7.
After being trapped in fog and ice described in lines 51-62, an
albatross came “as if it were a Christian soul” (line
66). The sailors welcome the bird in God’s name (67) and feed
it (68) and as the bird flies round the ice breaks apart, the wind
blows, and the sailors can navigate the waters again. After nine
nights perched on the ship, the Mariner, without explicit reason,
shoots the Albatross with a crossbow. At first, the sailors
admonished him for killing the bird that made the wind blow (94-95),
but when the fog begins to break, they praise him for killing the
creature which made the fog stay (99-100). But then the sea turns dry
and windless, and the Mariner is blamed. As a sign of his guilt, the
sailors hang the corpse of the dead albatross around the Mariner’s
neck. The Albatross remains around his neck until, one evening, they
meet another ship which carries Death and Life-among-death (188,
193). After a game of chance (197) it is decided that all but the
Mariner should die. All his shipmates fall to the deck dead (226-229)
The Mariner is left alone on the ship with a dead albatross around
his neck. The Mariner eventually frees himself, completely by
accident, when he blesses water snakes that swim in the shadow of the
ship whose beauty his loneliness forced him to contemplate.
8. What
is causing the poet’s “dejection”? (Dejection: An
Ode)
In
the poem, Dejection: An Ode, Coleridge seems to choose words
specifically to create a mood of not only dejection, but also
absolute depression. The words create a somber mood and even set the
tone to the empty, hopeless feeling of grief, described specifically
in lines 21 and 22. The rhythm of the poem is slow and drawn out,
replicating the heaviness of an author who wears a “Smoth’ring
weight on his chest” (41). The speaker of the poem seems to be
mourning a woman, but also a loss more internal to himself. The woman
he mourns is presented only vaguely. But since in lines 128 and 129
he beseeches sleep to heal her, it could be asserted that his is
mourning a fatally ill woman. Lines 76-80, however, indicate there is
something within himself which he is mourning- his own youthful
perspective of hope.
9. In both
Aolian and Frost there is an element of pantheism. Can you find this
idea in both poems and offer brief comment proving that it is
actually present?
Perhaps
the most overt element of pantheistic thought in either of these
poems occurs in lines 59-64 of Coleridge’s Frost
at Midnight. Line 62 is particularly
incriminating in this instance: “Himself in All, and all things
in himself.” This masculine pronoun refers to God, mentioned
earlier in the sentence; and so this statement could be accurately
read “God in all, and everything in (is) God”. This is
the most basic and standard dogma of the pantheistic worldview,
uttered almost word-for-word. In the poem The Eolian Harp, this theme
is slightly more difficult to identify, but the footnotes acknowledge
it rather overtly. The “offending” statement can be found
in line 26: “Oh the one life within us and abroad”.
Although more uniquely phrased than the pantheistic statement in
Frost, this statement says essentially the same thing: One life is
within us, and that same life is also in this outside of us” in
other words, God is in us, and also in everything else. We know that
“life” in line 26 refers to God because in line 48 there
is rebuttal to this idea, which specifically assigns Coleridge’s
comment in line 26 to God. The footnotes supply that this is
Coleridge expressing his own doubts about pantheism through the
poetic voice of Sara. Although both poems express pantheistic ideas
rather explicitly, it is clear that Coleridge himself had doubts
about adopting this worldview entirely.
