Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Day 1

"The answer is that nothing can permanently please which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise. If meter be superadded, all other parts must be made consonant with it" (chp 14).
Biographia Literaria (1815; 1817)

Points of Reflection

1. consider Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight" (1798; 1798), "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison" (1797; 1800), and Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" ( ). How do these two poets differ in their descriptions of that large power existing above and behind Nature?

2. how does memory, both past and future, play a role in "Frost at Midnight" and "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison" (1797; 1800)?

3. which do you consider a better appellation for these last two poems, "friendship" poems or "conversation" poems?

4. do the content and form of these poems accord with the guidelines laid out by the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, specifically the prescription that simple language, concrete images, and familiar situations find their place in the period's poetry?

5. consider closely "Dejection: An Ode"

"Moonlight" (1840)
J. M. W. Turner

Paul Marchbanks
marchban@email.unc.edu