Conversation poems
The series title was devised to describe verse where Coleridge incorporates conversational language while examining higher ideas of nature and morality.
In each, Coleridge explores his idea of "One Life", a belief that people are spiritually connected through a universal relationship with God that joins all natural beings.
In the course of this meditation the lyric speaker achieves an insight, faces up to a tragic loss, comes to a moral decision, or resolves an emotional problem.
Often the poem rounds itself to end where it began, at the outer scene, but with an altered mood and deepened understanding which is the result of the intervening meditation.
[6] As Paul Magnuson wrote in 2002, "Abrams credited Coleridge with originating what Abrams called the 'greater Romantic lyric', a genre that began with Coleridge's 'Conversation' poems, and included William Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, Percy Bysshe Shelley's Stanzas Written in Dejection and John Keats's Ode to a Nightingale, and was a major influence on more modern lyrics by Matthew Arnold, Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, and W. H.
A conversation is an exchange; and these poems, a dozen or fewer, stretching from 'The Eolian Harp' [...] to 'To William Wordsworth] [...] and perhaps further, are plainly monologues.
Those who met Coleridge in his later life, it is true, were inclined to find his conversation arrestingly one-sided, but this will hardly serve as an explanation of what is happening here.
And watch the clouds, that late were rich with light, Slow saddening round, and mark the star of eve Serenely brilliant (such should Wisdom be) Shine opposite!
How by the desultory breeze caress'd, Like some coy maid half yielding to her lover, It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs Tempt to repeat the wrong!
In contrast to the second poem in the series, Reflections, which hints at problems with the relationship, The Eolian Harp focuses on innocence and the poet's anticipation of his conjugal union.
These images and their being reconciled are described as analogous to the effects of an Aeolian harp[15] and Coleridge's pantheistic feelings towards nature.
Was it right, While my unnumber'd brethren toil'd and bled, That I should dream away the entrusted hours On rose-leaf beds, pampering the coward heart With feelings all too delicate for use?
Sweet is the tear that from some Howard's eye Drops on the cheek of one he lifts from earth: And he that works me good with unmov'd face, Does it but half: he chills me while he aids, My benefactor, not my brother man!
—"Reflections" (lines 43–62)[20] Soon after his autumn 1795 marriage to Sara Fricker, Coleridge left their home in Clevedon, North Somerset.
The poem details how men feel a need to seek truth like a philosopher while also desiring to simply live in an idyllic natural state.
The poem reconciles these desires by claiming that the pursuer of truth can still reflect back on his time when he was simply enjoying nature and God's presence.
They, meanwhile, Friends, whom I never more may meet again, On springy heath, along the hill-top edge, Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance, To that still roaring dell, of which I told; —"This Lime-Tree Bower" (lines 1–9)[27] During summer 1797, Coleridge spent time with many of his friends, including John Thelwall, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, Thomas Poole, and his wife Sara Fricker.
As a result, he was left alone at Poole's property underneath a lime tree, while Lamb, the Wordsworths and his wife went on a journey across the Quantocks.
[33] Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, Whether the summer clothe the general earth With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall Heard only in the trances of the blast, Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
By introducing the historically real possibility of an invasion of England, the narrator announces his determination to protect his family and the dell, along with his fellow Britons.
But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierced With the remembrance of a grievous wrong, Or slow distemper, or neglected love, (And so, poor wretch!
filled all things with himself, And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale Of his own sorrow) he, and such as he, First named these notes a melancholy strain.
[58] The poem captures many of the feelings expressed in his earlier works, including his exploration of a problematic childhood and thoughts on his religious beliefs.
[61] Portions of the verse were printed in the 1809 Friend, however Wordsworth did not wish it to be made public due to the private nature of Coleridge's thoughts.
[63] The poem begins by summarising the themes of The Prelude, and develops into a discussion of Wordsworth's understanding of his beliefs and their relationship with nature.
[68] Within Reflections, the idea of "One Life" compels the narrator to abandon the sensual pleasures of the cottage and of nature in order to pursue a path of helping mankind.
[69] This Lime-Tree Bower continues the conversation poems theme of "One Life" by linking Coleridge's surroundings with the walk his friends went on.
Similarly, the compulsion to enter into the world and help mankind is included, but it is altered from being motivated by guilt to a warning message against a possible invasion from outside forces.
[74] The final ten lines of Frost at Midnight were chosen by Harper in 1928 as the "best example of the peculiar kind of blank verse Coleridge had evolved, as natural-seeming as prose, but as exquisitely artistic as the most complicated sonnet.
It is a shameless return to the older, effusive manner, evidently written in a white heat of patriotic indignation against the degradation of English public opinion during the French wars, and it is only by stretching charity that it can be considered a conversation poem at all.
