The Complete Poems

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Keach (Editor)

‘O pure of heart! thou need’st not ask of me What this strong music in the soul may be!’

One of the major figures of English Romanticism, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) created works of remarkable diversity and imaginative genius. The period of his creative friendship with William Wordsworth inspired some of Coleridge’s best-known poems, from the nightmarish vision of the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and the opium-inspired "Kubla Khan" to the sombre passion of "Dejection: An Ode" and the medieval ballad "Christabel." His meditative ‘conversation’ poems, such as "Frost at Midnight" and "This Lime-Tree Bower Mr Prison," reflect on remembrance and solitude, while late works, such as "Youth and Age" and "Constancy to an Ideal Object," are haunting meditations on mortality and lost love.

This volume contains the final texts of all the poems published during Coleridge’s lifetime and a substantial selection from those still in manuscript at his death, arranged in chronological order of composition to show his development as a poet. Also included are an introduction, table of dates, further reading, extensive notes, and indexes of titles and first lines.  

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fiction, Romanticism, Literature, 19th Century, British Literature

656 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1834

About the author

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was an English poet, critic, and philosopher who was, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as his major prose work Biographia Literaria.

Reviews

[Leonard Gaya · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume is a compendium of Coleridge’s poems. I primarily focused my reading on one of them, the longest and, perhaps, the most famous, namely: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The story is somewhat tortuous: a ship gets lost in Antarctica, the mariner shoots an albatross and has to carry the bird’s corpse as a burden; then a phantom boat appears, and the crew dies. Finally, the mariner reaches his homeland and is rescued by a hermit.

The images in this poem are fascinating (e.g., “All in a hot and copper sky / The bloody sun at noon, / Right up above the mast did stand, / No bigger than the moon.”). The sounds and rhythms of Cloredige stanzas, often based on repetitions, are compelling as well: “The Ice was here, the Ice was there, / The Ice was all around”, or “Alone, alone, all, all alone, / Alone on a wide wide sea!” It works like a rocking movement, like the motion of the waves.

In passing, I also stopped off on the magnificent Kubla Khan. I believe one verse, in particular, will stay with me: “That sunny dome! those caves of ice!”

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like a hypocrite adding this, since its a collected edition and I'm only really a fan of a few of his poems.

The thing is, the few I'm a fan of are some of the best poems I've ever read. 'Rime', 'Aeolian Harp', 'Frost At Midnight'....

He could barely contain the imagination he held so close in some of these masterpieces. Read him at his best and you won't be dissapointed.

He used to walk fervently up the street, conversation companion in tow, talking loudly and forcefully, switching sides every 20 yards or so. He'd doze off intermittently at social occasions, wake up and go on two hour rants about Kant and Hegel and such, to everyone's rapt attention.

Sheer power of intellect and a little opium-laden imagination sure didn't hurt his place in literary history.

At his funeral, Wordsworth, weeping over his grave, said simply this: "the most Wonderful man I have ever met". I'm just bummed because there's no italics function here.

Still, I think you get the drift.

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

YES I HAVE READ ALL OF THEM I EVEN CITED "CRISTOBEL" IN A PAPER ABOUT LESBIAN VAMPIRES IN SEVENTIES FRENCH CINEMA

[Sladjana Kovacevic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Youth and Age

BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Verse, a breeze mid blossoms straying,

Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee—

Both were mine! Life went a-maying

With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,

When I was young!


When I was young?—Ah, woful When!

Ah! for the change 'twixt Now and Then!

This breathing house not built with hands,

This body that does me grievous wrong,

O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands,

How lightly then it flashed along:—

Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,

On winding lakes and rivers wide,

That ask no aid of sail or oar,

That fear no spite of wind or tide!

Nought cared this body for wind or weather

When Youth and I lived in't together.


Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like;

Friendship is a sheltering tree;

O! the joys, that came down shower-like,

Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,

Ere I was old!

Ere I was old? Ah woful Ere,

Which tells me, Youth's no longer here!

O Youth! for years so many and sweet,

'Tis known, that Thou and I were one,

I'll think it but a fond conceit—

It cannot be that Thou art gone!


Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll'd:—

And thou wert aye a masker bold!

What strange disguise hast now put on,

To make believe, that thou are gone?

I see these locks in silvery slips,

This drooping gait, this altered size:

But Spring-tide blossoms on thy lips,

And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!

