Why is coleridge important

For him it was better to die than to endure his sufferings. Then, urged on by his friends, he started a course of lectures in London, which achieved much success. It is written in the traditional ballad meter and deals with the supernatural punishment and penance of a seaman who wantonly kills an albatross. Nothing can exactly explain the witchery and magic of this poem.

The supernatural in the poem adds to the effects of horror and mystery. The moral is that of all-embracing love. Christabel is an unfinished Gothic ballad. Coleridge wrote its flawless first part in while the second part in which is not as effective as the first one. It narrates the medieval tale of witchcraft and mystical association. The supernatural atmosphere of the poem represents the eternal conflict between the forces of good and evil as personified in the innocent heroine Christabel and in the snake woman Geraldine.

In Christabel , the human and the supernatural elements interpenetrate each other in a more complete and subtle way than in The Rime of Ancient Mariner. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan in and published it in The poem is a mystical fragment and considered unrivalled for pure music, power of poetic diction, and imaginative suggestiveness.

Moreover, the poem is also a feat of supernaturalism and mystery. Coleridge has also used various sensuous phrases and images in Kubla Khan.

It is a poem of pure romance, in which all romantic associations are concentrated within a short compass to create a sense of mystery and awe. Besides mystery and romantic poems, Samuel Taylor Coleridge has also written several personal poems as well. Some of these are:. Coleridge wrote Frost at Midnight in It is one of his early conversation poems. The poem is a blank verse and uses a Romantic image of the eolian harp as both the order and the wildness found in nature.

The Nightingale , Published in consists of three-stanzas in a conversational style. This poem clearly reflects the Romantic ideas of the poet and is also a memorial to his friendship with Wordsworth.

The poem is an agonized cry of one who feels he has lost his potent voice before he could create all the symphonies he was capable of creating. Coleridge wrote this poem in a state of mental torment caused by marital strife, indifferent health, desertion by friends, financial stress, and unfulfillment in love.

Many consider the poem to be overworked by exclamatory sentences and an enlargement of German stanzas by Friederike Brun. In his poem Youth and Age , Published in , Coleridge presents a sharp contrast between youth and old age.

The poem vividly explains the difference between these two stages of life. Youth is like a budding flower, while old age is like the dawn. Coleridge has used various beautiful images in the poem to present these two stages of life. Coleridge composed his own Epitaph in It was published on his death in In his Epitaph , which is rooted in ideals of Christianity, the poet asks the passersby to pray for his mercy and forgiveness.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote some famous Political Poems as well. Some of these poems include:. Coleridge wrote France: An Ode in The Ode seems to mark the end of his impassioned defense of France, and the beginning of his conservative, somewhat Burkite philosophy.

Coleridge wrote Religious Musings in It is a desultory poem suffering from a turgid style and somewhat inconsistent thought. Yet it gains value from the principles of Unity and Harleian Necessity whereby Coleridge views the poorer features of the French Revolution as stages toward the final good. Coleridge wrote an Ode on the Departing Year at the close of It represents a transitional stage from his earlier enthusiasm for the French Revolution to his later disillusionment.

Coleridge penned down Fears in Solitude in It is a historically significant poem in which the poet reiterates his abhorrence of French politics. He also discusses the threats that his country is facing. We can note the low-keyed blank verse until the moment line when he relinquishes his pacifism and lashes out at the French.

After Fears in Solitude , Coleridge remained cool to French politics. There are many for whom he is the most important English critic, chiefly because he raised central questions about criticism itself, its method and philosophical basis. In both philosophy and literature, Coleridge was a man of stupendous learning.

His refined sensibility and penetration intellect, therefore, made him apt to the task of a critic. In Biographia Literaria, he has caught certain intentions as well as successes or failings of Wordsworth and illuminated them in depths. His remarks on Shakespeare, in fact, display a sound intuition of the profound unity of dramatic art.

It announced his unique contribution to the growth of English romanticism: the blending of lyrical and descriptive effusion with philosophical rumination in truly symbolic poetry. From March to May Coleridge edited the Watchman, a liberal periodical which failed after 10 issues. While this failure made him realize that he was "not fit for public life," his somewhat turgid "Ode to the Departing Year" shows that he had not abandoned his revolutionary fervor.

Yet philosophy and religion were his overriding interests. His voracious reading was mainly directed to one end, which was already apparent in his Religious Musings begun , published —he aimed to redefine orthodox Christianity so as to rid it of the Newtonian dichotomy between spirit and matter, to account for the unity and wholeness of the universe, and to reassess the relation between God and the created world. Perhaps the most influential event in Coleridge's career was his intimacy with William and Dorothy Wordsworth, in whose neighborhood he spent most of his life from to This friendship was partly responsible for his annus mirabilis July to July , which culminated in his joint publication with Wordsworth of the Lyrical Ballads in September As against 19 poems by Wordsworth, the volume contained only 4 by Coleridge, but one of these was "The Ancient Mariner.

Like Wordsworth's "The Thorn," for example, Coleridge's "The Ancient Mariner" deals with the themes of sin and punishment and of redemption through suffering and a loving apprehension of nature. A second, enlarged edition of Coleridge's Poems also appeared in In the writings of post-Kantian German philosophers such as J. Fichte, F. Sibylline Leaves contains lively, humorous accounts of his German experiences. The dozen years following Coleridge's return to England were the most miserable in his life.

In October he settled near the Wordsworths in the Lake District. The cold, wet climate worsened his many ailments, and turning to laudanum for relief, he soon became an addict. His marriage, which had never been a success, was now disintegrating, especially since Coleridge had fallen in love with Sara Hutchinson, sister of Wordsworth's wife-to-be.

Coleridge and Southey envisioned the men sharing the workload, a great library, philosophical discussions, and freedom of religious and political beliefs. After finally visiting Wales, Coleridge returned to England to find that Southey had become engaged to a woman named Edith Fricker.

As marriage was an integral part of the plan for communal living in the New World, Coleridge decided to marry another Fricker daughter, Sarah.

Coleridge wed in , in spite of the fact that he still loved Mary Evans, who was engaged to another man. Coleridge's marriage was unhappy and he spent much of it apart from his wife. During that period, Coleridge and Southey collaborated on a play titled The Fall of Robespierre While the pantisocracy was still in the planning stages, Southey abandoned the project to pursue his legacy in law.

Left without an alternative plan, Coleridge spent the next few years beginning his career as a writer. He never returned to Cambridge to finish his degree. In Coleridge befriended William Wordsworth , who greatly influenced Coleridge's verse. Coleridge, whose early work was celebratory and conventional, began writing in a more natural style. The following year, Coleridge published his first volume of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects , and began the first of ten issues of a liberal political publication entitled The Watchman.

From to he lived near Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, in Somersetshire. In the two men collaborated on a joint volume of poetry entitled Lyrical Ballads. The collection is considered the first great work of the Romantic school of poetry and contains Coleridge's famous poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

That autumn the two poets traveled to the Continent together. While there he mastered the German language and began translating. In Coleridge returned to England and settled in the Lake District, where he spent a miserable life for twelve years.

The climate made his many ailments worse. For pain relief he took laudanum, a type of opium drug, and soon became an addict. In addition, his marriage was failing. His opium addiction now began to take over his life: he separated from his wife in , quarrelled with Wordworth in , lost part of his annuity in , put himself under the care of Dr.

Daniel in , and finally moved in with Dr. Gilman in Highgate, London, where the doctor and his family managed for the next 18 years to keep his demon under control. Coleridge was one of the most important figures in English poetry. His poems directly and deeply influenced all the major poets of the age.