dialogues in his equally complicated tale of the sea, Moby-

Dick. Here in Coleridge’s poem, this dialogue plunges the reader suddenly

into the role of the Mariner, hearing the voices around him rather than simply

hearing them described. Disorienting techniques such as this one are used

throughout the “Rime” to ensure that the poem never becomes too abstract in

its interplay between side notes and verse; thus, however theoretical the level

of the poem’s operation, its story remains compelling.

“Frost at Midnight”

Summary

As the frost “performs its secret ministry” in the windless night, an owlet’s cry

twice pierces the silence. The “inmates” of the speaker’s cottage are all

asleep, and the speaker sits alone, solitary except for the “cradled infant”

sleeping by his side. The calm is so total that the silence becomes distracting,

and all the world of “sea, hill, and wood, / This populous village!” seems

“inaudible as dreams.” The thin blue flame of the fire burns without flickering;

only the film on the grate flutters, which makes it seem “companionable” to the

speaker, almost alive—stirred by “the idling Spirit.”

“But O!” the speaker declares; as a child he often watched “that fluttering

stranger” on the bars of his school window and daydreamed about his

birthplace and the church tower whose bells rang so sweetly on Fair-day.

These things lured him to sleep in his childhood, and he brooded on them at

school, only pretending to look at his books—unless, of course, the door

opened, in which case he looked up eagerly, hoping to see “Townsman, or

aunt, or sister more beloved, / My play-mate when we both were clothed

alike!”



Addressing the “Dear Babe, that sleep[s] cradled” by his side, whose breath

fills the silences in his thought, the speaker says that it thrills his heart to look

at his beautiful child. He enjoys the thought that although he himself was

raised in the “great city, pent ’mid cloisters dim,” his child will wander in therural countryside, by lakes and shores and mountains, and his spirit shall be

molded by God, who will “by giving make it [the child] ask.”

All seasons, the speaker proclaims, shall be sweet to his child, whether the

summer makes the earth green or the robin redbreast sings between tufts of

snow on the branch; whether the storm makes “the eave-drops fall” or the

frost’s “secret ministry” hangs icicles silently, “quietly shining to the quiet

Moon.”

Form

Like many Romantic verse monologues of this kind (Wordsworth’s “Tintern

Abbey” is a notable example), “Frost at Midnight” is written in blank verse, a

term used to describe unrhymed lines metered in iambic pentameter.

Commentary

The speaker of “Frost at Midnight” is generally held to be Coleridge himself,and the poem is a quiet, very personal restatement of the abiding themes of

early English Romanticism: the effect of nature on the imagination (nature is

the Teacher that “by giving” to the child’s spirit also makes it “ask”); the

relationship between children and the natural world (“thou, my babe! shall

wander like a breeze...”); the contrast between this liberating country setting

and city (“I was reared / In the great city, pent ’mid cloisters dim”); and the

relationship between adulthood and childhood as they are linked in adult

memory.

However, while the poem conforms to many of the guiding principles of

Romanticism, it also highlights a key difference between Coleridge and his

fellow Romantics, specifically Wordsworth. Wordsworth, raised in the rustic

countryside, saw his own childhood as a time when his connection with the

natural world was at its greatest; he revisited his memories of childhood in

order to soothe his feelings and provoke his imagination. Coleridge, on the

other hand, was raised in London, “pent ’mid cloisters dim,” and questions

Wordsworth’s easy identification of childhood with a kind of automatic, original



happiness; instead, in this poem he says that, as a child, he “saw naught

lovely but the stars and sky” and seems to feel the lingering effects of that

alienation. In this poem, we see how the pain of this alienation has

strengthened Coleridge’s wish that his child enjoy an idyllic Wordsworthianupbringing “by lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags / Of ancient

mountain, and beneath the clouds...” Rather than seeing the link between

childhood and nature as an inevitable, Coleridge seems to perceive it as a

fragile, precious, and extraordinary connection, one of which he himself was

deprived.

