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INTIMATIONS OF RE-CREATION FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF DEJECTION AND JOY

In 1798, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, a

collection of poems that, according to the preface of the work, differed greatly from all poetry

that came before. “The pleasure which I have proposed to myself to impart,” Wordsworth

wrote in the preface, “is of a kind very different from that which is supposed by many persons

to be the proper object of poetry” (Preface 600).1 This volume birthed the British Romantic

movement of poetry, causing much controversy at the time. Coleridge remarked upon this in

his major critical work, the Biographia Literaria:

From [Wordsworth‟s Preface to Lyrical Ballads], prefixed to poems in which

it was impossible to deny the presence of original genius, however
mistaken its direction might be deemed, arose the whole long-continued
controversy [regarding expressive poetry] (Biographia 479).

Lyrical Ballads was only one of many evidences regarding their close work together, their

professional involvement stimulated by their personal friendship. Much of their

correspondence has been recovered, which reveals an ongoing mutual involvement in each

other‟s art. One of the most interesting of these dialogues is found in two poems,

Wordsworth‟s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” and

Coleridge‟s “Dejection: An Ode.”

Wordsworth wrote the first stanzas of the poem, which he called simply, “Ode,” in

March 1802, and in late March Wordsworth read his new work, “Ode,” to Coleridge. In early

April 1802, Coleridge composed “Dejection” (Selincourt 464-5). “Two years at least passed

between the writing of the four first stanzas and the remaining part,” Wordsworth revealed in

his notes (Fenwick Notes 61); he reworked his poem in late February or early March of 1804,

1 The British Romantics (namely Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats) saw the poetry from their time as
frivolous and damaging. Wordsworth addresses his “contemporaries” in the Preface: “[They] think that they
are conferring honour upon themselves and their art, in proportion as they separate themselves from the
sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for
fickle tastes, and fickle appetites, of their own creation” (Preface 597).
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resulting in “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.” The

similar subject matter, similar lines, and compositional timeline all indicate that these two

poems are in direct dialogue with each other. Wordsworth wrote the “Ode” and read it to

Coleridge. Coleridge wrote “Dejection” as a response to Wordsworth‟s poem, giving his

views on the same subject. Wordsworth, upon reading “Dejection,” felt Coleridge had

misinterpreted his “Ode” and so wrote “Intimations,” reworking some of the extant text of the

“Ode” and adding seven additional stanzas.

The undeniable connection between the two poems makes them valuable to study in

tandem. These two central figures of British Romanticism, in this unaffected conversation,

reveal foundational philosophies of the movement. A close scrutiny of these two monumental

works will reveal at least a part of this philosophy. Pursuing the connection between the

poems will divulge themes the two poets share, and will direct the reader in a better

understanding of their works as a whole.

In addition to producing artistic work, both poets also wrote critically about the art of

poetry; their major prose works, Wordsworth‟s Preface to Lyrical Ballads and Coleridge‟s

Biographia Literaria, will inform the reading of their poetry. Despite some minor differences of

opinion between the two poets, their critical writings are largely complementary. It is

appropriate to apply Coleridge‟s theory to Wordsworth‟s poetry, and vice versa; doing so only

deepens the understanding of the Romantic movement as a whole, and the connection in

particular between these two poems. A third poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, will also be appealed

to in his critical capacity. Heavily influenced by Wordsworth‟s poetry, Shelley‟s insights into

Romanticism are eloquently pertinent. His critical work, A Defence of Poetry, can only serve to

illuminate the works of his precursors.

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The structure of this essay will take the same route as the artists‟ dialogue:

Wordsworth‟s first four stanzas will be analysed first, followed by Coleridge‟s complete poem;

the final seven stanzas of “Intimations” will conclude. Critical implications of applying British

Romantic theory to specific poems will be explored in the conclusion, after an analysis of the

poems has shown concrete links between their poetry and their critical works.
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INTIMATIONS 1-4

Before the poem proper begins, we are shown the direction of Wordsworth‟s vision by

the title, “Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.” This title,

though, cannot be unpacked without the help of the poem as a whole: it is unclear whose

immortality is being hinted at, nor is the type of recollection apparent—a specific instance or a

general feeling, happiness or annoyance. We must continue deeper, and do so with the

epigraph.

“Paulò majora canamus,”2 the epigraph reads: “Let us sing in a loftier strain.” Two

possible readings of this quote from Virgil are immediately apparent. This could be an

imperative to the poet, implying that he should write divinely, reminiscent of man‟s heavenly

origins; or an imperative to the audience, that we join the poet in his divine recollection. A

third option is some blending of the two: Wordsworth struggles to sing loftily in an effort to

uplift and enlighten the audience. Nor can it be overlooked that Virgil was Dante‟s guide

through hell; as Virgil led that poet through desperate places, so he again leads a hard journey

through recollections of early childhood—guide to Wordsworth in composition, guide to

reader in comprehension.

“There was a time,” Wordsworth begins, echoing the “recollection” of the title. This

poem frequently flits between an ideal past and a superficially morose present3 in an effort to

reconcile two disparate states of mind. We will see that, as Coleridge‟s “Dejection” compares

a past (naive enlightenment), present (deject stagnation), and future (sublime enlightenment),

Wordsworth begins to do the same in this poem.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 1

The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem

2 Virgil‟s Eclogues IV.i.

3 Wordsworth‟s complicated relationship between past and present will become apparent in later stanzas.
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Apparell'd in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream. 5

This past time is Wordsworth‟s childhood (as we may presume from the title); at this stage

every thing appeared garbed in a glow not of earth, but of a dream, fresh and unified.

Everyday objects in Wordsworth‟s life—here exemplified as natural formations—retained an

extraordinary quality. A child‟s traumatic transition from heaven to earth (the birth process)

leaves his undeveloped mind unaware of the differences between the divine and the earthly.

As in a dream, actions have no consequences, “past” and “future” are non-existent, and events

progress in a “now” that is unexplained but beautiful and present.

Wordsworth looks at natural images exclusively; manmade objects do not make an

appearance. This is not a denial that children find wonder at man-made objects. But

Wordsworth believes that current societal conditions cause man to become “out of tune” with

nature,4 and so part of his project is to reawaken an interest in natural beauty, to direct us to

those truths found in beauty. Wordsworth also wants to choose “incidents and situations

from common life” for his poetry (Preface 596), and nothing is shared more widely among

mankind than experiences of nature. Coleridge believes that poetry should “excit[e] the

sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature” (Biographia 478). Nature

gives special (more discernable) access to truth, and so both poets make a strong distinction

between natural objects and sentiments and those which are man-made.

The celestial illumination which affects all things is quickly dispersed:

It is not now as it hath been of yore;— 6

Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more. 9

4 See “The world is too much with us” for a compact explication of Wordsworth‟s concerns.
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The heavenly brightness has faded from Wordsworth‟s perception: no longer are natural

images suffused with a celestial glow; the divine is not apparent in familiar scenes. This

calamity immediately raises questions: did the light truly disperse or did Wordsworth‟s eyes

lose some ability? If the former, what scattered the light? If the latter, is losing this ability an

effect of aging or did the Poet spiritually injure himself? These questions cause us to recognise

within ourselves the same state of affairs: we recall a time when life was filled with wonder at

the smallest, most common natural occurrences, and we lament with Wordsworth that this is

no longer the case.

Wordsworth moves on in the second stanza to clarify his state of loss. Rainbow, rose,

moon, waters, and sunshine are temporal and waning images; things which, because of their

very nature, pass away and are reborn. These objects are still beautiful (lns. 10-16) despite

their transience, but “yet I know, where‟er I go, / That there hath passed away a glory from

the earth” (lns. 17-18). To no longer recognise the sublime but to still see beauty is a

distinction which is unclear in “Dejection,”5 but Wordsworth highlights this condition so the

reader is not confused about the poet‟s own state: a child can go into nature and see the

“celestial light” (ln. 4) which infuses all objects—the broken tree, the moving stream, the dead

and blooming flower alike; Wordsworth, a Poet, finds earthly beauty without any hint of

heavenly glory. This inability to see the sublime distinguishes Wordsworth‟s past state from

his present condition, and brings to mind a passage from the Preface. Wordsworth claims that

in the Poet there “is implied nothing differing in kind from other men, but only in degree”

(Preface 607). Adults all share the same qualities, but some—Poets—recognise the loss of

divine light from creation. Wordsworth, through some as-yet-unexplained event,6 has become

5We will see that Coleridge loses all appreciation of nature, unlike Wordsworth who here still sees beauty; refer
“Dejection” lns. 25-30, as well as pages 13-14 of this essay.
6 See page 35 of this essay for an analysis of the cause of blindness.
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unable to see celestial glory, but his genial power allows him, unlike his peers, to notice that it

is missing (ln. 22). The passage in the Preface goes on to explain what quality he means:

The Poet is chiefly distinguished from other men by a greater promptness

to think and feel without immediate external excitement, and a greater
power in expressing such thoughts and feelings as are produced in him in
that manner (Preface 607).

Wordsworth, despite his inability to perceive celestial glory, yet writes poetry. Lacking

“immediate external excitement” he continues to express his thoughts in an intelligible,

concise, and interesting manner—namely poetry. Through verse, the Poet tries to reclaim for

the reader what was lost in lines 6-9.

