Samuel Taylor Coleridge - A Tribute

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The present six verses of The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge are extracted from the fourth part of the poem and constitute in fact the ending of this part. The Mariner, who has been subject to complete material and moral deprivation for having killed the beneficent Albatross, immobilised in a tormentingly static universe and surrounded by corpses, now attains absolution through the ability to recognise the beauty of living creatures and finally to feel genuine love for them. This turning point in the Mariner's soul and mentality will signal his reconciliation with the natural elements and his gradual re-integration in a friendlier, familiar world.

The extract begins and ends with a quatrain; the second, third and fourth stanzas have five lines while the fifth one has six. The rhythm used is that of the traditional ballad, with an alternation of 4 and 3 main stresses, in this particular case it manifests a quality of smoothness which is achieved through the balance in the length of vowels (mostly long ones) and a certain abundance of diphthongs ("sky", "abide", "beside", "main", "lay", "hoary", "fire", "beauty"). The rhyming scheme in the first quatrain is abab; in the five-line verses the first line is independent, while the other four follow the scheme bccb. The six-line stanza, finally, comprises three independent lines (the 1st, 3rd and 5th) and two rhyming ones (the 2nd and 4th) while the last line is identical with the 4th. In the final quatrain of the fragment the only lines rhyming are the 2nd and 4th.

The present participle "moving" which opens the first quatrain is the first indication of movement in the atmosphere of suffocating immobility reigning ever since the second part of the poem. The "moving" (or "journeying" according to the respective gloss) moon, appearing with a capital M, with its beams spreading as white as "April hoarfrost", comes to diametrical contrast with the "bloody Sun" previously dominating in "a hot and copper sky". The comforting whiteness of the moonlight can only be a positive element of change, as it was in the end of the first part of the poem, where it "glimmered" through the fog showing the way. The adverb "softly" characterising the movement of the rising moon to the center of the sky contributes in itself to this newly introduced feeling of calmness. White is also a colour inevitably associated with light, since it results from the fusion of the seven main colours of the solar spectrum. The presence of white light is obsessional not only in this extract, but in the entire poem as well and Coleridge's poetry in general. Luminous images of this colour are also associated with the "slimy things", the water snakes, whose movement "in tracks of shining white" makes the "elfish light" dissolve in "hoary flakes". To the white lucidity is contrasted the hellish, "still and awful" red colour of the bewitched waters in the second stanza (suggesting also the blood of the murder, forgiveness for which is symbolised by the clearing of red and the prevalence of white, the colour of absolution and purity), and then the glorious feast of "blue, glossy green, and velvet black" creatures dancing like flames of a "golden fire", as if the initial whiteness were eventually decomposed into its colourful ingredients. It is also interesting to remark that rich colours, smooth/pleasant and comforting to the eye are here connected with movement (expressed with terms like "went up", "reared", "fell off", "coiled and swam", "gushed") while the powerful, blindingly bright red is "still and awful" like in the desert and conjured up by some evil spell which is to be broken in the last stanza of the extract.

The variation in the number of lines along the stanzas is another important thing to note: as serenity softly spreads, the horrifying emptiness of the setting begins to fill with life and the tyrannic monotony associated with death (of which the visible result is the presence of corpses on the decaying ship) is gradually exorcised until it is finally extinguished. The increasing number of lines corresponds to this inhabitation of the immobile vacant space by animate, moving elements such as the water snakes and the moon. The sense of the content is visually expressed by the use of longer stanzas and acoustically by a profusion of consonantic complexes ("blue", "glossy green", "velvet black", "flash of golden fire"). The expression "rich attire" referring to the skin of the snakes reinforces the visual impression conveyed, while the adjective "golden" characterising the fire attributes a quality of twinkling transparency to the image, in contrast to the "awful" aspect of the red fire on the "enchanted water". The complexes of consonants already mentioned also create the impression of hearing fire flicker, while the liquids L and R render the acoustic image of a watery surface being agitated. The rhythm, for its part, gradually quickens in the second and fourth stanzas until the final outburst of emotion occurs in the beginning of the fifth, longest verse: "O happy living things!". The Mariner's interior emptiness, reflecting that of his surroundings and reflected by it in its turn, has now given its place to an effusion of feelings expressed in a profusion of words. The awareness of the existence of beauty results in an "unaware" blessing of the "slimy things" which, though ugly in themselves, seem beautiful because they are the only animate creatures, besides the old sailor, present in the vast aquarelle of sea and sky. The verb "gushed" and its subject, "a spring of love", illustrate the abruptness of the feeling, and the repetition, twice, of the line "and I blessed them unaware" gives emphasis to the act of blessing which comes to annihilate the evil spell, the "curse in a dead man's eye" which was one of the causes of the Mariner's suffering.