Life is but thought: so think I will

That Youth and I are house-mates still.


Dew-drops are the gems of morning,

But the tears of mournful eve!

Where no hope is, life's a warning

That only serves to make us grieve,

When we are old:

That only serves to make us grieve

With oft and tedious taking-leave,

Like some poor nigh-related guest,

That may not rudely be dismist;

Yet hath outstay'd his welcome while,

And tells the jest without the smile.

[Jacky Chan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read and loved 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'; then turned to read some of his political, Gothic etc. poems, and they are all good. Out of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, I surprisingly like Coleridge most.

[Sarai · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uno dei miei poeti romantici preferiti

"What if you slept
And what if
In your sleep
You dreamed
And what if
In your dream
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what if
When you awoke
You had that flower in you hand
Ah, what then?"

[Angela]

Read for my English class, British Literature and Culture: Romanticism and the Anthropocene.

[Trevor Seigler · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll be honest right off the bat: I am not sure that I read poetry right. What I mean is, when given a book that has some poems in it not by one author, I can read all the poems and enjoy them on their own merits. When, in this case, I have a book of poems all by one author, and a huge book at that, I feel like I'm always unable to form critical opinions about each poem because, as soon as one is over, I'm on to the next one. Maybe if I wasn't reading this as part of a reading challenge (and skimming a lot of it, because not every poem in here is a winner), I might feel like I could take my time and enjoy each poem as is. But I'm kinda over reading this beginning to end (I'm not technically finished with it, yet, but I am going to go ahead and review it based on what I've read).

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was, alongside William Wordsworth, one of the premier English Romantic poets of the early Romantic period (roughly 1795 to 1815, by which time poets like Shelley, Byron, and Keats were starting to work). Coleridge is kind of a poet that more people have heard of than read (and if they've heard of him, it's because of "Kubla Khan" and the "stately pleasure palace of Xanadu," which Orson Welles used in "Citizen Kane"). But he was a pretty significant poet in his day, and many of the verses in this collection attest to his gifts as a poet. I think what has kept me from really diving deep into the mature work is the fact that I tried to start from the beginning with his first poems which, while fine, are not often indicative of his abilities in "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" or other later poems. But I've enjoyed the ones that I've read all the way through.

I feel like this is less of a ringing endorsement of "The Complete Poems" than I meant it to be, but in all seriousness, if you get this book take your time with it. Not every poem will wow you, but there are a lot of good poems here. At any rate, I can revisit it in the future, picking out the ones that I liked the first time around or the ones that I skipped because of page count.

[John Burns · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't have a lot to say about Coleridge. Like so many pre-20th century writers I find his work a little hard to understand. There is kind of a magical quality to some of it. Obviously the Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a pretty visionary work. He seems like a likeable guy. He writes poems about anything. About a cup of tea. About his maths studies at school. About a walk around the lake after dinner. About being examined by doctors who don't know what they're doing. I think this is a great way to write so long as you assume that a lot of what you write will be tosh but that it's ok to proceed in that manner because you can discard the tosh and just publish the good stuff, but this collected volume includes loads of stuff he wrote. I think there was too much. I do wonder slightly what people want from a "collected poems" volume. I feel like there aren't that many people who literally want to read every single extant work by a poet. More likely they want to read most of their work, or all their work except for the really crap stuff. I think when you're going through a poet's notebooks and picking up random scraps and fragments of abandoned works then you're taking the concept of a "collected" or even "complete" volume too far.

I think I enjoyed his work. There wasn't a lot of depth to it but on a purely technical level Coleridge was certainly a literary genius and there is a kind of charm and readability about his work. It's sort of enjoyable to read without being particularly comprehensible.

I didn't dislike his work but it didn't leave much of an impression on me. I'd probably recommend "The Rime of the ancient mariner" to people (especially with Mervyn Peake's illustrations) but I don't think I'd recommend Coleridge beyond that.

[C. B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mainly read this for the classic poems, while keeping an eye out for any lesser-known gems. I found The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to be very much deserving of fame. I’ve never read anything quite like that! (I’m rather late to the party, I know). I’m pleased that I never had it ruined by having it taught to me in a school, as drudging through it line by line would take away from its immediate punch. Christabel was interesting, but felt very much unfinished to me. Kubla Khan is utterly sublime; in fact, I got this book because I read it and it intrigued me. It’s abstruse, but I find some new feeling every time I come back to it. And as for those lesser-known gems… argh! There aren’t many, to be brutally honest. The majority of the collection is made-up of pleasant enough lines about love, nature, God, and Coleridge’s friends, whom he clearly had a great fondness for (particularly Charles Lamb). My earnest wish when I began was an entire book of Kubla Khans, but alas. However, there was one other poem that stood out, called The Pains of Sleep. It’s a moving depiction of sleep plagued by anxiety, and it made me feel very close to Coleridge in a way that none of the other poems did.