The third stanza begins to expand on Wordsworth‟s sense of loss. As birds sing and

lambs gambol, “to me alone there came a thought of grief” (ln. 22). In response to the lack of

glory (ln. 18), Wordsworth‟s spirits begin to sink. This is because of his poetic nature: being

more sensitive to his environment, Wordsworth feels the absence of the glory more strongly

than others, who feel it infrequently if at all. Despite soothing natural images (lns. 19-21), the

poet recognises that something is lacking from the scene before him. But as quickly as this

thought appears, it is swept away by “a timely utterance” (ln. 23):

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep, 25

No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,
The Winds come to me.... 28

Nature‟s joyful noise, wind and water, brush away Wordsworth‟s grief before it can take hold.

What Wordsworth feels is exemplified by the “Child of Joy” (ln. 34), the pastoral image of the

“happy Shepherd-boy,” who Wordsworth asks to “shout round me, let me hear thy shouts”

(ln. 35). The shepherd, intimately tied to bounding lambs, constantly serenaded by birdsong,

tumbling streams, and sighing breezes, takes comfort in nature. As a child, he sees all things

suffused with divine light. Wordsworth does not apprehend this glory, but he suddenly
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comprehends the joy inherent in nature; the understanding sweeps away his momentary grief

and leads him into the fourth stanza.

Wordsworth approves of nature‟s joy: “My heart is at your festival, / My head hath its

coronal, / The fullness of your bliss, I feel” (lns. 39-41). And despite the passing away of

“celestial light” (ln. 4), “the heavens laugh with you in your jubilee” (ln. 38). Wordsworth, in

the face of this unbridled joy, knows it would be evil “if I were sullen” (ln. 42). He cannot see

what the child shepherd sees, but the Poet knows there is worth inherent in nature.

Though the heavens (from whence the glory and freshness originated, ln. 5) “laugh

with” nature in its joy, this jubilee is completely separate from the sublime. “The Earth

herself,” not the heavens, “is adorning, / This sweet May-morning” (lns. 43-4). Wordsworth

has left his grief behind, but a sense of disquiet still lingers. Amidst the lush valleys, fresh

flowers, warm sunlight, and smiling babes (lns. 47-9), Wordsworth is still reminded of what,

once here, is now gone:

—But there's a Tree, of many one, 51

A single Field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream? 57

Beauty is present in natural images, and this brings joy. But Wordsworth cannot escape his

impression at the end of the second stanza: “But yet I know, where'er I go, / That there hath

pass'd away a glory from the earth” (lns. 17-18). The tree, field, and pansy speak to him of this

absence. He does not become dejected—nature has cured him of that affliction. But he still

questions why this gleaming, glorious presence (lns. 56-7) has departed. He is plagued with

the question by all of nature. “Of many one” (ln. 51) in reference to the tree can be understood

to mean the archetype of tree in Wordsworth‟s mind; “a single Field” (ln. 52) means that all
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the fields Wordsworth sees are to him the same, because they cry the same tale; this is also

true of the pansy.

At the end of this first version of the poem, Wordsworth leaves the reader with hope,

but ultimately unsatisfied. Beauty and pleasure can be found in nature, but there is something

more, some missing aspect of existence that nature does not address; Wordsworth sees this

lack and begins to quest after the absent feeling, inviting the reader to join his search.

“[Poetry‟s] object is truth, not individual and local, but general, and operative,” Wordsworth

says (Preface 605); in the following stanzas, written two years later, Wordsworth will

investigate what truth is missing from his (and the reader‟s) common observations of nature.

The identity of this sublime truth is not the only missing piece from these stanzas: the

question of its origin, how it was lost, and the importance of regaining it are also left

unanswered. When it was given to Coleridge in this form in 1802, he reacted negatively to it

because of these very questions. As is apparent from, “Dejection,” Coleridge made several

misinterpretations about Wordsworth‟s answers to these questions. Coleridge reads

Wordsworth‟s loss of glory as an actual event: divine illumination had at a moment in time

left the world. Wordsworth‟s ambiguous ending, “Wither is fled the visionary gleam? /

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?” (lns. 56-7) leads Coleridge to assume that

Wordsworth finds this an unavoidable or unalterable state; Coleridge does not think that grief

is a permanent or desirable state, and works in “Dejection” to overcome feelings of loss.

Coleridge‟s reading of the poem is contrary to the interpretation advanced in this essay, which

is informed by the later stanzas (five through eleven) of “Intimations,” unavailable to

Coleridge. When Coleridge wrote “Dejection,” he saw it as a refutation of “Intimations.” We

can correctly read his poem as complementary to Wordsworth‟s work, since the whole of

“Intimations” is accessible to us.

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Coleridge, in “Dejection,” clearly identifies that it is his own fault he can no longer feel

beauty. He lays out the way in which he regained his ability to use the Imagination, and

expounds on the beauties of the natural world. He works through his dejection, inspired by

nature, and concludes with an exhortation to the reader to arrive at the same state as the Poet:

pleasurable understanding of natural beauty. Stanzas 1-4 of “Intimations” hinted at similar

conclusions to all these problems, and keeping this in mind, we can move into “Dejection: An

Ode.”
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DEJECTION: AN ODE

The poem opens with a short quote from a popular Scottish ballad: when the dark

remainder of the moon is easily seen next to a bright crescent, there will presently be a storm.

Coleridge expands on this borrowed stanza, but colours it extravagantly:

Well! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made 1

The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,
This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence
Unroused by winds, that ply a busier trade
Than those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes,
Or the dull sobbing draft, that moans and rakes,
Upon the strings of this Æolian lute,
Which better far were mute. 8

It may seem that doubt is cast upon the forecasting skills of this other poet by Coleridge‟s use

of the word “if” in line 1. But reading further, the weather does turn violent. Coleridge‟s

thoughts are spurred by an accurate foretelling, not by any flight of fancy. Coleridge‟s

accuracy is the first clue in the poem that he is not, while writing, in a state of dejection. The

Poet has a clear grasp of the workings of nature, and bases his poetry on this understanding.

This first stanza paints specific personifications of air. Lines 3-5 describe a lethargic

zephyr, “those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes,” contrasted with the building winds.

Lines 6-8 calls it a sorrowful breeze, “the dull sobbing draft,” voicing feelings Coleridge would

rather not hear. The moaning, sluggish breeze embodies the emotion that Coleridge tries to

overcome in the work, an emotion that appears throughout the poem, and is especially

evident in the title. He is heavily under the influence of this poisonous dejection in the first

few stanzas, and because of dejection‟s influence finds typical natural occurrences (the breeze)

disturbing.7

7 Coleridge is clearly not dejected when writing the poem, because his genius must be operative for poetry to be
written. He does, though, write about a time when his poetic faculty was inoperative. This claim is
investigated further on the following pages.
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Coleridge looks forward to the storm, which he sees as fundamentally different from

the lazy wind and the dull draft. He has experienced a moon-wrought storm before, and

found it uplifting. The penultimate stanza shows that the storm is the poem‟s destination, and

is identified in the last line of the first stanza:

Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awed, 17
And sent my soul abroad,
Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give,
Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live! 20

The coming storm, Coleridge believes, can alleviate his dejection and send his soul outside

himself; abroad, his soul can experience the general condition of man rather than sit mired in

personal failings. Shelley recognised the poet‟s ability to look beyond his own particulars in

the Defence of Poetry when he said, “A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one;

as far as relates to his conceptions, time and place and number are not” (Defence 348). A poet

is concerned with universals, with problems and passions affecting the whole of humanity.

The Poet does use his own personal experiences to find such truth, but he must move beyond

experience, rather than wallow in it.

The awe-ful feeling of line 17, produced by the wind, will not dispel his dejection, but

will rather fashion it anew, with purpose. Lines 17-18 give voice to the Sublime, a

combination of the splendid and dreadful. When looking up at Mont Blanc,8 we recognise the

beautiful grandeur—the awesomeness—of the natural. In the face of this utterly inhuman

object we are forcefully reminded of the smallness of the human self, in both a physical and

mental way. This amalgamation of awesome and awful (line 17) is the Sublime, a feeling that

is expanded on by Coleridge later in the poem when he employs the Imagination.

8 Shelley illustrates this feeling of wonderful and dreadful in his poem, “Mont Blanc.”
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Imagination is a force that allows the Poet to access nature; it is through the power of the

Imagination that Coleridge later finds a cure in the storm.9

This first stanza is characterised by the storm, the hoped-for cure to Coleridge‟s titular

dejection. The second stanza moves on to express his peculiar unhappiness, the central issue

of the work.

Coleridge‟s sorrow is no glorified anguish, no great heartache. His is “a grief without a

pang,” “stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned” (ln. 21-2), noteworthily similar to the breeze from the

previous stanza. This grief is dead. Coleridge believes this to be an aberration of grief;

presumably, sadness should “move and live” (ln. 20). Perhaps the core problem Coleridge

experiences is that his grief has “no natural outlet” (ln. 23). He has bottled up his emotions,

has not indulged in “word, or sigh, or tear.” (ln. 24). Just as a pond without an outlet is

stagnant, so his grief, without refreshment, is moribund.

Due to this “wan” mood (ln. 25), Coleridge is out of tune with nature. The throstle

does not draw him, the curiously coloured sky does not spark his thoughts, the stars do not

affect his feelings. Dejection springs, it may be surmised, from a modern callousness

identified by Wordsworth in the Preface: “a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are

now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind” (Preface

599). Coleridge (and the reader) feels this dejection because he cannot clearly perceive the

messages nature offers to any observer, delicate truths that the frantic pace of industrialised

life drowns out. This is not somehow nature‟s fault for being feeble, but is rooted in what

Wordsworth calls a “degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation” present in modern society

(Preface 599), which prevents people from taking delight in the subtler beauties of the natural

world.

