Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1772-1834

Childhood• Born October 21, 1772 in Devonshire, England

• Youngest of 10 children from his father’s second wife

• Started school at age 3; at 9, sent to Christ’s Hospital, a London Boarding School, after his father’s death

Christ’s Hospital – West Sussex, England

Youth• Enrolled at Jesus College, Cambridge in 1791• Quickly became distracted by the French Revolution• Enlisted in the 15th Light Dragoons under the alias Silas Tomkyn

Comberbache in 1793• An atrocious soldier, Coleridge’s

brothers-in-arms pooled money to bail him out of the army

Peter Vandyke - Coleridge in 1795

• Coleridge returned to Cambridge• Met Robert Southey, dreamed up the Pantisocracy• Marries Sarah Fricker in 1795• In that same year, walked fifty miles to Dorset to meet Wordsworth,

decided to move to Nether Stowey• 1797-1798 maintained daily correspondence with Wordsworth,

develops much of his literary philosophy• 1798 Thomas and Josiah Wedgwood offered him 150 pounds a year

to support him while he wrote. Soon finished “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, “Christabel”, which were to be published anonymously with Wordsworth in Lyrical Ballads

Adulthood

Later Years and Decline• 1800, visited doctor for relief from rheumatic pain prescribed

Laudanum• Traveled to Malta and Italy for two years in the hopes of gaining

better health• 1806 returned to England• 1807 wrote “To William Wordsworth”, a response to The Prelude,

venerated Wordsworth• 1808 moved in with Wordsworth at Grasmere lives there for 2 years• 1816 moved in with James Gilliman at Highgate, a doctor who helps

him decrease his opium addiction• 1822 his son left him forever• July 25, 1834 Samuel Taylor Coleridge died of heart and lung

problems

Critical ReceptionCritical opinions of Coleridge became more favorable after his death when the scope of his poetic genius began to be recognized. Most critics agree that his writings constitute a seminal contribution to English literature. Contemporary scholars now view Coleridge as the intellectual center of the English Romantic Movement due to both his published works and his known influence on the other writers of his day.

The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere [sic] was professedly written in imitation of the style, as well as of the spirit of the elder poets; but with a few exceptions, the Author believes that the language adopted in it has been equally intelligible for these three last centuries.

-William Wordsworth, 1798

Critical ReceptionThe Rime of the Ancyent Marinere [sic]… is the strangest story of a cock and a buck that we ever saw on paper: yet, though it seems a rhapsody of unintelligible wildness and incoherence, there are in it poetical touches of an exquisite kind.

-Charles Burney, 1799

The influence of Coleridge, like that of Bentham, extends far beyond those who share in the peculiarities of his religious or philosophical creed. He has been the great awakener in this country of the spirit of philosophy, within the bounds of traditional opinions. He has been, almost as truly as Bentham, 'the great questioner of things established'; for a questioner needs nor necessarily be an enemy.

-John Stuart Mill, 1840

Critical ReceptionWhat Coleridge lacked was what theologians call a ‘saving belief’ in Christianity, or else a strenuous intellectual immorality. He imagined himself to believe in Christianity, but his belief never realized itself in effective action, either in the mind or in conduct, while it frequently clogged his energies by weak scruples and restrictions which were but so many internal irritations.

-Arthur Symons, 1904

Coleridge was perhaps the greatest of English critics, and in a sense the last.

-T.S. Eliot 1920

Rime of the Ancient Mariner

1798

Rime of the Ancient Mariner

“Rime of the Ancient Mariner” was published in 1798 as the opening poem of Lyrical Ballads, which comprised of works of both Coleridge and Wordsworth.

The poem is typical of the Romantic style it would help create in that it places a character “from ordinary life” under surreal or supernatural circumstances, venerating the common man– in this case, a sailor.

Coleridge also illustrates the Mariner’s relationship with the powerful, beautiful natural world, a theme common throughout Romantic works.

It is the only poem Coleridge completed of his own accord.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner

I pass, like night, from land to land;I have strange power of speech;That moment that his face I see,I know the man that must hear me:To him my tale I teach.