[Noah Pemar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book, it was very interesting to read it. I like it.

[Patrick Halston]

From Humble(d) Beginnings (November 2003)

As a boy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was badly bullied. His brother Frank bullied him because he thought Samuel was their mother’s favorite son. Samuel became “fretful” and “timorous” (Weissman 110). Shunned by other boys for being a sissy, Samuel read books about adventures and playfully acted out the tales. But his father, believing Samuel to be overwhelmed by the books’ scary parts, burnt the books. This Coleridge was understandably pleased after writing “This Lime-Tree Bower,” because “Lime-Tree” was an imaginative attempt to shape his boyhood miseries into a boon. However, Coleridge had once both turned the tables on his brother and successfully braved an evening alone outside his home. And this Coleridge, the person he might have been had he not been bullied, the one who thought of himself as wild and free, is the person he tried to recover in subsequent poetry. Through first rejecting (in the re-write of “Lime-Tree” and in “Frost at Midnight”) the accommodating tone and the self-deceptive stance of “Lime-Tree,” Coleridge regains the will in “France: an Ode” to once again brave placing himself before a threatening night sky. And out there, outside, Coleridge claims liberty from all “prisons,” self-imposed or otherwise.

In “Lime Tree,” Coleridge characterizes himself as “lame,” “faint,” and “lonely.” He pretends that this status—the consequence here of Sarah spilling hot milk on his foot—is unusual. The norm, he pretends, was for him to roam about with friends. But Coleridge grew up denied the outdoor play others enjoyed. His brother Frank intimidated him until he became the sort of person—a sissy—other boys would have nothing to do with (Weissman 110). He compensated by reading adventure stories, but his father, “disliking the effect [. . .] which these books had produced” (Coleridge, “Dearest Poole” 346-50), burnt the books, just as Sarah burns Coleridge’s foot in “Lime-Tree.” Coleridge had his whole childhood to persuade himself that deprivation is a good thing, so his revelation in “Lime-tree” is better understood as a capitulation to the status imposed upon him by boyhood bullies than as enlightenment. But Coleridge penned “Lime-Tree” prepared to repudiate the lame representation of himself in the poem as someone whose natural company is the hornless, stingless, humble-bee.

Perhaps buoyed by his friendship with the “great man” Wordsworth, and certainly building on the one night as a boy he had threatened his brother with a knife, Coleridge alters “Lime-Tree” in the re-write so he seems more commanding than accommodating. The accommodating Coleridge in the first version is the one who discovers virtues in “narrow” places, and who states that “sometimes / [t]is well to be bereaved of promised good, / [t]hat we may lift the soul and contemplate [ . . . ] the joys we cannot share.” The commanding Coleridge is the one who in the re- write alters the dell his friends explore so it becomes awe-inspiring and threatening.

In the original version there is a “rifted dell, where many an ash / [t]wists its wild limbs beside the ferny rock.” In the re-write there is a “roaring dell, o’erwooded, narrow [ . . . ] [and] deep.” In the original version he imagines his friends only “look[ing]” into the dell; the re-write has them “winding down” into it. The result of this alteration is that when Coleridge addresses the sun, clouds, grove, and ocean, he is commanding these elements to do battle with the dell. Despite all of the exclamation marks ending statements such as “[r]ichlier burn, ye clouds!” and “kindle, though blue ocean!,” in the first version, because he has not evoked the image of a threatening dell, Coleridge’s address seems more a wistful plea for nature to tend to his long-suffering friend Charles Lamb than a command to rescue him from threatening surroundings. The reference to his friend’s deprived status as a city- dweller is still there in the re-write, but it is overwhelmed, outmatched, by the more evocative dell.

Lamb objected to being described in “Lime-Tree” as a “gentle” city-dweller that needed “rescuing,” and asked that Coleridge change how he characterized him in subsequent versions of the poem (Wu 458). Coleridge never complied with his friend’s request; instead, in the re-write he ends up leaving out his own self- description as “lame,” “lonely,” and “faint.” The removal of these descriptors is appropriate, for in the re-write Coleridge acts in such a way that he no longer warrants being described as the human equivalent of the humble bee.