9 The Imagination is discussed more fully as it becomes apparent in the poem.

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Coleridge can rationally understand that beauty is in these natural images but

simultaneously does not feel anything about them (ln. 38). Coleridge recognises this problem

in a letter to a friend. “When we declare an object beautiful,” he writes,

the contemplation or intuition of its beauty precedes the feeling of

complacency, in order of nature at least: nay, in great depression of spirits
may even exist without sensibly producing it (Complete Poems 553).

What seems to have affected modern man is an under-appreciation of natural beauty and an

ignorance of its proper effects. The natural world produces no feelings in mankind. In this

stanza Coleridge agrees with Wordsworth‟s assertion that beauty in nature “moves us not”

(Wordsworth 270). This lack of appreciation of natural beauty is one of the serious problems

Coleridge is addressing, and a main object of Romantic poetry is to cultivate appreciation of

nature. Coleridge says in the Biographia Literaria:

It is the prime merit of genius, and its most unequivocal mode of

manifestation, so to represent familiar objects as to awaken in the minds of
others a kindred feeling concerning them, and that freshness of sensation
which is the constant accompaniment of mental no less than of bodily
convalescence (Biographia 476).

Poets have this genius, and it is to the poetic responsibility that Coleridge speaks. Man has

become dulled to the world, and nature no longer feels fresh, because every waking moment

he is inundated with stimulation. That sense of wonder that a child feels is not felt by the

adult—recall the first stanza of “Intimations.” In the word “convalescence,” Coleridge even

implies that this desensitisation is a disease and a sickness; the cure can be induced by genius

through art, and Coleridge uses poetry to this end. Artists have a responsibility to reawaken

this sense of newness and freshness so that man can feel and be moved by beauty, not just know

it intellectually. The cure to a stagnant spirit is motion. A moving spirit, actively engaged in

the world, cannot be bogged down by dejection.

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In this second stanza Coleridge is already laying the groundwork for a cure. While his

dejection has “no relief” (ln. 23) because he has not talked about it, the poem is addressed to a

Lady,10 meaning that this poem, in explicating his distraught sensations, may well be the cure

to his gloom. And if writing the poem is a cure (or the record of a cure) for Coleridge, reading

it is plausibly a cure for us as readers. Coleridge, as a Poet, must already be cured for him to

have written this work. Wordsworth says in the Preface that the Poet‟s “passions and thoughts

and feelings” are connected

with our moral sentiments and animal sensations, and with the causes
which excite these; with the operations of the elements and the appearances
of the visible universe; with storm and sun-shine, with the revolutions of
the seasons, with cold and heat, with loss of friends and kindred, with
injuries and resentments, gratitude and hope, with fear and sorrow (Preface
607-8).

Coleridge‟s imagery and subject is obviously identifiable here. For him to name his dejection,

to notice his disconnect with nature, and to hope for a cure is to be under the influence of

genius. He writes genially (ln. 39) about a time when his genius was not functional.

If the first few lines of stanza two give a clue about the method of the work, the rest of

the stanza turns back to an explication of Coleridge‟s problematic state of mind. Mired in his

stagnant grief (examined a few paragraphs above), Coleridge ignores the curative pleas of

nature: “to other thoughts by yonder throstle woo‟d” (ln. 26). The birds try and move him to

other thoughts than his dejection, but their melodic sound cannot overcome his mental

opposition. If sound (which he earlier rejected in lines 7-8, wishing the lute were mute) cannot

restore him, neither can sight. He gazes “on the western sky, / And its peculiar tint of yellow

green” (lns. 28-9), a shade both startling and intriguing. This sight should be enough to cause

his soul to rise, unique and beautiful as it is. But Coleridge‟s eyes are blank (ln. 30) of

10 “Lady” (line 25) in the final version. In earlier versions this word was variously “Sara,” “William,” and
“Edmund.” Coleridge personalized the poem for various reasons, but ultimately addressed whoever reads it,
art for all men.
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understanding, uncomprehending of nature‟s truths.11 As the twilight fades, the stars emerge

and Coleridge is spurred to further thoughts. There is sharp contrast between the motion of

the stars and the immobility of his own emotions. This paralysis allows him only to “see, not

feel, how beautiful” these natural images are (ln. 38).

Coleridge‟s blind immobility links back to his letter, quoted earlier: in great

depression, man does not feel beauty. The problem is located, Coleridge would say, in the

esemplastic power, the Imagination, which he describes in the Biographia Literaria:

The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of
all human perception.... [The secondary imagination] dissolves, diffuses,
dissipates, in order to recreate; or where this process is rendered
impossible, yet still, at all events, it struggles to idealise and to unify. It is
essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead
(Biographia 477).

Coleridge can still see the stars, but he cannot feel them. Mental images can still be

constructed, because the primary imagination functions; but meaning cannot be wrought from

the images, because the vital secondary imagination is mired in dejection.

Coleridge‟s dejection is emphasised by its contrast with the moving stars, “that glide...

/ Now sparkling” (lns. 33-4). In the Biographia, he claims that objects are fixed and dead, but

he sees the stars moving. This perceived movement betrays meaning behind the objects, truth

that can be apprehended through the observation and synthesis of natural images. There is

not meaning in the familiar scientific objects themselves (objects as objects), seen by the

primary imagination: gaseous nuclear reactions give no insight into a deeper truth, a truth

pointed to by the beauty of the stars. Coleridge, in his dejection, cannot utilise the secondary

imagination, and so cannot feel the stars‟ beauty. This point anticipates the sixth stanza,

where Coleridge reveals the origin of his dejection and the reason his imagination failed: while

he is not so far gone as to completely ignore nature—the moving stars—he struggles with

11 Recall the end of Keats‟ “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”
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understanding the truths that perceived motion indicates. Coleridge can only see the stars as

mundane.

The inability to comprehend truths in beauty is not surprising in the common man, but

in a Poet it is disaster. Shelley says that poetry (and therefore the Poet) “lifts the veil from the

hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar”

(Defence 351). Coleridge‟s dejection prevents him from seeing the stars anew; familiar objects

cannot inspire as forcefully as fresh visions. His despair results in the failure of his powers of

genius, his ability to lift the veil and create freshness; he acknowledges this dysfunction in the

first line of the third stanza: “my genial spirits fail” (ln. 39).

The despair felt by the Poet, then, is a consequence of failing his function (in an

Aristotelian sense). It is the function of the Poet to see beauty in nature and re-create uplifting

images for the pleasure of the reader. Coleridge, by not engaging in this process, is failing his

inborn responsibilities as an artist.12 Artists have a responsibility, because of their innate

genius, to share their beneficial visions in the hopes that the audience will be enlightened to

the deeper truths of the universe. Coleridge‟s recognition of his failure of function contributes

to his feelings of despair.

The third stanza marks the deepest depression of the poem. Coleridge recognises that

his poetic genius has, for the time, left. But, he says, “what can these avail / To lift the

smothering weight from off my breast?” (lns. 40-1). He doubts—even if he were still in control

of his Imagination—that he would ever be able to escape dejection. In these two lines,

Coleridge has completely lost hope in his own poetic faculties and perhaps all poetic genius:

“It were a vain endeavour, / Though I should gaze forever / On that green light that lingers in

12 Coleridge believes poetic genius to be inborn, see ln. 85-6.

 Cartmell 18

the west” (lns. 42-4). He can see no way, through nature‟s effects or through self-motivation,

to make his soul move again.

In Coleridge‟s despair there is a startlingly astute observation. While he has dismissed

nature and his own poetic faculties, claiming that neither have the power to cure his disease

(although this claim is suspect, coming as it does from a diseased mind; we later see that his

faculties are responsible for curing him), he acknowledges that nature has not failed—he is the

problem. “I may not hope from outward forms to win / The passion and the life, whose

fountains are within” (lns. 45-6). The movement that he longs for springs from himself, his

own Imagination. If there is no understanding, then nature is “fixed and dead,” a stuffed,

scientific curiosity. Any cure to this dejection must come from a change in Coleridge‟s way of

thinking, rather than a revolution in nature.13

The third stanza most clearly exemplifies Coleridge‟s understandable interpretation of

the first version of “Intimations.” In reading the first four stanzas, it is possible to believe that

Wordsworth blamed nature for the loss of celestial light (“Intimations” ln. 18). Coleridge

wants it to be clear that he faults himself, not nature, for his dejection. If nature were blamed

for dejection, Wordsworth‟s claims about the desensitisation of mankind could be dismissed

as the degradation of nature. Since Wordsworth says in the Preface and elsewhere that man is

at fault for his own misunderstanding and unhappiness, his poem must obviously mean

something else. Coleridge‟s gross misinterpretation of Wordsworth‟s meaning, which

prompted him to write “Dejection,” prompted Wordsworth to add stanzas five through eleven

in order to clarify his view of the relationship between nature and man‟s poetic faculty.

The fourth stanza of “Dejection” continues the thought expressed in line 46: the search

for meaning starts within the human soul. Meaning is not found within, though. Coleridge

13 This begins to touch on the paradoxical balance between feeling and thinking that Coleridge‟s despair springs
from; he addresses it further in stanza six.
 Cartmell 19

writes, “we receive but what we give” (ln. 47); this is not in the manner of giving anger and

receiving anger back: this refers to giving a seed to the earth, and receiving a fruit back. If

Coleridge gives honest inquiry, he will receive understanding. The willingness to plant comes

from within; but the product, the meaning, the end, is not found in man—it is displayed

through nature and comes from the universe.

