I promised him that I would make the attempt; but, almost immediately after, a rheumatic complaint seized on my head, and continued to prevent the possibility of poetic composition till within the last three days.
But I trust that the present case is an exception, and that the peculiar circumstances, which obliged me to write with such unusual rapidity, give a propriety to my professions of it [...] For me to discuss the literary merits of this hasty composition, were idle and presumptuous [...] I am more anxious, lest the moral spirit of the Ode should be mistaken.
Yet, mine eye fix'd on Heaven's unchanging clime Long had I listen'd, free from mortal fear, With inward stillness, and a bowéd mind; When lo!
[6] The poem then predicts the fall of Britain if the British government was to ally with tyrant forces against the French:[2] Not yet enslaved, not wholly vile, O Albion!
Now I recentre my immortal mind In the deep Sabbath of meek self-content; Cleans'd from the vaporous passions that bedim God's Image, sister of the Seraphim.
[5] Connections to the themes in Coleridge's poetry continued until the late poem, "Ne Plus Ultra", incorporates parallels to the ideas within the Ode.
[7] In a Letter to Poole in December, Coleridge wrote: "I mean to work very hard — as Cook, Butler, Scullion, Shoe-cleaner, occasional Nurse, Gardener, Hind, Pig-protector, Chaplain, Secretary, Poet, Reviewer, and omni-botherum shilling-scavenger — in other words, I shall keep no Servant, and will cultivate my Land-acre and my wise-acres, as well as I can.
"[3] After the poem was published on 31 December 1796, Coleridge set out from Bristol to be with his wife Sara and their child; his plans was to move to Stowey to become a farmer.