Coleridge, while he commands nature, does not in the re-write usurp his bower- prison. What he does do is italicize the word “usurp” in the text, which only adds to the many exclamation marks in the poem, a disturbance to its meditative mood. Coleridge does not usurp “prisons” in “Frost at Midnight,” either, but he makes clear in this poem the real reason he chose not to do so in “Lime-Tree.”

As was the case in “Lime-Tree,” Coleridge is denied access to “playmate[s]” in “Frost at Midnight.” Unlike “Lime-Tree,” he boldly addresses rather than camouflages his perpetual boyhood experience of being “dr[iven] [ . . . ] from play” (“Dearest Poole” 346-50). What keeps him “imprisoned” in “Frost at Midnight” is not an accident but rather the “stern preceptor’s [intimidating] face.” And rather than discovering that there is “[n]o scene so narrow but may well employ / [e]ach faculty of sense, and keep the heart / [a]wake to love and beauty,” in “Frost at Midnight” “narrow” scenes lead inevitably to restricted happiness. “Cloister[ed]” living is not redeemed in this poem by discovering virtue in denied pleasures. Instead, Coleridge is regretful that he “saw nought lovely [as a child] but the sky and stars (emphasis added).”

In “Frost at Midnight,” Coleridge hopes his son will not be confined to narrow scenes as he once was. He hopes instead his son will “wander [epic landscapes] like the breeze.” However, because he refers to the night sky as the only redemptive element he knew as a boy, Coleridge may already be preparing to wander about awesome environments himself. Coleridge’s sole experience as a child of usurping bullies and enduring outside dangers involved spending an evening alone before the night sky. Though it may have been only one occasion, Coleridge had on this occasion known what it was to fight back “without running back to his mother, [. . . ] proving he was no sissy or tattletale” (Weissman 118). He ran outside his home and endured a “dreadful stormy night” (Coleridge, “Dear Poole” 352-56), proving he could handle the fearsome experiences his father thought him incapable of. And in “France: An Ode,” Coleridge leaves his bower-prison behind to wind his “moonlight way” “[t]hrough glooms which never woodman trod.”

Coleridge begins “France: An Ode” with an apology: he must apologize to nature for controlling it in the re-write of “Lime-Tree.” The clouds he had commanded to “richlier burn” become the clouds that “no mortal may control.” The woods that he had the “ancient ivy” “usurp,” now are “imperious” and master the wind. Coleridge has no interest here in the “sweet sounds” and “pleasing shapes” of nature that inspired capitulation in “Lime-Tree.” He is instead intent on rediscovering amidst the “rude shape[s] [. . .] and wild unconquerable sound[s]” of nature, the obstinacy, the will, to refuse to “[y]ield homage” to those who would curtail his freedom.

He does not exempt himself. Coleridge repudiates in “France: an Ode” those who are “[s]laves by their own compulsion[,] [ . . . ] [who] wear the name / [o]f freedom graven on a heavier chain.” He likely is thinking of himself here—or at least the version of himself who pretended in “Lime-Tree” that deprivation can lead to “wis[dom],” “pur[ity],” and happiness. This Coleridge, who used his imagination to transform a prison into a holy site, needed no stern eye to keep him in place. Nor should he have feared punishment: he was willing to pretend that physical incapacitation can be a good thing.

The Coleridge in “France: An Ode” should expect punishment—but this
Coleridge is not intimidated. Standing before nature he declares he will not be anyone’s slave. But because, despite the certainty of punishment, he had still as a boy managed to defy brother, father, and mother—those who had, as with Sarah in “Lime-Tree,” made him into a pitiful home-body—Coleridge had already learned that “obstinacy vanquish[es] [. . .] fears” (“Dear Poole” 352-56).

By rediscovering this insight, a more profound discovery than anything found in the bower-prison, outside, before a night sky, Coleridge also recovers what he hopes is his true self: “Oh Liberty, [he proclaims,] my [true] spirit felt thee there!” (emphasis added).