There is a vital interplay between the duties of man and the function of nature. “In our

life alone does nature live,” Coleridge says (ln. 48). Without man nature is unmoving, “fixed

and dead.” But with man‟s active understanding (the secondary Imagination) applied to

natural images, meaning can be found in the movements of the stars and the musics of the

birds.

Coleridge illustrates the interplay of nature and man, at once showing the

consequences of apathy and interest:

And would we aught behold, of higher worth, 50

Than that inanimate cold world allowed
To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd,
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the Earth. 55

The “poor loveless ever-anxious crowd” (ln. 52) is common man, full of apprehension, devoid

of superior feeling. To this man, the world is inanimate and cold (ln. 51), motionless and

lifeless. It can hold no interest and can give no succour to the mind. If we would find truth

and beauty in nature (“aught of higher worth”), a light—removing darkness and giving

comprehension—must fountain up from within the soul. The fair luminous cloud (ln. 54) will

enable Coleridge to understand what has in previous stanzas moved him not—the throstle,

the stars, the coloured sky. The light from his soul illuminates the entire world, all of nature,

and is the first step toward understanding.

 Cartmell 20

As Coleridge addresses sight, a heavily recurring theme in the poem, he also deals

with sound: “And from the soul itself must there be sent / A sweet and potent voice, of its

own birth, / Of all sweet sounds the life and element!” (lns. 56-8). At the moment of birth, the

human soul emits a note so poignant and beautiful—“this beautiful and beauty-making

power” (ln. 63)—that it informs (or should inform) all of man‟s subsequent hearing. When

Coleridge recollects this sound from early childhood, he can again search for meaning in the

“sobbing draft” and “Æolian lute” (lns. 6, 7) that, under the influence of dejection, he found

repellent.

Where the third stanza showed Coleridge‟s deepest depression (“my genial spirits

fail”), in the fifth stanza Coleridge has recovered his genius and jubilantly shares it with the

reader.14 This “sweet voice” and “luminous cloud” (ln. 71), he says, is Joy. Joy is the light that

illumines and the sound that harmonises, the emotion born in the soul that allows the Poet

(and his readers) to search for meaning in nature. As Coleridge has shown in the previous

stanzas, without Joy nature appears blank and irrelevant. With Joy, truth and beauty can be

found in nature. Joy is the essential first step, since from it “flows all that charms or ear or

sight, / All melodies the echoes of that voice, / All colours a suffusion from that light” (lns.

73-5).

In the fifth stanza Coleridge introduces a moral issue to poetic understanding,

connected closely with Joy.

O pure of heart! thou need‟st not ask of me 59

What this strong music in the soul may be!
.........................................................................
................................Joy that ne‟er was given,
Save to the pure. 65

14 “The passion and the life, whose fountains are within. / O Lady! we receive but what we give, / And in our life
alone does nature live” (lns. 46-8).
 Cartmell 21

The man who is “pure of heart” (ln. 59) is already familiar with Joy, and this good man is

contrasted with “the sensual and the proud” (ln. 70), those who will not inhabit the new

Heaven and new Earth (ln. 69). Joy, or what enables man to properly comprehend nature, is

given to good men only, “in dower” from Nature (ln. 68). Selfish, bad men will never

properly understand the truths of the universe, those beauties to which nature points. A Poet

must have a pure heart; and a reader, to be moved by poetry, must also have a pure heart,

either entering the poem or through the poem‟s action on him.15 Once a man becomes pure,

he can join with Nature in a wedding-like relationship. The closeness and love of a marriage

in stanza five is contrasted with the shallow appreciation of nature in stanza six.

After stanza five‟s introduction to Joy, the anti-dejection, Coleridge moves into stanza

six with a history of his own interactions with Joy.

There was a time16 when, though my path was rough, 76

This joy within me dallied with distress,
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:
For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine. 81

Coleridge has not always been dejected, and he has actually found some measure of pleasure

in milder forms of misery (“distress” ln. 77). This joy was due, Coleridge says, to hope. Hope

came from outside the self (lns. 80-1), but Coleridge believed the source to be from within:

“foliage, not my own, seemed mine” (ln. 81). Hope‟s fruits and leaves Coleridge mistakenly

thought to emanate from himself. This false conviction—that man, rather than nature, is the

source of goodness—contributed substantially to Coleridge‟s slide into dejection.17 When

15 How this change is affected in the reader is explored in the conclusion of this essay.
16 The line here mimes the first line of “Intimations”: “There was a time....” This is one of many textual clues that
the two poems are in direct dialogue with each other, that Wordsworth and Coleridge are speaking to the same
subject, perhaps even the same type of incident.
17 Goodness exists outside the self, while movement (the pursuit of goodness) starts inside the self, as line 46 makes

clear.
 Cartmell 22

Coleridge discovered that hope was not an inherent part of the human soul, his understanding

of what made up a human collapsed, leaving a dearth of any beliefs, easily filled by dejection.

Coleridge‟s present dejection is possible only because of his earlier self-deception.

True happiness comes from a proper use of the Imagination, but these earlier “dreams of

happiness,” false and unfounded fantasies, are born of Fancy. Coleridge explains Fancy, and

its difference from the Imagination,18 in the Biographia.

The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the
order of time and space; and blended with, and modified by that empirical
phenomenon of the will which we express by the word CHOICE. But
equally with the ordinary memory it must receive all its materials ready
made from the law of association (Biographia 477-8).

Fancy results in dreams of happiness, rather than actual happiness, because Fancy can build

nothing original, but can only desperately try to fit together incongruous experiences in the

hope of finding joy. This false happiness may appear at first to be genuine and lasting, but it

collapses when challenged by actual experiences contradictory to the constructed viewpoint.

Now Coleridge explicates his fall into despair: “Now afflictions bow me down to

earth... / ... / each visitation / suspends... / My shaping spirit of Imagination” (lns. 82-6).

Where in earlier life Coleridge‟s Joy helped him manage his distress, he has now lost Joy,

causing him to give in to the dejection affliction brings. “Nor care I that they rob me of my

mirth” (ln. 83), he says, distinguishing between unhappiness (a lack of mirth or jovial spirits)

and true, listless dejection. Dejection, Coleridge points out in this passage, is not born from

solemnity: its roots are a dysfunction in the Imagination. This original dysfunction lays the

ground for the future state of dejection described in lines 21-24.

Dejection‟s source is a lack of Imagination, and Coleridge does not hesitate to explain

specifically how the Imagination degenerates:

18 Recall Coleridge‟s discussion of the Imagination on page 16 of this essay.

 Cartmell 23

For not to think of what I needs must feel 87

But to be still and patient, all I can;
And haply by abstruse research to steal
From my own nature all the natural man—
This was my sole resource, my only plan;
Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul. 93

Coleridge loses his powers of Imagination by being still, rather than actively addressing his

problem (lns. 87-8). This stillness in his life foreshadows the stagnation of spirit (like the pond

without outlet) that so affects him at the depth of dejection. Coleridge directs his energies to

“abstruse research” (ln. 89), recondite knowledge, rather than more natural truths available

from simple observation of the universe. This pursuit of the esoteric changes Coleridge into

something artificial and affected, removed from Nature, ironically cutting him off from true

insights into human being. The dysfunction of the Imagination prevents Coleridge from

following any other path, however. Coleridge realises that eventually his entire self will be

subsumed by this poisonous habit; once the transformation is complete, there is little hope that

the poetic faculty will ever be restored.

The inability to avoid abstruse thoughts (ln. 89) comes from the attitude Coleridge had

in the first part of the sixth stanza: “fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine” (ln. 81).

The mistaken belief that truth is within the self leads to an unimaginative view of nature. The

obsessive quest for knowledge in the human psyche is an esoteric pursuit, and results in a

disregard for general revelation found in nature, available to all men, either through the genial

spirit (for the Poet) or through poetry (for those without the poetic faculty).

Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind, 94

Reality‟s dark dream!
I turn from you, and listen to the wind,
Which long has raved unnoticed. 97

Coleridge rejects these dreams “of happiness” (ln. 79) spun from fancy, unrealistic and

unimaginative, deceitful and misguiding. Finally, Coleridge turns to nature, faith in his
 Cartmell 24

genius breaking through the habits (ln. 93) that nearly consumed him. He rejects the

poisonous viper and listens to the storm.

The storm, foretold in the first stanza, has buffeted Coleridge for some time,

overlooked due to his lethargic dejection. Coleridge‟s disregard of the forceful gale

emphasises the deep state of dejection he was in. Even though he begged for the storm to

sweep away his lassitude (lns. 15, 20), he cannot be moved by it when it first arrives. In

addition to an act of nature, Coleridge himself must will his soul toward a healthy state.

Coleridge must see nature once again with that particular aptitude given to poets. To the

common man, deep in his habits of dreaming fancy, this storm would do nothing, for he

would never have the poetic Imagination to change himself.19 Coleridge, as a Poet, remembers

the freshness of nature and is called to return to this view.

Coleridge does not here rationalise or over-think the storm. All that is required of him

is a will to stir his stagnant spirit. The storm washes over him in a hurricane of sensory input;

there is no rational pursuit of the storm‟s meaning. In this state of acceptance Coleridge can

begin to find truth in natural images. For the reader, as well as Coleridge, the truth he finds in

the storm‟s billows is unexpected.

