Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

• co-rote The Lyrical Ballads with Wordsworth

"On Donne's Poetry"

With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,

Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots;

Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue,

Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.

"Frost at Midnight"

The Frost performs its secret ministry,

Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry

Came loud- and hark, again! loud as before.

The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,

Have left me to that solitude, which suits

Abstruser musings: save that at my side

My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.

Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
>From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shall learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

Biographia Literaria

• imagination is the supreme faculty of the human intellect
• cultivation of imagination is both a prerequisite and aim of poetry
• imagination is the process of keenly perceiving the phenomena of the world and self, and then re-expressing phenomena through the creative faculties of the poet's whole being, the mind and the soul, the rational and the irrational
• Coleridge always capitalizes the words "Imagination" and "Fancy" which recur throughout the work

"Kubla Khan"

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A statley pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinous 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 slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By 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 burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through 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 far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I 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 fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

• mariner stops a man on the way to a wedding ceremony and recites his story
• tale begins with mariner's ship leaving harbor
• ship is soon driven off course by a storm and reaches Antartica
• an albatross, a good omen, leads them out, but the mariner shoots at it wit a crossbow
• the other sailors are angry with the mariner and blame him for the change in weather that happens after the bird's death
• the death of the albatross also arouses the wrath of supernatural spirits who pursue the ship
• when the weather becomes misty, the sailors change their minds and hail the mariner for killing the bird that brought the fog, but then they blame the mariner for the torment of their thirst and hang the albatross around the mariner's neck as a sign of his guilt
• Day after day, day after day,
  We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
  As idle as a painted ship
  Upon a painted ocean.
  Water, water, everywhere,
  And all the boards did shrink;
  Water, water, everywhere,
  Nor any drop to drink.
• the ship encounters a ghostly vessel with Death (skeleton) and Life-in-Death (pale woman) aboard, who are playing dice for the souls of the crew
• Death wins the crew members and Life-in-death the mariner
• one by one all the mariner's crew members die except him
• his curse is lifted when he sees sea creatures swimming in the water
• the mariner begins praying and the albatross falls from his neck
• the bodies of the crew, possessed by good spirits, rise again and steer the ship back home, where it sinks into a whirlpool and leaves only the mariner behind
• as penance for his deed the mariner is forced to wander the earth and tell his story
• He prayeth best, who loveth best
  All things both great and small;
  For the dear God who loveth us,
  He made and loveth all.