“To Nature” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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You have seen the unfriendly attitude of humans towards Mother Earth.
However, Romantic poets have always found comfort in the lap of Nature.
See what [Coleridge’s “To Nature” poem says...
It may indeed be phantasy, when I
Essay to draw from all created things
Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings;
And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie
Lessons of love and earnest piety.
So let it be; and if the wide world rings
In mock of this belief, it brings
Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity.
So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,
Thee only God! and thou shalt not despise
Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice.
GLOSSARY:
Fantasy (N): A fanciful mental image, typically one on which a person often dwells and which reflects
their conscious or unconscious wishes
Essay (V): Attempt or try
Clings (V): Third person present tense of the word “cling”, that is, to hold on tightly to
Trace (V): Find or discover by investigation
Earnest (Adj): Resulting from or showing sincere and intense conviction
Piety (N): The quality of being religious or reverent
Mock (N): An object of derision
Grief (N): Intense sorrow, especially caused by someone’s death
Vain (Adj): Producing no result; useless
Perplexity (N): Inability to deal with or understand something
Altar (N): A table or flat-topped block used as the focus for a religious ritual, especially for making
sacrifices or offerings to a deity
Fretted (Adj): (Especially of wood or stone) decorated with patterns
Dome (N): A rounded vault forming the roof of a building or structure, typically with a circular base
Fragrance (N): A pleasant, sweet smell
Yields (V): Third person present tense of the word “yield”, that is, to produce or provide (a natural,
agricultural, or industrial product)
Incense (N): A gum, spice, or other substance that is burned for the sweet smell it produces
Thee (Pr): An older form of the word “you”
Thou (Pr): An older form of the word “you”
Shalt (V): An older form of the word “shall”
Despise (V): Feel contempt or a deep repugnance for
Priest (N): An ordained minister of the Catholic, Orthodox, or Anglican Church, authorized to perform
certain rites and administer certain sacraments
Sacrifice (N): An act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more
important or worthy
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 -1834) is an English poet, literary critic and philosopher.
He and his friend Wordsworth are regarded as the founders of the Romantic Movement in
English Literature. He is best known for his poems THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT
MARINER and KUBLA KHAN. His major prose work is BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and a poem as “organic”:
from The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.
http://flash.lakeheadu.ca/~emurray/1112RomanticismOutline.htm
· “For Coleridge the creative work of every poet springs from an imaginative power at once
available for analysis yet mysterious in its sources. He sees a poem as organic [Norton’s
emphasis], true to itself, acquiring it shape like a plant from a seed and thereby growing
according to its own internal law of development.”
· This theory “honours the creative capacity of persons while remaining steadfast to the
primacy of God” Coleridge was serious about his religion.
· For Coleridge, allegory is mechanical, merely human-made, while “symbol is organically
unified, fusing the particular and the general, the temporal and the eternal.” 671
· Coleridge distinguishes between “fancy” and “imagination,” and sees imagination as far
superior.
· The first is “the ‘primary’ imagination, the ‘living power’ of God, in the eternal act of
creation, it is also the power of creation in each person.”670
· “The ‘secondary’ imagination echoes the primary; in conjunction with the will and
understanding, it dissolves in order to re-create, making whole and harmonizing as a ‘synthetic
and magical power.’
· For Coleridge, “fancy,” in contrast, is an inferior ability. It merely associates ‘fixities and
definites’.” It simply reproduces what one has already seen, in memory, without creativity.
S. T. Coleridge
Posted on December 20, 2015 by briefpoems
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), was born in Devonshire, the youngest son of the vicar of Ottery
St Mary. After his father’s death he was sent away to Christ’s Hospital School in London. He also
studied at Jesus College where he was renowned for his amazing memory and his appetite for learning.
However, he described his next three years of school as “depressed, moping, friendless.” Because of bad
debts, Coleridge joined the 15th Light Dragoons, a British cavalry unit, in December 1793. After his
discharge in April 1794, he returned to Jesus College, but he left in December without completing a
degree.
In Cambridge he met the radical, future poet laureate Robert Southey and moved with him to Bristol to
establish a plan for a “pantisocracy,” a vision of an ideal community to be founded in
Pennsylvania. The plan failed. In 1795 he married the sister of Southey’s fiancée, Sara Fricker.
However, he grew to detest his wife, whom he only married because of social constraints. They
eventually separated.
Coleridge’s first collection Poems On Various Subjects was published in 1796. He had a close friendship
with Dorothy and William Wordsworth, one of the most fruitful creative relationships in English
literature. From it resulted Lyrical Ballads, which set a new style by using everyday language and fresh
ways of looking at nature. It opened with Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and ended with
Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”. He visited Germany in 1798-99 with William and Dorothy
Wordsworth, mastered the German language and studied philosophy at Göttingen University.
In 1799 he fell in love with Sara Hutchinson, the sister of Wordsworth’s future wife, to whom he
devoted his work Dejection: An Ode (1802) and with whom he wrote and edited the literary and political
magazine The Friend. That love was not reciprocated. From 1808 to 1818 he gave several lectures,
chiefly in London, and was considered the greatest of Shakespearean critics. In 1810 Coleridge’s
friendship with Wordsworth reached crisis point. These two great Romantic poets never fully recovered
their friendship.
Suffering initially from a toothache and later from rheumatic pains, Coleridge became addicted to
laudanum and opium. During the following years, almost suicidal, he lived in London. He found a
permanent shelter in Highgate in the household of Dr. James Gillman who built a special annex to house
the poet. Coleridge rarely left the house. In 1816 the unfinished poems Christabel and Kubla Khan,
whose supernatural themes and exotic images may have been affected by his use of the drugs, were
published. His most important production during this period was the Biographia Literaria (1817). After
1817 he devoted himself to theological and politico-sociological works. Coleridge was elected a fellow
of the Royal Society of Literature in 1824.
Thomas Carlyle has described his life at Highgate: Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill, in those
years, looking down on London and its smoke-tumult, like a sage escaped from the inanity of life’s battle
… The practical intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a
metaphysical dreamer: but to the rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime
character; and sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr.
Gilman’s house at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain whether oracles or jargon.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge died in Highgate, near London on July 25, 1834.