...........................................What a scream 97
Of agony by torture lengthened out
That lute sent forth! Thou Wind, that rav‟st without,
Bare crag, or mountain-tairn, or blasted tree,
Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb,
Or lonely house, long held the witches‟ home, 102
Methinks were fitter instruments for thee,
Mad Lutanist! who in this month of showers,
Of dark-brown gardens, and of peeping flowers,
Mak‟st Devils‟ yule, with worse than wintry song,
The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves among. 107

19 The common man, unable to be moved by the storm, would never naturally be in a state of dejection as the Poet
can be. This is discussed further on page 30 of this essay.
 Cartmell 25

In the first stanza, Coleridge wished that a storm, rather than a “dull sobbing draft” (ln. 6),

would come and move his soul to life (ln. 20). The sad breeze played the Æolian lute (ln. 7);

this was a sharp distinction, in Coleridge‟s dejected mind, between a sad nature and a moving,

living nature. But here, in the seventh stanza, Coleridge names the hoped-for storm as the

player of the lute and echoes his earlier sentiment: the lute should be mute (ln. 8, 103-4).

Coleridge can find only pain in the melodies of the lute; he believes that a pleasanter song

could be found if the wind played objects not purposed to be instruments (peak or pond or

timber, lns. 100-3). More than even anguish, Coleridge hears blasphemy (“Devils‟ yule”) in

the harp‟s notes: this is a “wintry song” (ln. 106) out of place in spring, when things should be

birthing and growing. But he perseveres in his newly-regained faculty.

Coleridge sees the wind as artist, and himself as audience: “Thou Actor, perfect in all

tragic sounds! / Thou mighty Poet, even to frenzy bold!” This disquieting tale was not what

Coleridge expected to hear with his reinstated genial power; but he trusts nature‟s teaching,

and pursues the unfolding vision.

Coleridge hears real horror in this disturbing lute, expressed in the next few lines:

What tell‟st thou now about? 110

‟Tis of the rushing of an host in rout,
With groans of trampled men, with smarting wounds—
At once they groan with pain and shudder with the cold! 113

Coleridge‟s hoped-for cure, Joy, seems to be at extreme odds with the sentiments he sees

expressed by the storm; instead of delight, he perceives only pain—violence inflicted on men

by men. Coleridge‟s newly-restored poetic faculty seems to have betrayed him: instead of

healing and peace, he is given a vision of death.

This clamorous blowing quickly changes into quiet, and Coleridge finds significance in

the reversal.

But hush! there is a pause of deepest silence! 114

 Cartmell 26

And all that noise, as of a rushing crowd,

With groans, and tremulous shudderings—all is over—
It tells another tale, with sounds less deep and loud!
A tale of less affright,
And tempered with delight,
As Otway‟s20 self had framed the tender lay. 120
‟Tis of a little child,
Upon a lonesome wild,
Not far from home, but she hath lost her way;
And now moans low in bitter grief and fear,
And now screams loud, and hopes to make her mother hear. 125

This tale—told in silence and so different than the zephyrous battle—is Coleridge‟s own; he is

the little child. The Poet-as-child metaphor will appear again in “Intimations,” where

Wordsworth discovers that man needs to be like a child.21 This poem, “Dejection,” is a tale

“less deep and loud” (ln. 117) than other poems (“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” for

instance). It is not a poem of suspense or fear, but is a flowing melody describing Coleridge‟s

dejection and convalescence, enjoyable to the reader, “tempered with delight” (ln. 119).

Coleridge, playing in the fields of dreamful Fancy (ln. 79), soon strayed from the path of true

genius, “not far from home, but she hath lost her way” (ln. 123). It is at times difficult to

distinguish true Imagination (the genial power, ln. 39) from mere Fancy, but that small

distance is the difference between dream and reality.

Coleridge‟s continued efforts at finding his way home are rewarded: he fights through

the dejection and regains his poetic faculty, enabling him to write this poem about the

experience. Coleridge closes the poem with a prayer for his companion (the reader, see line

25). “Full seldom may my friend such vigils keep!” (ln. 127), he wishes, both for her mental

well-being (curing dejection is a trying experience for all involved) and for his own continued

poetic abilities. “May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling,” Coleridge prays (ln. 130),

the sparkling, moving stars of stanza two letting her feel beauty in nature. “Joy lift her spirit,

20 Thomas Otway, a popular English playwright in the seventeenth century, was most famous for Venice Preserv’d,
1682. An omnibus was first published in 1712.
21 See page 38 of this essay for this analysis.
 Cartmell 27

joy attune her voice; / To her may all things live, from pole to pole” (lns. 134-5); the Joy that

Coleridge rediscovered he now wishes upon the reader, that they may see (perhaps through

this poem) the motion truth imparts to nature.

The true dejection in Coleridge‟s work is absent from “Intimations,” and yet both poets

tell a similar tale. Wordsworth begins with happiness, moves quickly through “a thought of

grief” (“Intimations” ln. 22), and ends in Joy.22 Coleridge starts with “dreams of happiness”

(ln. 79), almost loses his genial spirit, and eventually arrives at Joy.

“Dejection” makes it clear that the Poet has a duty to enlighten mankind through

poetry. The Poet, says Wordsworth in the Preface, is “endued with more lively sensibility,

more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more

comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind” (Preface 603). Since

not all men can access truths in nature, because they have not the poetic genial spirit (ln. 39),

the Poet must use his special talent to enliven the souls of his readers.

Coleridge, in “Dejection,” clearly identifies that it is his own fault he can no longer feel

beauty. He lays out the way in which he regained his ability to use the Imagination, and

expounds on the beauties of the natural world. He works through his dejection, inspired by

nature, and concludes with an exhortation to the reader to arrive at the same state as the Poet:

pleasurable understanding of natural beauty. Stanzas 1-4 of “Intimations” hinted at similar

conclusions to all these problems, and we see them expanded in the following stanzas.

22 Wordsworth‟s grief and Joy, touched upon briefly in the first stanzas, are further investigated in the following
pages.
 Cartmell 28

INTIMATIONS 5-11

In the fifth stanza, Wordsworth does not immediately clarify Coleridge‟s

misinterpretation of his poem. He expands on the thought at the end of the fourth stanza:

although there is much joy and beauty in nature (lns. 36-50), he is still frequently reminded

that the “visionary gleam...the glory and the dream” (lns. 56-7) has vanished from the world.

Wordsworth begins to explain this loss of celestial light (ln. 4), starting at man‟s birth:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 58

The Soul that rises with us, our life‟s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy! 66

When man is born, wisps of heaven, “clouds of glory,” follow him to earth. Being used to

unearthly surroundings, childish eyes interpret all earthly sights through a heavenly patina.

The beginning of life is the “time before” Wordsworth references in the first line of the poem.

We can now begin to see meaning in the title, “Intimations of Immortality from Recollections

of Early Childhood.” Wordsworth, as a poet, has begun to put together pieces that reveal to

him higher truth. The contrast between childhood vision (both remembrances of his own and

his observations of children) and his present vision causes him to ponder the differences

between heaven and earth.

The stanza continues with a decline of man‟s ability to see celestial glory in nature.

The “growing Boy” (ln. 68) begins to be fenced in by “shades of the prison-house” which is

earth (ln. 67), yet he still “beholds the light... / sees it in his joy” (lns. 69-70). The boy matures

into the youth, inevitably travelling “daily farther from the East” (ln. 71), from whence his soul
 Cartmell 29

and life‟s star originated (ln. 59).23 Despite his increasing distance from heaven, he “still is

Nature‟s Priest, / And by the vision splendid / Is on his way attended” (lns. 72-4). To see the

celestial in nature is to find spiritual (eternal) truth in earthly images, to intertwine the

invisible with the corporeal, to be “Nature‟s Priest.” The youth perceives glory all around,

making him a priest of the truths that nature shows him. Yet, even this deep connection with

nature betrays the youth‟s growing distance from his heavenly origins. The relationship of a

priest with nature is formalised and ritualised—there is nothing fresh or new to be discovered

for a priest, unlike the young prophet (ln. 114). But the priest worships for the benefit of

others, not only himself. The Poet can regain a sense of freshness through observing the

youth-priest.24

Finally, the poem arrives at Wordsworth‟s own current state: “At length the Man

perceives it die away, / And fade into the light of common day” (lns. 75-6). The fully-grown

human can no longer see the light of heaven; it commingles with common illumination and

seems to disappear. Recall the final line of the first stanza: “The things which I have seen I

now can see no more” (ln. 9). According to Wordsworth, this is not an isolated affliction: all

adults have lost the ability to see the celestial light.25

One of Coleridge‟s misinterpretations of the first four stanzas was that Wordsworth

blamed nature for losing something, rather than placing the fault in himself. Here

Wordsworth clears up this problem and agrees with “Dejection” that it is man‟s own fault,

and nature has not diminished.26 There are adults and children simultaneously alive on earth.

If children can see the light at the same time adults cannot, this indicates some loss of function

23 The image of man‟s life following the arc of the sun—birth in the east and death in the west—is a common
enough literary technique for it to be easily recognised here.
24 This relationship is discussed further on pages 34-5 of this essay.
25 “our” ln. 58, “we” ln. 64; these plural pronouns indicate that the singular “Boy,” “Youth,” and “Man” in stanza

five are representative of all humanity.

26 See stanza two of “Dejection” for Coleridge‟s view, pages 13-15 of this essay.
 Cartmell 30

because of aging (or experience that comes with age). Wordsworth‟s view of age and the

deterioration it brings is explored further in stanza eight.