Works Cited

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Dear Poole.” 16 October 1781. Collected Letters of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. Ed. E. L Grigg. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon, 1956. Print.
---. “France: An Ode.” Romanticism: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Duncan Wu 465-468. Malden: Blackwell, 1998. Print.
---. “Frost at Midnight.” Duncan Wu 462-465.
---. “My Dearest Poole.” 9 October 1797. E. L. Griff.
---. “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison.” Duncan Wu 458-59, 551-52.
Weissman, Stephen. His Brother’s Keeper: A Psychobiography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Madison: International Universities, 1989. Print.Wu, Duncan, ed. Romanticism: An Anthology.

[Jc Roushar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coleridge's work ignited my love of poetry. The depths and heights of his emotion have significantly influenced my view of the world and have inspired my imagination. His greatness as a poet lies in his capacity to create vivid pictures through succinct and unforgettable lines. This is a nice collection, and an upgrade from the only works of his that I own (an anthology which only included Kublai Khan, Dejection: an Ode, and a few of his other works). This collection of works contains some of the finest literary achievments of the English language.

[Steven Walle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coleridge is one of my favorite poets. His entire collection of works is a master peice. Starting with his juvenile poems the book takes you through his entire carreer including a chronilogical history of his life. I recomend this romantic poet to everybody.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

excellent compilation

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did Coleridge ever right a word that wasn't great? I haven't come across anything he's written, criticism included, that I didn't think was brilliant. One of my favorites, hands down.

[JT · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think all the poetry just flattened me out.

[E. G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Introduction
Acknowledgements
Table of Dates
Further Reading

--Easter Holidays
--Dura navis
--Nil pejus est caelibe vita
--Sonnet to the Autumnal Moon
--Julia
--Quae nocent docent
--The Nose
--Life
--To the Muse
--Destruction of the Bastile
--Anthem for the Children of Christ's Hospital
--Progress of Vice
--Monody on the Death of Chatterton (first version)
--Monody on the Death of Chatterton (second version)
--An Invocation
--Anna and Harland
--To the Evening Star
--Pain
--On a Lady Weeping
--Monody on a Tea-Kettle
--Genevieve
--On Receiving an Account that his Only Sister's Death Was Inevitable
--On Seeing a Youth Affectionately Welcomed by a Sister
--A Mathematical Problem
--Honour
--On Imitation
--Inside the Coach
--Devonshire Roads
--Music
--Absence: A Farewell Ode on Quitting School for Jesus College, Cambridge
--Sonnet on the Same
--Happiness
--A Wish Written in Jesus Wood, February 10th 1792
--An Ode in the Manner of Anacreon
--To Disappointment
--A Fragment Found in a Lecture-Room
--Ode
--A Lover's Complaint to his Mistress
--With Fielding's Amelia
--Written After a Walk Before Supper
--Imitated from Ossian
--The Complaint of Ninathóma, from the Same
--The Rose
--Kisses
--Sonnet ('Thou gentle look')
--Sonnet to the River Otter
--Lines on an Autumnal Evening
--To Fortune: On Buying a Ticket in the Irish Lottery
--Perspiration: A Travelling Eclogue
--Lines written at the King's Arms, Ross, formerly the House of the 'Man of Ross'
--Imitated from the Welsh
--Lines to a Beautiful Spring in a Village
--Imitations Ad Lyram
--The Sigh
--The Kiss
--To a Young Lady, with a Poem on the French Revolution
--Translation of Wrangham's 'Hendecasyllabi ad Bruntonam e Granta Exituram'
--To Miss Brunton with the Preceding Translation
--Epitaph on an Infant
--[Pantisocracy]
--On the Prospect of Establishing a Pantisocracy in America
--Elegy, Imitated from One of Akenside's Blank-Verse Inscriptions
--The Faded Flower
--Sonnet ('Pale Roamer through the night!')
--Domestic Peace
--Sonnet ('Thou bleedest, my poor Heart!')
--Sonnet to the Author of the 'Robbers'
--Melancholy: A Fragment
--Songs of the Pixies
--To a Young Ass, its Mother being Tethered Near it
--Lines on a Friend Who Died of a Frenzy Fever Induced by Calumnious Reports
--To a Friend, together with an Unfinished Poem

Sonnets on Eminent Characters:
--1 To the Honourable Mr Erskine
--2 Burke
--3 Priestly
--4 La Fayette
--5 Koskiusko
--6 Pitt
--7 To the Rev. W. L. Bowles (two versions)
--8 Mrs Siddons
--9 To William Godwin, Author of 'Political Justice'
--10 To Robert Southey, of Balliol College, Oxford, Author of the 'Retrospect', and Other Poems
--11 To Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Esq.
--12 To Lord Stanhope, on Reading his Late Protest in the House of Lords