In expressing its central themes, “Frost at Midnight” relies on a highly

personal idiom whereby the reader follows the natural progression of the

speaker’s mind as he sits up late one winter night thinking. His idle

observation gives the reader a quick impression of the scene, from the “silent

ministry” of the frost to the cry of the owl and the sleeping child. Coleridge

uses language that indicates the immediacy of the scene to draw in the

reader; for instance, the speaker cries “Hark!” upon hearing the owl, as

though he were surprised by its call. The objects surrounding the speaker

become metaphors for the work of the mind and the imagination, so that the

fluttering film on the fire grate plunges him into the recollection of his

childhood. His memory of feeling trapped in the schoolhouse naturally bringshim back into his immediate surroundings with a surge of love and sympathy

for his son. His final meditation on his son’s future becomes mingled with his

Romantic interpretation of nature and its role in the child’s imagination, and

his consideration of the objects of nature brings him back to the frost and the

icicles, which, forming and shining in silence, mirror the silent way in which

the world works upon the mind; this revisitation of winter’s frosty forms brings

the poem full circle.

“The Nightingale”

Summary

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 nighttime with

joy. Then, he again bids farewell to his friends and the nightingale.

Form

“The Nightingale” is subtitled “A Conversation Poem” and is an example of

Coleridge’s use of blank verse—unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter—to

approximate the register of natural speech. Coleridge’s poetry is never as

speech-like as Wordsworth’s, simply because Coleridge often favors musical

and metrical effects over unadorned explication; however, “The Nightingale” is

one of his most Wordsworthian poems, both in form and in theme.

Commentary

One of several Conversation Poems written by Coleridge during the last part

of the1790s, “The Nightingale” is in many ways similar to “Frost at Midnight,”

and in it, Coleridge again visits the characteristically Wordsworthian themes of

childhood and its relationship to nature. As in “Frost at Midnight,” 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 modeled on

Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy) rest and the grove where the nightingales

sing. Moreover, both poems utilize a language of immediacy (“And hark! the

Nightingale begins its song!”) to create their scenes, and both rely on a central



metaphor—in this case, the nightingale and its song—to impart their ideas

about nature. Also like “Frost at Midnight,” 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 instill anessential joy in him. In fact, “The Nightingale” is almost the social version of

the solitary “Frost at Midnight”—while the one shows the speaker musing

alone, the other shows him holding forth to companions; while the one is

concerned with the mute frost and the silent moon, the other 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 areindiscriminately projected. It is this lesson that Coleridge hopes to instill in his

child; those poets who describe the nightingale as melancholy have yet to

learn it. (The phrase quoted by Coleridge’s poem as representative of these

unenlightened poets—”most musical, most melancholy”—comes from

Milton’s Il Penseroso, though Coleridge later emphasized that he never

intended to impugn Milton’s poetry.)

“Kubla Khan”

Summary

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 beheard. “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.”

Form

The chant-like, musical incantations of “Kubla Khan” result from Coleridge’s

masterful use of iambic tetrameter and alternating rhyme schemes. The first

stanza is written in tetrameter with a rhyme scheme of ABAABCCDEDE,

alternating between staggered rhymes and couplets. The second stanza

expands into tetrameter and follows roughly the same rhyming pattern, also

expanded— ABAABCCDDFFGGHIIHJJ. The third stanza tightens into

tetrameter and rhymes ABABCC. The fourth stanza continues the tetrameter

of the third and rhymes ABCCBDEDEFGFFFGHHG.

Commentary

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 writingfuriously; 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, thematizing 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 inand 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 poem becomes especially

evocative when, after the second stanza, the meter suddenly tightens; the

resulting lines are terse and solid, almost beating out the sound of the war

drums (“The shadow of the dome of pleasure / Floated midway on the

waves...”).