Having established his common experience with humanity, Wordsworth moves on to

distinguish his poetic nature from the rest of men. In this stanza, Wordsworth does not set out

to show his superiority, but that he writes these lines exhibits the Poet‟s inclination toward

thoughts others are not thinking.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; 77

Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a Mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely Nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came. 84

Line 82, “Inmate Man,” reinforces the image from stanza five, earth as prison to the spirit (ln.

68). The “trailing clouds of glory” (ln. 64) from the previous stanza are long since dispersed,

replaced with pleasures and yearnings from the temporal realm. Wordsworth acknowledges

the worthiness of pursuing earthly “pleasures,” because man cannot return to “whence he

came” (ln. 84); it is better to have productive, slightly deceived humans than dejected,

motionless ones. The reader should never be put in Coleridge‟s position, because we do not

have the poetic faculties necessary to escape dejection. For a moment, we as reader experience

true dejection through the poem, but are immediately cured of it by the Poet, drawn into

delightful truth by the healing work of the verse on our souls. Experiencing dejection is an

important part of the enlightenment process, but Wordsworth carefully notes that the reader

should not be left in this state. The Poet, he says, “ought especially to take care, that whatever

passions he communicates to his Reader, those passions, if his Reader‟s mind be sound and

vigorous, should always be accompanied with an overbalance of pleasure” (Preface 611).

 Cartmell 31

Exploring geological activity, finding the perfect combination of chocolate and

strawberries, relishing the beauty of flowers—these are the pleasures earth has to offer, to

placate man who has forgotten the eternal glories of the celestial realms. These “glories he

hath known” (ln. 83), then, refer to something other than scientific fact or pleasure in beauty.

The “something other” is truth; Wordsworth in the Preface lays out this purpose of

poetry: “[Poetry‟s] object is truth, not individual and local, but general, and operative” (Preface

605). Man as an infant is closest to truth, and poetry aims to restore his proximity to truth.

Coleridge in the Biographia explains this method of poetry, which aims at heavenly

glories. Poetry, Coleridge says, “described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man

into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other, according to their relative

worth and dignity” (Biographia 482). The man of pure science is not acknowledging his spirit;

the man concerned solely with pleasure is not employing his reason; the man interested only

in surface beauty does not understand the deeper truths.

Humans have several faculties of the soul; to be completely human, all these faculties

(mind, spirit, appetite) must interact in an appropriate hierarchy: when he is properly aligned,

man begins to access truth. Poetry is an effective method of engaging the whole man as a

unified being, instead of merely addressing his constituent faculties disjointedly.27 In

“Intimations” Wordsworth writes about his personal struggles with the misalignment of his

soul that occurs through aging. Wordsworth, however, is different than his fellow man:

where non-poets become lost in “the darkness of the grave” (ln. 117), ignorant to their

blindness, the Poet actively overcomes dejection to regain truth.

Recall the fourth stanza: Wordsworth finds joy in nature‟s pleasures during the first

half (lns. 36-50), but is reminded at the end that the “visionary gleam” (ln. 56) has

27 This idea becomes clear through a Romantic understanding of the Imagination, and is explored more fully in the
conclusion.
 Cartmell 32

disappeared. Unlike the common man, lulled to forgetfulness by earth‟s charms, Wordsworth

the Poet knows that there are truths higher than the physical. With these intimations of

immortality in mind, he writes of the young child, closest to birth and thus closest to God.

“Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,” Wordsworth begins the seventh

stanza. This young child has the best of both heaven and earth: he sees all things “apparelled

in celestial light” (ln. 4), and without the responsibilities of adulthood can play at “business,

love, or strife” (ln. 98). Yet this child closest to heaven is destined to lose sight of the glory.

Wordsworth describes him as a “pigmy” (ln. 86), a child in size only but adult in essence; this

child is already spending all his playtime “dream[ing] of human life” (ln. 91): “A wedding or a

festival, / A mourning or a funeral; / And this hath now his heart” (lns. 93-5). The child is

weighted down by earthly pleasures (ln. 77), “fretted by sallies of his Mother‟s kisses, / With

light upon him from his Father‟s eyes” (lns. 88-9); this is not the light of heaven, but a much

more mundane illumination, filled with earthly ambitions, and akin to Coleridge‟s “fancy”

(“Dejection” ln. 79). These ambitions eventually capture the child, but for now the child can

indiscriminately throw his games aside and con another part whenever he chooses (lns. 99-

101). This is not the case for the adult, bogged down by worldly concerns.

It is tempting to equate this child and the Poet, as we did in “Dejection,” especially

considering the last lines of the stanza: “His whole vocation / Were endless imitation” (lns.

106-7).28 But this child is not Wordsworth because Wordsworth, unlike the child, no longer

sees the celestial light. Wordsworth, then, valuing invisible heavenly glory, cannot be

engaged in imitation of what he sees—he must re-create in poetry how the world should be

viewed (how the world actually is), rather than copying the earthly scenes his flawed eyes

behold. The Poet, unlike common man, realises there is an invisible presence inherent to life.

28 Recall Republic, 601e, where Plato describes art as mere imitation.

 Cartmell 33

This realisation places the Poet closer to the young child, who easily perceives celestial glory.

Understanding this fact and seeking for what is missing will improve man‟s soul, and

Wordsworth states this in the Preface: “Our moral feelings influencing, and influenced by these

judgments [in my and Coleridge‟s poetry] will, I believe, be corrected and purified” (Preface

603). The point of poetry is to enliven and reawaken the soul of man, a concept Coleridge

successfully addresses in “Dejection.” Both poets focus on natural images rather than

anything manmade, and in this way the Poet and the child are alike: both see truth in nature.

The reader (common man) does not extract truth from nature. As was discussed earlier,29 man

is out of tune with nature and distracted by the busyness of life, which contributes to his

ultimate unhappiness. This unhappiness is different than the Poet‟s dejection: dejection

springs from the realisation that truth in nature can no longer be perceived, that the poetic

faculty—the secondary Imagination—is no longer functional. Man‟s unhappiness is a general

malaise, a shallow sense of disquiet and unfulfillment that hovers at the edges of activity.

Since the reader does not pay attention to nature, the Poet uses a manmade object (the poem)

to direct the reader‟s attention back to nature. Despite some differences of opinion between

Wordsworth and Coleridge, both poets, in the poems and in the critical works, have a

common object and employ a common method in their direction of the reader. This assertion,

supported by the reading of the poems, will be further investigated in the conclusion of this

essay.

The seeds of adulthood are already sown in the child, but stanza eight reminds the

reader that there is something special about children.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie 108

Thy Soul‟s immensity;
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,

29 Page 13 of this essay.

 Cartmell 34

That, deaf and silent, read‟st the eternal deep,

Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,— 113

The confined pigmy body of the child contradicts his soul‟s freedom (“Thy Soul‟s

immensity”), his visionary ability (“thou Eye among the blind”) to see the celestial light. He is

a Philosopher in the best possible sense, not some sophist hack, but a true lover of divine

wisdom, looking to his origins to find meaning. Within his small frame lies knowledge of the

divine; his eyes can see what adults, blinded by worldly concerns, cannot. To be a child is to

see the truths of “eternal mind”—the child is Eye. His nature, however, prevents him from

hearing or speaking, making him unable to share those truths which he beholds. The child

cannot have discourse because his entire being is Eye. This image of the mute child points

back to stanza seven. Recall the dreams the child has of human life: “a wedding or a festival,

/ A mourning or a funeral” (lns. 93-4). The significance of these events is wrapped up in

sound: music, laughter, weeping, conversation. Without the ability to hear or speak, the child

cannot participate, but only dream: he must play at “dialogues” (ln. 98) rather than take part.

The Poet has lost the Eye that the child has, but he has gained the ability to express what he

understands through experience and recollection.30

Due to his non-participation in the earthly realm, the child innately grasps, through his

spiritual vision, those eternal truths that the Poet struggles to discover and express (ln. 115-6).

The child is “haunted...by the eternal mind” (ln. 113): he continually sees a spiritual presence

infringing on physical existence. He “read‟st the eternal deep” (ln. 112) with his youthful

vision in a way that the Poet cannot, because of his inability to see spiritual light.

Wordsworth calls the child a prophet not in a Biblical sense of the word, but

reminiscent of Delphi: the oracle makes obscure references that are interpreted by the priest

30 In the ninth stanza, Wordsworth says that this loss of sight should not be mourned, since it is replaced with
something as valuable.
 Cartmell 35

for the people. Rather than hearing from the divine and repeating a message to the people, the

Poet observes the child and informs the reader of truths the child‟s vision reveals.

Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! 114

On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave. 117

Wordsworth, like the child, is haunted: but it is a lack of presence, rather than continual

encroachment, that disturbs the Poet. This echoes the beginning of the third stanza, “To me

alone there came a thought of grief” (ln. 22), and the end of the fourth stanza, “Whither is fled

the visionary gleam? / Where is it now, the glory and the dream?” (lns. 56-7). But where the

Poet is left grasping blindly for truth, the child sees clearly and lives in his heavenly heritage.

The child is a prophet of the eternal realms; but how he is a seer becomes evident only in the

next stanza. Recognising the child‟s status is possible through the poetic genius, once again

setting the Poet apart from common man. The child interacts with an absence; where the

common man laughs and kisses him (ln. 88), the Poet investigates this invisible presence.