--To Earl Stanhope
--Lines to a Friend in Answer to a Melancholy Letter
--To an Infant
--To the Rev. W. J. Hort, while teaching a young lady some song-tunes on his flute
--Sonnet ('Sweet Mercy! how my very heart has bled')
--To the Nightingale
--Lines composed while climbing the left ascent of Brockley Coomb, Somersetshire, May 1795
--Lines in the Manner of Spenser
--To the Author of Poems published anonymously at Bristol in September 1795
--The Production of a Young Lady, addressed to the author of the poems alluded to in the preceding epistle
--Effusion XXXV. Composed August 20th 1795, at Clevedon, Somersetshire
--The Eolian Harp
--Lines written at Shurton Bars, near Bridgewater, September 1795, in answer to a letter from Bristol
--Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement
--On Donne's Poetry
--The Hour When We Shall Meet Again
--The Destiny of Nations
--Religious Musings
--From an Unpublished Poem
--On Observing a Blossom on the First of February 1796
--Verses addressed to J. Horne Tooke
--On a Late Connubial Rupture in High Life
--Sonnet written on receiving letters informing me of the birth of a Son, I being at Birmingham
--Sonnet composed on a journey homeward; the author having received intelligence of the birth of a son, September 20th 1796
--Sonnet to a friend who asked, how I felt when the nurse first presented my infant to me
--Sonnet [to Charles Lloyd]
--To a Young Friend, on his Proposing to Domesticate with the Author. Composed in 1796
--Addressed to a Young Man of Fortune Who Abandoned Himself to an Indolent and Causeless Melancholy
--To a Friend Who Had Declared his Intention of Writing No More Poetry
--Ode to the Departing Year
--The Raven
--To an Unfortunate Woman
--To the Rev. George Coleridge
--On the Christening of a Friend's Child
--Inscription by the Rev. W. L. Bowles in Nether Stowey Church
--This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison
--The Foster-Mother's Tale
--The Dungeon

Sonnets Attempted in the Manner of Contemporary Writers:
--Sonnet I
--Sonnet II
--Sonnet III