What loud uproar bursts from that door!The wedding-guests are there:But in the garden-bower the brideAnd bride-maids singing are;And hark the little vesper bell,Which biddeth me to prayer!

Wedding-Guest! this soul hath beenAlone on a wide wide sea:So lonely 'twas, that God himselfScarce seemed there to be.

O sweeter than the marriage-feast,'Tis sweeter far to me,To walk together to the kirkWith a goodly company! –

To walk together to the kirk,

And all together pray,While each to his great Father bends,Old men, and babes, and loving friends,And youths and maidens gay!

Farewell, farewell! but this I tellTo thee, thou Wedding-Guest!He prayeth well, who loveth wellBoth man and bird and beast.

The Mariner, whose eye is bright,Whose beard with age is hoar,Is gone; and now the Wedding-GuestTurned from the bridegroom's door.

He went like one that hath been stunned,And is of sense forlorn:A sadder and a wiser manHe rose the morrow morn.

Kubla Khan

1816

Kubla Khan

Coleridge claims to have received the inspiration for Kubla Khan from a vivid dream, though modern scholars hypothesize that his vision may have in fact occurred in an opium-induced haze.

Upon waking, Coleridge scribbled the beginnings of the poem from memory, but was interrupted by a knock at the door. He conversed briefly with “the person from Porlock”– possibly his physician bringing laudanum, an opium-laden drink.

When Coleridge returned to his work, he had difficulty remembering even minute fragments of his vision, and the poem– intended to be 200-300 lines– was abruptly ended at 55.

Coleridge finished the poem for publication in 1816, tacking on an uninspired ending to the brilliant original piece.

Kubla KhanIn Xanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree:Where Alph, the sacred river, ranThrough caverns measureless to manDown to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile groundWith walls and towers were girdled round:And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;And here were forests ancient as the hills,Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slantedDown the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!A savage place! as holy and enchantedAs e'er beneath a waning moon was hauntedBy woman wailing for her demon-lover!And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,A mighty fountain momently was forced:Amid whose swift half-intermitted burstHuge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and everIt flung up momently the sacred river.Five miles meandering with a mazy motionThrough wood and dale the sacred river ran,Then reached the caverns measureless to man,And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from farAncestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasureFloated midway on the waves;Where was heard the mingled measureFrom the fountain and the caves.It was a miracle of rare device,A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimerIn a vision once I saw:It was an Abyssinian maid,And on her dulcimer she played,Singing of Mount Abora.Could I revive within meHer symphony and song,To such a deep delight 'twould win meThat with music loud and longI would build that dome in air,That sunny dome! those caves of ice!And all who heard should see them there,And all should cry, Beware! Beware!His flashing eyes, his floating hair!Weave a circle round him thrice,And close your eyes with holy dread,For he on honey-dew hath fedAnd drunk the milk of Paradise.

Kubla Khan

How would you have finished it?...

Kubla KhanIn Xanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree:Where Alph, the sacred river, ranThrough caverns measureless to manDown to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile groundWith walls and towers were girdled round:And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;And here were forests ancient as the hills,Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slantedDown the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!A savage place! as holy and enchantedAs e'er beneath a waning moon was hauntedBy woman wailing for her demon-lover!And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,A mighty fountain momently was forced:Amid whose swift half-intermitted burstHuge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and everIt flung up momently the sacred river.Five miles meandering with a mazy motionThrough wood and dale the sacred river ran,Then reached the caverns measureless to man,And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from farAncestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasureFloated midway on the waves;Where was heard the mingled measureFrom the fountain and the caves.It was a miracle of rare device,A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimerIn a vision once I saw:It was an Abyssinian maid,And on her dulcimer she played,Singing of Mount Abora.Could I revive within meHer symphony and song,To such a deep delight 'twould win meThat with music loud and longI would build that dome in air,That sunny dome! those caves of ice!And all who heard should see them there,And all should cry, Beware! Beware!His flashing eyes, his floating hair!Weave a circle round him thrice,And close your eyes with holy dread,For he on honey-dew hath fedAnd drunk the milk of Paradise…________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________!

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1772-1834