Line 117 reveals how adults differ from children, perhaps the key to the child‟s Sight:

as an adult, we are “in darkness lost, the darkness of the grave.” A massive headstone looms

over mankind, casting its deathly shadow over all our endeavours. We are chained to an

awareness of mortality and the cessation of action and thought it inevitably entails. But we

are born on the other side of the stone, delivered in the celestial light sans awareness of death.

For the child there is nothing but light.

The heavenly illumination is bright to the point of oppressiveness. The shadow of the

grave is real, but the child cannot perceive it because his eyes are adjusted to the light, as when

you stare outside on a bright day and then cannot see anything inside the house.

Thou, over whom thy Immortality 118

Broods like the Day, a Master o‟er a Slave,
A Presence which is not to be put by... 120
 Cartmell 36

Immortality “broods” over the child and cannot “be put by.” This divine light blinds the child

to his own mortality—though he has not yet knowledge of death, he soon will. For the child,

infinity takes the form of a day. There is no sense of progress for the child: he exists in a

perpetual present. As there is no hope of change in circumstance for a slave (ln. 119), so there

is no perceived movement in time for the child.31

The final lines of stanza eight accuse the child of untimely eagerness to grow up, to

leave behind “heaven-born freedom” (ln. 122) in favour of “earthly freight, and custom” (lns.

126-7). The “little Actor” (ln. 102) will soon live the parts that he once merely played. Though

the child possesses an ironic (considering his visionary powers) blindness to his future state of

adulthood, Wordsworth points out that to see the divine is to be blessed (ln. 125); the Poet

strives to see the divine while in the shadow of death. Custom and the knowledge of death

are “deep almost as life” (ln. 128): the Poet‟s ability to seek the divine resides in that thin

margin of life not overtaken by custom.

Most people cannot utilise that fine remainder of themselves unencumbered by

convention32. But the Poet can, and he opens the ninth stanza with praise for this small section

of self that remains unaffected by the knowledge of death.

O joy! that in our embers 129

Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive! 132

Wordsworth‟s lengthy observation of childhood has recalled to him intimations of the celestial

light, even though he himself cannot distinguish it. This is how the child is a prophet (ln. 114):

he leads the Poet to divine truths. The state of childhood at first appears to be the best

31 Blake‟s “Auguries of Innocence” speaks to this idea of an eternal now: “To see a world in a grain of sand, / And a
heaven in a wild flower, / Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, / And eternity in an hour” (lns. 1-4).
32 Customs that come from modern life, recall discussion on page 13 of this essay.
 Cartmell 37

possible condition on earth because he is closest to God (lns. 65-7), but Wordsworth does not

pine dejectedly for a status that is no longer available to him:

The thought of our past years in me doth breed 133

Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest—
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise; 140

Wordsworth is an adult, dwelling in the shadow of death, and yet he does not regret losing

the “delight and liberty” (ln. 136) of childhood, the hope inherent in an unexplored world. He

instead draws our attention away from childhood, and directs us to consider the state we

inevitably find ourselves in.

In adulthood, Wordsworth says, unlike in childhood, it is possible to see the

differences between heaven and earth. Since man finds himself on earth, he needs to live

differently than he would in heaven. The child cannot do this, because the celestial light

makes heaven and earth appear the same.

But for those obstinate questionings 141

Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised... 147

The Poet must construct a system with which to live and flourish in a world “not realised” (ln.

145). These instincts to comprehend the world, to perceive meaning in existence and to

persevere in the face of loss are heavenly instincts, subconscious recollections from man‟s

immortal soul; they disturb his earthly (mortal, finite, ln. 146) nature, which cannot consider

anything outside the tombstone‟s dark shadow.

 Cartmell 38

These “high instincts” (ln. 146) are rooted in childhood, when we can see heavenly

glory overlaying earthly substance.

But for those first affections, 148

Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing. 152

Though he does not yearn to become a child, Wordsworth wishes to be like a child, to see as a

child sees. The adult cannot be Eye (ln. 111), but he can see something of the glory that the

child perceives.33 The recollection of early childhood, when all things were “apparell‟d in

celestial light” (ln. 4), inspires Wordsworth to see existence in a different manner than the

common man. These memories “uphold us, cherish, and have power to make / Our noisy

years seem moments in the being / Of the eternal Silence” (lns. 153-5). The clamour of earth,

suffusing the ears and mouths of adults, is for a moment stifled by this childlike way of seeing;

the absence of noisy distraction permits the Poet to pursue “truths that wake, / To perish

never” (lns. 155-6). Having glimpsed these truths, the Poet records his thoughts and process

in a poem, re-creating his journey so truth may also be waked in the reader‟s soul. The Poet can

express what he discovers, where the child can only observe for himself, and the common

man, unaware of higher existence, himself seeks nothing.

Once these eternal, heavenly truths are reawakened in man‟s soul, he is able to see

beauty and truth in nature: he can never completely forget the truths the Poet has shown him:

“which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, / Nor Man nor Boy, / Nor all that is at

enmity with joy, / Can utterly abolish or destroy!” (lns. 157-9). Coleridge‟s dejection does not

weigh truth down; Mother Earth does not obscure truth; neither blind, boisterous common

man nor mute seer can steal away knowledge of divine glory.

33 Recall Christ‟s words in Matthew 18: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you
will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
 Cartmell 39

This knowledge secured, the Poet (and all adults) can mentally travel east towards

heaven (lns. 71, 66):

Hence in a season of calm weather 161

Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 167

When the understanding of heavenly glory is garnered, children‟s actions (ln. 166) are re-

evaluated in this light. The Poet, once blind, can now see; he is in the best possible position,

able to see, hear, and re-create divine truth. Unlike the child, who can only see, and unlike the

common man, who can only hear and speak, the Poet can both “see...the shore” (ln. 166) and

“hear the mighty waters” (ln. 167). He can partake most fully of man‟s dual nature, heaven-

born and earth-bound.

Wordsworth‟s “calm weather” (ln. 161) is in sharp contrast to Coleridge‟s raving,

tortured wind (“Dejection” lns. 97-8), and this is perhaps the most apparent discrepancy

between the two poems. A storm shows Coleridge truth, where clear skies allow Wordsworth

to gaze into his past. Where Coleridge is passive and must be motivated by rough winds,

Wordsworth actively investigates. This difference, though, is not due to any philosophical or

critical divergence between the two poets. As is obvious from the Preface and the Biographia,

the two agree on almost all aspects of poetry. This difference in weather is due to the different

positions in life they write about. Coleridge needed some extra motivation to animate his

poetic genius, outside his own will, because of the deep dejection he only recently struggled

with. Wordsworth did not feel similar depths of despair, and so his genius, not tired from

struggle, can easily reach out as it wishes.

 Cartmell 40

The end of the ninth stanza reveals that it is possible, as an adult, to access the divine

light that Wordsworth, at the beginning of the poem, lamented as lost (lns. 9, 18, 22, 56-7; lns.

161-7). In the opening of stanza three, the Poet could not take pleasure in the birds‟ song and

the lambs‟ gambolling, because he was bogged down by feelings of loss. “Now, while the

birds thus sing a joyous song, / And while the young lambs bound / As to the tabor‟s sound,

/ To me alone there came a thought of grief” (lns. 19-22). When Wordsworth reclaims the

“glories he hath known” (ln. 83)34 this depression is banished, and stanza ten bursts forth in

celebration: “Sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song! / And let the young Lambs bound / As

to the tabor‟s sound!” (lns. 168-70). Where before Wordsworth could not engage fully with

nature, he now delights in it because he can discern the divine presence.

The Poet does not see the same thing the child sees: this vision is lost forever to the

adult. “What though the radiance which was once so bright / Be now for ever taken from my

sight, / Though nothing can bring back the hour / Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the

flower...” (lns. 175-8). The “visionary gleam” (ln. 56), the radiance of celestial light, is forever

vanished from the Poet‟s perception. Yet, the Poet has gained a new vision, and he employs

this faculty immediately and to great effect.

We will grieve not, rather find 179

Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind. 186

Complementing the ninth stanza,35 the Poet finds “strength” and “soothing thoughts” in his

new vision of the world. This is not the state of childhood (a perpetual “now” ignorant of

34 As discussed earlier on page 31, rediscovering divine truth is the highest goal available to man.
35 See pages 36-9 of this essay.
 Cartmell 41

loss), nor is it the state of the child‟s parents (a perpetual grief ignorant of the divine): it is an

enlightened view, applying eternal truths to the unavoidable realities of suffering and death.

Now Wordsworth can take true joy in nature, and this ability to find higher meaning in

the earthly is our compensation for losing the divine glory suffusing the mundane.