--Parliamentary Oscillators
--The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere (1798)
--The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1834)
--Christabel
--Lines to W. L. while he Sang a Song to Purcell's Music
--The Three Graves
--The Wanderings of Cain
--Fire, Famine, and Slaughter
--The Old Man of the Alps
--The Apotheosis, or The Snow-Drop
--Frost at Midnight
--France. An Ode
--Lewti, or the Circassian Love-Chaunt
--To a Young Lady on her Recovery from a Fever
--Fears in Solitude
--The Nightingale
--The Ballad of the Dark Ladie
--Kubla Khan: Or, A Vision in a Dream
--[Lines from a notebook - September 1798]
--[Hexameters:] William, My Teacher, My Friend!
--[Translation of a passage in Ottfried's metrical paraphrase of the Gospel]
--[Fragmentary translation of the Song of Deborah]
--Catullian Hendecasyllables
--The Homeric Hexameter Described and Exemplified
--The Ovidian Elegiac Metre Described and Exemplified
--On a Cataract
--Tell's Birth-Place
--The Visit of the Gods
--On an Infant which Died before Baptism
--Something Childish, but Very Natural
--Home-Sick, Written in Germany
--The Virgin's Cradle-Hymn
--Lines written in the album at Elbingerode, in the Hartz Forest
--The British Stripling's War-Song
--Names
--The Devil's Thoughts
--Lines Composed in a Concert-Room
--The Exchange
--[Paraphrase of Psalm 46. Hexameters]
--Hymn to the Earth. Hexameters
--Mahomet
--Ode to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire
--A Christmas Carol
--On an Insignificant
--Job's Luck
--Love
--The Madman and the Lethargist, an Example
--On a Volunteer Singer
--Talleyrand to Lord Grenville
--The Two Round Spaces on the Tomb-Stone
--The Mad Monk
--A Stranger Minstrel
--Inscription for a Seat by the Road Side Half-Way Up a Steep Hill Facing South
--Apologia Pro Vita Sua
--The Night Scene: A Dramatic Fragment
--On Revisiting the Sea-Shore
--Inscription for a Fountain on a Heath
--Drinking versus Thinking
--An Ode to the Rain
--The Wills of the Wisp
--Ode to Tranquility
--A Letter to ---------, April 4th 1802. Sunday Evening
--Dejection: An Ode
--[A Soliloquy of the full Moon, She being in a Mad Passion--]
--Answer to a Child's Question
--A Day Dream
--The Day-Dream
--To Asra
--The Happy Husband
--A Thought Suggested by a View of Saddleback in Cumberland
--[Untitled]
--The Keepsake
--The Picture, or the Lover's Resolution
--Hymn before Sun-Rise, in the Vale of Chamouni
--The Good, Great Man
--The Knight's Tomb
--To Matilda Betham from a Stranger
--Westphalian Song
--The Pains of Sleep
--[Lines from a notebook - September 1803]
--[Lines from a notebook - February-March 1804]
--[What is Life?]
--[Lines from a notebook - April 1805]
--[Lines from a notebook - May-June 1805]
--Phantom
--[An Angel Visitant]
--Reason for Love's Blindness
--[Untitled]
--Constancy to an Ideal Object
--[Lines from a notebook - March 1806]
--[Lines from a notebook - June 1806]
--Farewell to Love
--Time, Real and Imaginary
--[Lines from a notebook - 1806]
--[Lines from a notebook - October-November 1806]
--[Lines from a notebook - 1806]
--[Lines from a notebook - November-December 1806]
--[Lines from a notebook - February 1807]
--[Lines from a notebook - February 1807]
--[Lines from a manuscript - 1807-8]
--[Lines from a notebook - July 1807; includes lines previously published separately as 'Coeli enarrant']
--[Lines from a notebook - January 1808]
--To William Wordsworth
--Metrical Feet. Lesson for a Boy
--Recollections of Love
--The Blossoming of the Solitary Date-Tree. A Lament
--To Two Sisters
--On Taking Leave of -------, 1817
--A Child's Evening Prayer
--Ad Vilmum Axiologum
--Psyche
--[Sonnet - translated from Marino]
--[Fragment: 'Two wedded Hearts']
--A Tombless Epitaph
--On a Clock in a Market-Place
--Separation
--The Visionary Hope
--[Lines from a notebook - 1811]
--[Fragment of an ode on Napoleon]
--[Lines inscribed on the fly-leaf of Benedetto Menzini's 'Poesie' (1782)]
--[Lines from a notebook - May-June 1811]
--[Lines from a notebook - May-July 1811]
--[Lines from a notebook - May 1814?]
--[Lines from a notebook - 1815-16]
--[Lines from a notebook - 1815-16]
--On Donne's First Poem
--Limbo
--Moles
--Ne plus ultra
--The Suicide's Argument
--[An Invocation: from 'Remorse']
--God's Omnipresence, a Hymn
--To a Lady. With Falconer's 'Shipwreck'
--Human Life, on the Denial of Immortality
--[Song from 'Zapolya']
--[Hunting Song from 'Zapolya']
--[Faith, Hope, and Charity. From the Italian of Guarini]
--Fancy in Nubibus
--Israel's Lament
--A Character
--Lines to a Comic Author, on an Abusive Review
--To Nature
--The Tears of a Grateful People
--First Advent of Love
--[Reason]
--[Lines from a notebook - 1822]
--From the German
--The Reproof and Reply
--Youth and Age
--Desire
--The Delinquent Travellers
--Song, ex improviso
--Work Without Hope
--The Two Founts
--The Pang More Sharp Than All
--Sancti Dominici Pallium
--The Improvisatore
--Love's Burial-Place: A Madrigal
--Lines Suggested by the Last Words of Berengarius
--Epitaphium testamentarium
--Duty Surviving Self-Love
--[Homeless]
--Ἔρως ἀεὶ λάληθρος ἑταῖρος
--Song
--Profuse Kindness
--Written in an Album
--To Mary Pridham
--Verses Trivocular
--Water Ballad
--Cologne
--On my Joyful Departure from the Same City
--[The Netherlands]
--The Garden of Boccaccio
--Alice du Clos: Or The Forked Tongue. A Ballad
--Love, Hope, and Patience in Education
--[Lines written in commonplace book of Miss Barbour]
--To Miss A. T.
--Love and Friendship Opposite
--Not at Home
--W. H. Eheu!
--Phantom or Fact?
--Charity in Thought
--Humility the Mother of Charity
--['Gently I took that which urgently came']
--Cholera Cured Before Hand
--Love's Apparition and Evanishment
--To the Young Artist, Kayser of Kaserwerth
--Know Thyself
--My Baptismal Birth-Day
--Epitaph

Appendices:
1. On the Wretched Lot of the Slaves in the Isles of Western India
2. [Notebook draft of an essay on punctuation]

Notes
Index of Titles
Index of First Lines

[Cassandra Glissadevil · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.8 stars!
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

That pretty much describes Coleridge's poetry.

