Coleridge wrote two similar poems, “Effusion XXXV” and the revised version, “The Eolian Harp”. His first, written in 1795, was composed thirty-nine years before his revision, which was placed in his Poetical Works. Both poems were written in Somersetshire and continue to speak in the same conversational tone to Sara, his fiancé. While both poems can be considered similar to each other, they each have a different story when read throughout.
“Effusion XXXV” has three stanzas and fifty-six lines. It is a conversational poem where Coleridge is speaking to the woman he loves, Sara, who he would marry two months after the creation of the poem. In the first stanza, the speaker of the poem addresses Sara and where they are. He explains his love for her and often relates it to sound. “The world so hushed! / The stilly murmur of the distant sea / Tells us of silence” (10-13). Here the readers see the first relatable words to sound in the poem, but when we look over at “The Eolian Harp”, we realize that Coleridge has kept this line but allowed it to have a deeper meaning as he ends his first stanza with it. Sound becomes an important attribute in both poems because of how often Coleridge speaks about it. It allows the readers to be able to not only imagine a sound but also hear the rhythm of the poem. The speaker continues with his poem, without starting another stanza in “Effusion XXXV”, which then allows the reader to not consider the lines above to be an important part in the poem. As the poem continues, sound becomes lost after the second stanza where the harp is first mentioned instead of the lute, “And what if all of animated nature / Be but organic harps diversely framed,” (36-37). The poem, in the final third stanza is the exact s...
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...em to progress and become something more.
Coleridge’s two poems “Effusion XXXV” and “The Eolian Harp” are similar upon a first glance, but become different once delved into. “Effusion XXXV” is tense at times and a little difficult to read. It is deeply intriguing and much more serious before the revision. “The Eolian Harp” quickly becomes a favorite of the two and easily relatable to due to its much lighter pace and vaster imaginative space. Coleridge seems as if he is almost a different person in both poems and unless the poems are read together every time, it continues to remain that way.
Works Cited
Coleridge, S.T. “Effusion XXXV”. Romanticism An Anthology. Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2012. 620. Print.
Coleridge, S.T. “The Eolian Harp”. Romanticism An Anthology. Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2012. 621. Print.
In his preface to "Kubla Khan," Samuel Taylor Coleridge makes the claim that his poem is a virtual recording of something given to him in a drug-induced reverie, "if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things . . . without any sensation or consciousness of effort." As spontaneous and as much a product of the unconscious or dreaming world as the poem might seem on first reading, however, it is also a finely structured, well wrought device that suggests the careful manipulation by the conscious mind.
Furthermore, Wordsworth’s assertion of feelings as the effects of an action or a situation, which means that actions should influence the emotions of the character and not the other way around, is dissimilar to The Raven’s character’s feeling of desperation in which he succumbed to his distress. However, the lesson derived from the bizarre workings of the human mind in preferring more devotion to the pain for the sake of “preserving the memory,” as “The Raven” illustrates, exposes to us how a particular person behaves towards grief. The statement thus proves in relation to Coleridge’s statement of the readers’ elicitation of the poem is more significant than the poem itself (in reference to his emphasis on the importance of the “Return”). Another variation between Wordsworth and Coleridge is that the former claims that the writer must bring the language near to the language of men, whilst the latter believes that the language of poetry should beautiful and elevated. “The Raven” in this case
Coleridge paints the picture of a kingdom, Xanadu, and the surrounding scenery is described with a heavenly, dreamlike vividness that can only result from smoking a little too much opium. This kingdom has a “pleasure dome” that was created by Kubla Kahn. The paradise-like kingdom consists of ten miles of “fertile ground” and is surrounded by walls that are securely “girdled” around the property. The gardens are “blossoming with many an incense baring tree” and are watered by a wandering stream. There is a river, and it gives life to Kubla Kahn’s creations and runs “through caverns measureless to man.”
To fully understand this poem, the reader would find it helpful to know what led Coleridge to write it. Coleridge grew up with English essayist Charles Lamb in school and the two were close friends (Merriman.) In their later years, however, the two rarely saw each other as Coleridge lived in the country side and Lamb lived in the city, where he cared for his mentally ill sister (Merriman.) On one of the rare days Lamb went to visit him, Coleridge planed to go on a walk through the scenic area surrounding his house with Lamb and some other friends, but before they left, Coleridge’s wife accidentally dropped boiling milk on his foot and he was unable to participate in the walk (Benzon.) While the others gallivanted across the countryside, Coleridge sat in his garden and wrote this poem.