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 pleasure-dome out of music and words, and take on the persona

of the magician or visionary. His hearers would recognize the dangerous

power of the vision, which would manifest itself in his “flashing eyes” and

“floating hair.” But, awestruck, they would nonetheless dutifully take part in theritual, recognizing that “he on honey-dew hath fed, / And drunk the milk of

Paradise.”

“Dejection: An Ode”

Summary

The speaker recalls a poem that tells the tale of Sir Patrick Spence: In this

poem, the moon takes on a certain strange appearance that presages the

coming of a storm. The speaker declares that if the author of the poempossessed a sound understanding of weather, then a storm will break on this

night as well, for the moon looks now as it did in the poem. The speaker

wishes ardently for a storm to erupt, for the violence of the squall might cure

his numb feeling. He says that he feels only a ‘dull pain,” “a grief without a

pang”—a constant deadening of all his feelings. Speaking to a woman whom

he addresses as “O Lady,” he admits that he has been gazing at the western

sky all evening, able to see its beauty but unable fully to feel it. He says that

staring at the green sky will never raise his spirits, for no “outward forms” can

generate feelings: Emotions can only emerge from within.

According to the speaker, “we receive but what we give”: the soul itself must

provide the light by which we may hope to see nature’s true beauty—a beauty

not given to the common crowd of human beings (“the poor loveless ever-

anxious crowd”). Calling the Lady “pure of heart,” the speaker says that she

already knows about the light and music of the soul, which is Joy. Joy, he

says, marries us to nature, thereby giving us “a new Earth and new Heaven, /

Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud.”

The speaker insists that there was a time when he was full of hope, when

every tribulation was simply the material with which “fancy made me dreams

of happiness.” But now his afflictions press him to the earth; he does not mind

the decline of his mirth, but he cannot bear the corresponding degeneration of

his imagination, which is the source of his creativity and his understanding of

the human condition, that which enables him to construct “from my own

nature all the natural man.” Hoping to escape the “viper thoughts” that coil

around his mind, the speaker turns his attention to the howling wind that has



begun to blow. He thinks of the world as an instrument played by a musician,

who spins out of the wind a “worse than wintry song.” This melody first calls to

mind the rush of an army on the field; quieting, it then evokes a young girl, lost

and alone.

It is midnight, but the speaker has “small thoughts” of sleep. However, he

hopes that his friend the Lady will be visited by “gentle Sleep” and that she will

wake with joyful thoughts and “light heart.” Calling the Lady the “friend

devoutest of my choice,” the speaker wishes that she might “ever, evermore

rejoice.”

Form

The long ode stanzas of “Dejection” are metered in iambic lines ranging in

length from trimeter to pentameter. The rhymes alternate between bracketed

rhymes (ABBA) and couplets (CC) with occasional exceptions.

Commentary

In this poem, Coleridge continues his sophisticated philosophical exploration

of the relationship between man and nature, positing as he did in “The

Nightingale” that human feelings and the forms of nature are essentiallyseparate. Just as the speaker insisted in the earlier poem that the

nightingale’s song should not be called melancholy simply because it sounded

so to a melancholy poet, he insists here that the beauty of the sky before the

storm does not have the power to fill him with joy, for the source of human

feeling is within. Only when the individual has access to that source, so that

joy shines from him like a light, is he able to see the beauty of nature and to

respond to it. (As in “Frost in Midnight,” the city-raised Coleridge insists on a

sharper demarcation between the mind and nature than the country-raised

Wordsworth would ever have done.)

Coleridge blames his desolate numbness for sapping his creative powers and

leaving him without his habitual method of understanding human nature.

Despite his insistence on the separation between the mind and the world,

Coleridge nevertheless continues to find metaphors for his own feelings in

nature: His dejection is reflected in the gloom of the night as it awaits the

storm.