“To be loved is all I need,
And whom I love, I love indeed.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

And I love Samuel Taylor Coleridge!

[aimee · Rating 2 out of 5]

i've decided i'm not a poetry girlie.
the only poem in this entire collection that I actually enjoyed was the rime of the ancient mariner. if the poems had made more sense to me, maybe i'd have rated it higher.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked off the shelf on a whim and what a pleasure. My favourite poet. His work is superb and his letters are intelligent and full of feeling and wisdom.

[Ashleigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Romanticism at its dang finest.
Coleridge has always been a classic for me, a go-to for Romantic structures of poetic narrative.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as good as Shelley, Swinburne, or Landor but still worth the read.

[Poli]

read: "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", "Kubla Khan", and "Christabel" 16.03

[Pollymoore3 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favourites: “This Lime-tree Bower my Prison” and “Frost at Midnight”.

[Kealan O'ver · Rating 3 out of 5]

I mean there’s probably only so much 250 year old poetry that one can really take in.

[Scott Palmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

First read: May 2024 - November 2024

[Joshua Friesen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy Coleridge more the older I get.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

"No more my visionary soul shall dwell
On joys that were; no more endure to weigh
The shame and anguish of the evil day,
Wisely forgetful! O'er the ocean swell
Sublime of Hope, I seek the cottag'd dell
Where Virtue calm with the careless step may stray,
And dancing to the moonlight roundelay,
The wizard Passions weave an holy spell.
Eyes that have ach'd with Sorrow! Ye shall weep
Tears of doubt-mingled joy, like theirs who start
From Precipices of distemper'd sleep,
On which the fierce-eyed Fiends, their reveils keep,
And see the rising Sun, and feel it dart
New rays of pleasance trembling to the heart."
-"Pantisocracy"

I remember studying Coleridge quite a bit in my AP English class last year, particularly "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". In fact, I think we really did learn more about him than any other Romantic. As a result, in my solo studies I decided to give Coleridge a rest for a while, and it has been a year since then so what better time to study him than now? I suppose I can compare him to the other Romantics I've studied: Lord Byron and John Keats. Now, Coleridge belongs securely in the middle of the two for my personal taste; I don't think that anybody can top the beauty of Keats, but I enjoy Coleridge more than Byron. The main similarity is that beauty and elegant style that makes the Romantics so wonderful as a whole. The use of clever rhyme and poignant topics set a clear tone; Coleridge does a fantastic job of sticking to this trend.

Although I do not think that Coleridge is as sophisticated as Keats, I do think that he definitely had the same skill. The same rhymes that would make me stop and ponder with Keats were evident in the poems of Coleridge. Where I think the true beauty lies in this case, however, is in this poet's ability to make narrative poetry come alive. Anyone who has been reading my reviews for a while should probably know that I don't particularly like narrative poetry, but I can make an exception for Coleridge. "Rime" is a legendary, wonderful poem, as is "Kubla Khan"- and I can bet you that most people that have picked up this collection picked it up for those two poems alone. Bet you a million dollars!

In conclusion, I can't say much more about Coleridge. I am not as astonished by him as I am with some other poets, but I did not struggle through his works. He is enjoyable, and his poems have a lovely flow to them that I find soothing.

[Annalise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Titles such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel and Kubla Khan, contributed to Coleridge's renown. With reference to the Ancient Mariner I recommend anyone who enjoys this have a listen to Susan McKeown's Albatross - a beautiful song which always reminds me of the poem. I always enjoyed Coleridge. Like the poets of his time he explored themes of nature, love, imagination, and spirituality. His exploration of the mysteries of existence and his depth of thought and feeling is particularly appealing. His language is both elegant and powerful, and his poetry is full of vivid and imaginative imagery.

“What if you slept
And what if
In your sleep
You dreamed
And what if
In your dream
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what if
When you awoke
You had that flower in you hand
Ah, what then?”