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, 187

Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway. 191

The Poet has lost his ability to see the heavenly “radiance which was once so bright” (ln. 175),

but all men lose this when they gain a knowledge of death. Because of this loss, man can live

fully in the earthly realm where he has no choice but to dwell. “I love the Brooks” (ln. 192) he

says, and the “new-born Day / Is lovely yet” (lns. 194-5): nature can be wholly enjoyed,

without “thought of grief” (ln. 23). “The Clouds that gather round the setting sun,” and all of

nature, now “take a sober colouring from” the Poet‟s enlightened eye that keeps “watch o‟er

man‟s mortality” (lns. 196-8). This final stanza of the poem reinforces the conclusion that the

Poet, who applies divine truth to earthly reality, is the happiest of all men. Shelley agrees in

the Defence: “A Poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue and

glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the wisest, and the most illustrious

of men” (Defence 361). Through the poem, the Poet shares this insight and invites the reader to

join with him in Joy (“Intimations” ln. 129, “Dejection” ln. 64). What was lost to all men can be

found again through the revelations of poetry, possible only “thanks to the human heart by

which we live, / Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears” (lns. 200-01), emotions born “in

our embers / ...something that doth live” (lns. 129-30). Wordsworth offers us the chance to see

creation in a fresh light. If this invitation is accepted, “the meanest flower that blows can give

/ Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears” (lns. 202-3).
 Cartmell 42

RE-CREATION, OR THE POWER OF THE POET

Through a careful analysis of “Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early

Childhood” and “Dejection: An Ode,” we have identified a common object shared by both

poets: they strive to reawaken a knowledge—once inherent in the reader, now lost—of truth

and existence, which knowledge results in Joy. For Wordsworth, the knowledge is about

man‟s celestial origins and his understanding of the world through a heavenly lens. For

Coleridge, the knowledge is an appreciation of beauty in nature and proper application of this

beauty.

We have identified a common method: the poet‟s personal experiences of nature

expressed in delightful metre.36 Wordsworth records his observations of children and of

natural images; Coleridge encounters natural images and a storm.

Both poets have the same purpose because both have seen the state of man. As he

ages, man becomes inured to the beauty surrounding him, dismissing familiar sensations as

uninteresting and uninspiring.37 This habituation prevents him from accessing truth, general

and operative (Preface 605). The Poet uses poetry to soften man‟s hardened heart, and

Coleridge, in the Biographia, describes the Poet‟s object through poetry:

To find no contradiction in the union of old and new, to contemplate the

Ancient of Days and all his works with feelings as fresh as if all had then
sprang forth at the first creative fiat, characterizes the mind that feels the
riddle of the world and may help to unravel it. To carry on the feelings of
childhood into the powers of manhood; to combine the child‟s sense of
wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day for perhaps
forty years had rendered familiar... (Biographia 476).

36 Delight is a crucial component of poetry. Coleridge says “Pleasurable interest...is the peculiar business of poetry
to impart” (Biographia 479), and Wordsworth agrees, “The Poet writes under one restriction only, namely, that
of the necessity of giving immediate pleasure” (Preface 605), as does Shelley: “Poetry is ever accompanied with
pleasure: all spirits on which it falls, open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with its delight”
(Defence 350).
37 Recall discussion on page 13 of this essay regarding modern life and stimulation.
 Cartmell 43

The “feelings of childhood” identified by Coleridge here are the same ones recognized by

Wordsworth in “Intimations.” The child‟s eye, still influenced by heavenly glory, sees the

world in a manner that allows him to more fully interact with and exist in nature. Since the

child cannot express these truths, it is up to the Poet to reveal to adult man the sight he has

lost. The Poet brings man back to a point where he can joyfully experience nature‟s truths,

those “thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears” identified in the final line of

“Intimations.”

This artistic process—reawakening a sense of freshness and interest through the

delightful presentation of truth—can be best described as re-creation. The Poet (or, generally,

Artist) takes nature and re-shapes it into a fresh and striking image in order to communicate

some truth to the reader. The word is Romantic in origin, and comes from a single line in the

Biographia, describing the secondary Imagination: “[it] dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order

to recreate; to idealize and unify” (Biographia 477). The poetic process and the poetic faculty are

tied up in the Imagination, which is engaged in re-creation. The secondary Imagination is the

poetic faculty, and while all men have it in some measure, in the Poet it flourishes.38

Shelley in the Defence, in support of Coleridge‟s terminology, says that “poetry, in a

general sense, may be defined to be „the expression of the Imagination‟” (Defence 347). The

Biographia tells precisely what is meant here by the word “Imagination”:

The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living power and prime agent of
all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal
act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary I consider as an echo of
the former, coexisting with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the
primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the
mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate;
to idealize and unify (Biographia 477).

38 Recall Wordsworth‟s words about the differences between Poet and common man: “[there] is implied nothing
differing in kind from other men, but only in degree” (Preface 607).
 Cartmell 44

All men regularly employ the primary Imagination: every interpretation of sensory perception

from eye or ear to mind requires this power. To use Coleridge‟s terminology, it is primary

Imagination which allows us to navigate through sensory input and interact with objects (and

other people) outside ourselves. This power has no expressive ability, but is merely receptive.

It is the secondary Imagination that lets us construct truth about existence from input and

communicate these discoveries. Where the primary Imagination perceives, the secondary

Imagination breaks these images apart and re-creates them to form interlocking patterns and

structures. All men have this power—the Poet‟s greatness is his continual attention to input

that common man overlooks or outright ignores, and his ability to construct meaning from

these familiar and seemingly trivial images. In the Defence, Shelley supports this reading of

the esemplastic power:39

To be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful, in a word the good
which exists in the relation, subsisting, first between existence and
perception, and secondly between perception and expression (Defence 348).

The primary Imagination is the relation between existence and perception, and the secondary

the relation between perception and expression. The primary Imagination deals with the way

images are processed in the mind, and the secondary Imagination constructs interconnecting

relations between these images and finds meaning. Through the secondary Imagination, the

Poet sees what is good (true and beautiful)40 in these relationships, where common man only

sees, if anything, that a relation exists. The Poet‟s gift is his ability to interpret these relations.

Recall the second stanza of “Dejection,” when Coleridge gazes at the stars and, in his dejected

state, without poetic genius, cannot contemplate their beauty. This is man‟s common state,

unable to feel the truth of the stars; man is saved from dejection because he does not realise

what he is missing—he has lost his childlike vision. The Poet, though, recalls when his poetic

39 Discussed earlier on page 16.

40 Bonvm, Veritas, Pvlcher.
 Cartmell 45

faculty functioned properly, and so becomes dejected when he notices his failing. The theme

of “Dejection” centres on this realisation and the Poet‟s recovery of his genial faculty.

The purpose of poetry, and art in general, is tied up in the Poet‟s use of the secondary

Imagination. We have already identified the expression of the Imagination as the poet‟s

personal experiences of nature displayed in delightful metre; the Poet expresses his

observations in order to open man‟s eyes to truth, as Wordsworth states in “Intimations”: “O

joy! that in our embers / Is something that doth live, / That nature yet remembers / What was

so fugitive!” (lns. 129-32). The Poet (Artist) strives to rekindle these embers of remembrance,

the intimations of immortality from a period when the soul was unencumbered by earthly

freight.41 Man is dulled to the beauties and wonders about him, the “discriminating powers of

the mind” are blunted by modern life (Preface 599). The world looks old, tired, and ordinary to

common man; but to the Poet, it is full of truth and beauty. Recall a few pages earlier the

quotation from Coleridge (page 42): the Poet re-creates his experiences, forming an image fresh

and striking that will seize the attention of the reader and point out to him what he could

never see through his own power.

Shelley defines the purpose of poetry in the Defence: “Poetry acts in another and

diviner manner. It awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a

thousand unapprehended combinations of thought” (Defence 351). The reader‟s mind,

through poetry, is awakened to heavenly truths, enlarged to comprehend eternity. This is

accomplished in the poem by fresh combinations of thought, images of nature re-created by

the poet in before-unapprehended amalgamations. Shelley continues in beautiful prose:

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes
familiar objects be as if they were not familiar; it reproduces all that it
represents, and the impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand
thenceforward in the minds of those who have once contemplated them, as

41 The child can see so clearly because he lacks knowledge of death, as discussed above on page 35.
 Cartmell 46

memorials of that gentle and exalted content which extends itself over all
thoughts and actions with which it coexists (Defence 351).

The effect of poetry on the common man is divine, recalling clouds of celestial glory. What

was lost to him is found anew through poetry. The re-creation of familiar objects in a fresh,

sublime light is the work of the Poet. Poetry causes the reader to look with childlike eyes42 at

scenes he has beheld a thousand times before—but with these eyes of a child, the reader can

now glean truths previously inaccessible. Poetry, says Shelley, “creates anew the universe

after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by

reiteration. It justifies that bold and true word of Tasso—Non merita nome di creatore, se non

Iddio ed il Poeta”43 (Defence 361). The Poet does not create objects ex nihilo, as the Creator did,

but he does take present objects and cast them in a new light, making them interesting again

to the reader—he re-creates his own experiences in a manner that compels the reader to feel

what the Poet feels.

The Poet‟s gift is twofold: his great capacity for feeling, and his ability to clearly

communicate these feelings in a beneficial manner. This comes naturally to the Poet, says

Wordsworth, because he is “endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and

tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul,

than are supposed to be common among mankind” (Preface 603). He cannot help but find

sublime truth wherever he looks; these truths create emotion, and poetry results, since it is

“the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (Preface 611).

When the reader engages with the Poet‟s powerful feelings, the reader‟s soul is

improved as a result, a renewed desire for truth and beauty is waked within. Shelley agrees

with Wordsworth and Coleridge when he identifies this effect of poetry: “[Poetry] is as it were

42 See again Coleridge quotation, page 42, and “Intimations” analysis, page 38.
43 “Nobody merits the title of Creator save God and the Poet.”
 Cartmell 47

the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own...and the state of mind produced by

[it] is at war with every base desire” (Defence 360-1). Poetry enlightens the mind and enlivens

the soul; it melts the callous heart of man. Wordsworth, in the Preface, sums up the work of

the Poet and the purpose of poetry:

The Poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices
in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion.... He is
the rock of defence of human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying
every where with him relationship and love (Preface 606).