Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet and one of the most influential writers of the Romanticism movement. He was born in Devonshire, England, in October of 1772. After his father died, Coleridge moved to London, where he studied at Christ’s Hospital School. While there, he accumulated a large debt that followed him for his entire life.
In the late 1790s, Coleridge met William Wordsworth and began the most important period of his writing. Wordsworth and Coleridge soon started their collaboration on Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems that is considered to be one of the greatest works of the Romantic Movement. It was published in 1798. Coleridge died in July of 1834 after struggling with illness and an addiction to opium. Read more about Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ is a lyrical ballad about a mysterious sea-faring wedding guest who tells a long story of a dangerous journey. It was written between 1797 and 1798.
He holds him with his glittering eye—
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child:
The Mariner hath his will.
‘Work without Hope’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge describes the ways in which Nature works and the importance of having goals, or hopes, to strive towards.
All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair—
The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing—
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
‘Kubla Khan’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a poem that describes the poet’s dream of visiting the palace of Kubla Khan, a Mongol emperor who ruled over the ancient Chinese Yuan Dynasty.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,
And the owls have awakened the crowing cock;
Tu—whit! Tu—whoo!
And hark, again! the crowing cock,
Well! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made
The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,
This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence
Unroused by winds, that ply a busier trade
‘The Pains of Sleep’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge describes a period in a speaker’s life in which he is besieged by terrible imagery. These images are representative of the horrors of humankind and the speaker is unable to shake them from his mind.
Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
‘Frost at Midnight’ was written in 1798 and discusses the importance of childhood and the developmental years of one’s life.
The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.
The oak that in summer was sweet to hear,
And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year,
And whistled and roared in the winter alone,
Is gone,—and the birch in its stead is grown.—
‘Love’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge details the emotional and physical relationship between a speaker and the woman he woos through storytelling.
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
‘Human Life’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge describes a speaker’s frustration with the concept that there is no purpose to life or existence after death.
If dead, we cease to be ; if total gloom
Swallow up life’s brief flash for aye, we fare
As summer-gusts, of sudden birth and doom,
Whose sound and motion not alone declare,
Since all that beat about in Nature's range,
Or veer or vanish; why should'st thou remain
The only constant in a world of change,
O yearning Thought! that liv'st but in the brain?
‘Fears in Solitude’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a historically significant poem in which the speaker discusses the threats his country is facing. He has no desire to be the enemy of his country, but he does need to stand up for what he believes in.
A green and silent spot amid the hills,
A small and silent dell!—O'er stiller place
No singing sky-lark ever pois'd himself!
The hills are heathy, save that swelling slope,
‘Metrical Feet’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge talks about different metrical feet and provides a basic description of those feet. The poet wrote this poem for instructing his son, Derwent Coleridge.
Trochee trips from long to short;
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow Spondee stalks, strong foot!, yet ill able
Ever to come up with Dactyl's trisyllable.
The Sun now rose upon the right:
Out of the sea came he,
Still hid in mist, and on the left
Went down into the sea.
There passed a weary time. Each throat
Was parched, and glazed each eye.
A weary time! a weary time!
How glazed each weary eye,
The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.
The other was a softer voice,
As soft as honey-dew:
Quoth he, 'The man hath penance done,
And penance more will do.'
Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,
Yet she sailed softly too:
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze—
On me alone it blew.
He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.
‘In Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement’ by S. T. Coleridge considers his home as a place of great beauty and a spiritual retreat away from society.
‘Sonnet: To the River Otter’ contains a speaker’s recollections of a river and the joy it brought him when he was a child.
Dear native brook! wild streamlet of the West!
How many various-fated years have passed,
What happy and what mournful hours, since last
I skimmed the smooth thin stone along thy breast,
‘The Eolian Harp’ by S.T. Coleridge, has been entitled after the ‘Aeolian harp’, which creates melodious music while the wind blows across its strings. It is one of Coleridge’s early conversation poems.
And thus, my Love! as on the midway slope
Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon,
Whilst through my half-closed eyelids I behold
The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main,
No cloud, no relique of the sunken day
Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip
Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.
Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!
Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,
This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost
Beauties and feelings, such as would have been
Most sweet to my remembrance even when age
‘Time, Real and Imaginary’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is concerned with how time progresses. The speaker uses the narrative of two children to discuss it.
ON the wide level of a mountain's head
(I knew not where, but 'twas some faery place),
Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread,
Two lovely children run an endless race,
With momentary stars of my own birth,
Fair constellated foam, still darting off
Into the darkness ; now a tranquil sea,
Outspread and bright, yet swelling to the moon.
Verse, a breeze mid blossoms straying,
Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee—
Both were mine! Life went a-maying
With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,
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