During the 18th century, two great companion; William Wordsworth collaborated together to create Lyrical Ballad; one of the greatest works of the Romantic period. The two major poems of Lyrical Ballad are Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” and Coleridge’s “Frost at Midnight.” Even though these two poems contain different experiences of the two speakers, upon close reading of these poems, the similarities are found in their use of language, the tone, the use of illustrative imagery to fascinate the reader’s visual sense and the message to their loved ones.
Stillinger, Jack. ~~Coleridge & Textual Instability: The Multiple Versions of the Major Poems~~. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
with the alliteration of the frst five lines : "Kubla Khan'', ''dome decree'', and ''sunless sea''. Coleridge interlaces short exclamations (''but oh!'', ''a savage place!'') and exageratedly long exclamations (''as holy and enchanted as e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted by a woman wailing for her demon lover!'') reinforces the feeling of flowing which is related to the time ''ticking'' irregularly away, creating a sense of timelessness.
...ous allegory represents Christian ideals such as sin, forgiveness, and prayer. In addition, Coleridge’s use of language and form contribute to the message conveyed in the text. The form fluctuates throughout the text by use of different rhyme schemes, loose meter, and stanzas in length varying four to nine lines. The variety of form could be representative the array of interpretations of this text. Coleridge conveys profound religious meaning by using symbolic language with interpretive representations. Although his use of elevated language possibly narrowed the audience, that could have been his intentions due to the complexities of this philosophical poem. In the end, Coleridge’s depiction of the Mariner’s journey ultimately conveys the Christian ideal, which is to love and appreciate all creatures created by God, whether Albatross or snake.
Coleridge’s preoccupation with light and the way in which it changes the perception of the object is what links this passage with the ideas of Berkeley. Even though Coleridge and many other Romantics (such as Wordsworth) used the came to different conclusions about perception than Berkeley, his theories about light “pointed to the why in which such phenomena of light as the rainbow could be used as a scientific model for the imagination as a perceptual relationship between man and nature” (Prickett 13).
Both poems where written in the Anglo-Saxton era in Old English and later translated into English. As well as both poems being written in the same time period, they are both elegiac poems, meaning they are poignant and mournful.
Magnuson, Paul. "The Gang: Coleridge, the Hutchinsons & The Wordsworths in 1802." Criticism 4(2001):451. eLibrary. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
While Coleridge describes the process of creating Romantic poetry and encourages poets to use the combination of nature and imagination in this process, Keats is more focused on reality and is well aware of the limitations of the Grecian urn. With the poets’ admiration of nature present in both poems …… to be completed.
Orr, Leonard. A. Critical Essays on Samuel Taylor Coleridge. New York: G.K. Hall, 1994.
Moreover, searching for the different mechanics in each of these poems makes it easier for the reader to analysis and interpret them. To begin, in “The World is Too Much with Us” the way the punctuation is fit into the poem is different since there are many semicolons between each line and one period suggesting that the poem is actually one long sentence. Then I believe the speaker to be someone who acknowledges that he too has lost connection with nature since he’s been preoccupied with other things in the world. This is proven throughout the whole poem since he talks in first person using the word “I.” The tone of this poem is angry, frustrated, and dissatisfied because of how the world has changed. The rhyme scheme is also another appealing mechanic here too since Wordsworth only uses fou...
Through alliteration and imagery, Coleridge turns the words of the poem into a system of symbols that become unfixed to the reader. Coleridge uses alliteration throughout the poem, in which the reader “hovers” between imagination and reality. As the reader moves through the poem, they feel as if they are traveling along a river, “five miles meandering with a mazy motion” (25). The words become a symbol of a slow moving river and as the reader travels along the river, they are also traveling through each stanza. This creates a scene that the viewer can turn words into symbols while in reality they are just reading text. Coleridge is also able to illustrate a suspension of the mind through imagery; done so by producing images that are unfixed to the r...