“Dejection” was written in 1802 but was originally drafted in the form of a

letter to Sara Hutchinson, the woman Coleridge loved. The much longer

original version of the poem contained many of the same elements as “The

Nightingale” and “Frost at Midnight,” including the same meditation on hischildren and their natural education. This version also referred explicitly to

“Sara” (replaced in the later version by “Lady”) and “William” (a clear

reference to Wordsworth). Coleridge’s strict revision process shortened and

tightened the poem, depersonalizing it, but the earlier draft hints at just how

important the poem’s themes were to Coleridge personally and indicates that

the feelings expressed were the poet’s true beliefs about his own place in the

world.

A side note: The story of Sir Patrick Spence, to which the poet alludes in the

first stanza, is an ancient Scottish ballad about a sailor who drowns with a

boatload of Scottish noblemen, sailing on orders from the king but against his

own better judgment. It contains lines that refer to the moon as a predictor of

storms, which Coleridge quotes as an epigraph for his ode: “Late, late

yestreen I saw the new Moon / With the old Moon in her arms; / And I fear, I

fear, my Master dear! / We shall have a deadly storm.”

Study Questions

1. Coleridge writes frequently about children, but, unlike other Romantic

poets, he writes about his own children more often than he writes about

himself as a child. With particular reference to “Frost at Midnight” and “The

Nightingale,” how can Coleridge’s attitude toward children best be

characterized? How does this attitude relate to his larger ideas of nature and

the imagination?

Answer for Study Question 1 >>

2. Many of Coleridge’s poems—including “Frost at Midnight,” “The

Nightingale,” and “Dejection: An Ode”—achieve their effect through the

evocation of a dramatic scene in which the speaker himself is situated. How

does Coleridge describe a scene simply by tracing his speaker’s thoughts?

How does he imbue the scene with a sense of immediacy?



Answer for Study Question 2 >>

3. How does Coleridge’s poetry differ from the Romantic archetype articulated

by Wordsworth in the preface to Lyrical Ballads? How does it resemble that

archetype?

4. What are some of the ways in which we can interpret the peculiarities of

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”—the archaisms, the side notes, etc.?

Which interpretation seems most convincing? Why?

5. In many ways, “Kubla Khan” is a poem whose interpretation depends on a

knowledge of events that occurred outside of the poem itself. How does the

story of the person from Porlock affect the ways in which the poem can be

understood? Is it possible to find any significance in “Kubla Khan” without

knowledge of Coleridge’s opium dream?

6. Coleridge is often described as a “poet of the imagination.” What does this

appellation mean? What role does imagination play in Coleridge’s work, both

as a source and as a subject?

7. How does Coleridge create metaphors from natural objects and scenes?

How does this practice support or conflict with his explicit opinions about the

human tendency to impose our feelings upon nature, as in “The Nightingale”?

Bibliography

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Selected Poetry, edited by Heather Jackson. New

York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

How to Cite This SparkNote

Full Bibliographic Citation

MLA

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Coleridge’s Poetry.” SparkNotes.com.

SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Web. 6 May 2013.



The Chicago Manual of Style

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Coleridge’s Poetry.” SparkNotes LLC.

2002. http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/coleridge/ (accessed May 6, 2013).

APA

SparkNotes Editors. (2002). SparkNote on Coleridge’s Poetry. Retrieved May

6, 2013, from http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/coleridge/

In Text Citation

MLA

“Their conversation is awkward, especially when she mentions Wickham, a

subject Darcy clearly wishes to avoid” (SparkNotes Editors).

APA

“Their conversation is awkward, especially when she mentions Wickham, a

subject Darcy clearly wishes to avoid” (SparkNotes Editors, 2002).

Footnote

The Chicago Manual of Style

Chicago requires the use of footnotes, rather than parenthetical citations, in

conjunction with a list of works cited when dealing with literature.

1 SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Coleridge’s Poetry.” SparkNotes LLC.

2002. http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/coleridge/ (accessed May 6, 2013).

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