The relief from internal pain, in its own turn, releases the power of praying: free from himself (because it is also due to his being a prisoner of his own solitude, of his literal egocentricity - he, alone, in the middle of a desert scenery - that the Mariner has been so much morally tormented), the Mariner is also freed from the burden of the Albatross he has killed. His conscience is now clearer because his soul has been purified at the sight and the blessing of beauty. The fact that the Albatross is mentioned at this moment indicates the ending of a part; each one of of the seven parts of the poem, except the last one, is concluded with a reference to this bird, which is always there to remind of the Mariner's sinful deed of killing it, that is to say of the source of all what he has gone through. The seventh part does not include a reference to the Albatross, perhaps because the last two stanzas do not belong to the Mariner's narration. The Albatross is charged with religious connotations, compared to a "Christian soul" hailed "in God's name" (1st part), to a "cross" hanging about the Mariner's neck (2nd part), to a burden of lead on the Mariner's conscience (4th part); even when the Albatross itself is not mentioned, there are indirect references to it: the "crossbow" with which it was killed (3rd & 51b parts) and the bird's blood which will be "washed away" (6th part). Its "sinking like lead into the sea" symbolises the complete liberation of the Mariner from the object of his crime and, by extension, from the crime committed itself.

Dejection: An Ode

In the thirteenth chapter of his Biographia Literaria, Samuel Coleridge distinguishes "Fancy" from "Imagination". "Fancy" is defined as "a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space" having "no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites", while "Imagination" is seen as "the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception" which "dissolves, diffuses, dissipates in order to re-create; or [...] to idealise and to unify". This definition is given in other words in C. M. Bowra's Romantic Imagination, where Imagination is described as "a wonderful capacity to create imaginary worlds" which is "something vitally necessary for the poet's whole being". The words "Fancy" and "Imagination" in themselves appear in Coleridge's poem entitled Dejection: An Ode (Conversation Poems, 1795-1807), where the fear of having lost his "shaping spirit", his poetic power, gives the poet the feeling of "dejection" referred to in the title.

This "shaping spirit" of imagination is not only "vitally necessary" to the poet, but also identified with him. A poet without what Bowra calls "wonderful capacity" is not a poet at all. In Kubla Khan, one of Coleridge's strangest and most fascinating poems, the poet appears as a gifted, almost superhuman being, whose "flashing eyes and floating hair" cause "holy dread" to the beholders, and mark him as one who "on honeydew hath fed" and "drunk the milk of Paradise". The ending of this poem reflects exactly what Coleridge expresses in the thirteenth chapter of the Biographia Literaria: the "symphony and song" mentioned in the poem are but a figurative description of the "repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM". The act of poetic creation thus becomes sacred and the poet a kind of prophet inspired by a, one could say, divine flame. This image of the poet-prophet can also be found in The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, where the creative imagination is celebrated in the most puzzling, and at the same time most effective way:

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.

(Part VII, 11.586-590)

The poem where Coleridge's theory of "unity" in tone and content, in "symphony and song" ia best achieved, is Frost At Midnight. The poetic "Fancy" attains here its mere quality of being "emancipated from the order of time and space", but the emotions this emancipation brings to the surface are characterised by a mild nostalgic harmony and not by the wild anarchy dominating in The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner. The poet's mind is left free to wander in familiar places and among different fragments of temporality, but each one of its journeys has a concrete point of reference where it starts from and comes back to, "seeking everywhere echo or mirror of itself, and makes a toy of thought". The comforting serenity reigning in this "meditative joy" poem is contrasted with the uneasiness in the natural atmosphere of Christabel, where the reader's imagination is led to create the most unpromising possibilities ("'Tis the middle of the night by the castle clock and the owls have awakened the crowing cock") for the future of the unfortunate Christabel, as well as with the feeling of weakness and almost self-pity which springs from Dejection: An Ode.

This last poem (which, one must notice, is characterised by the poet himself as an "Ode", that is to say a formal, conventional piece of poetry expressing a state of mind or a personal cause along with a feeling of artistic and emotional crisis; Dejection was written almost simultaneously with William Wordsworth's Intimations Of Immortality and, as Wordsworth was the poet's most intimate friend and confidant, it is not strange that the two poems have a number of elements in common) is one in which Coleridge deplores, among other things, the loss of his creative powers as a poet and the emptiness this realisation has left in his heart: "I see them all (the stars, the moon and the sky) so excellently fair, I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!". This fear of being gradually deprived of his imaginative potential is also reflected in the form of the poem, which is strict, rather "official", and the use of the conventional, sometimes unconvincing verbal effects ("those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, that give away their motion to the stars"), which are, however, meant to appear as such, conveying the "blankness" of the poet's eye as he indifferently contemplates the surrounding nature. The absence of joy and the overwhelming of sadness and loneliness hinder the artistic creation and break the "unity" of the poet with the natural world. It is interesting to remark, anyway, that the very words of "Fancy" and "Imagination", which constitute the most fundamental notions in Coleridge's theory of poetic creation, appear in this poem which is exactly about their wearing out. Perhaps this is in itself a phenomenon of crisis, because when a poet is full of creativity he feels no need of dealing theoretically with his art in his very works; the content, the ingredients of his art are enough to speak about themselves without any further explanations. And this is why Dejection is important as a document, showing how an artist feels about his artistic object at a moment of mental and sentimental (emotional) questioning.