Relation of Descriptions to Nature in Coleridge's Poetry

Relation of Descriptions to Nature in Coleridge's Poetry

RELATION OF DESCRIPTIONS TO NATURE IN COLERIDGE'S POETRY

Coleridge, like many other romantic writers of his time such as Wordsworth, demonstrated through his works a great interest in nature. Instead of following the philosophy of the eighteenth century which drew the line between man and nature, Coleridge developed a passionate view of the idea that there is just ''one''. He believed that nature was ""the eternal language which God utters"", therefore conecting men, nature and the spiritual together. In his poetry, Coleridge used his philosophy to to explore wider issues through the close observation of images and themes relating to the natural world.

Coleridge makes use of paradoxes to demonstrate the equilibrium

found in the ever-conflicting natural world. For example, in the ''Rime of the Ancient Mariner", the statement : ''water, water every where,/ nor any drop to drink'' is demontrative of this paradoxical irony. Such as the ''beauty and the happiness'' of the ''slimy things'' which the mariner notices whilst at sea. There is also a double meaning in the description of the mariner's soul, which includes the ambiguous word agony, as it can mean mental pain and pleasure. The reason for this double meaning is to symbolise the fact that the balance in nature is at the heart of the natural world, just as the soul of the mariner is to him. Both in imagery and style, these contrasts are equally balanced.

Furthermore, Coleridge has used his techinque to explore the timelessness, or eternity, found in nature. In the poem Kubla Khan, he hints it with adjectives like ''measureless'', in reference

to he caverns, and ''ancient'', referring to the forests, purposely present in the first stanza to show the importance they hold. The mysterious names he employs, like Kubla Khan and Xanadu, he is suggesting that what is man-made is evanescent, unlike the ternity of nature. To enforce this feeling and underline eternity, he chose to keep the natural subjects in the poem undefinite : "green hills", "caves of ice''.

Moreover, Kubla Khan possess a sort of hypnotizing beat, particularly noticed in the first stanza. The poem is given a hard but regular rhythm

with the alliteration of the frst five lines : "Kubla Khan'', ''dome decree'', and ''sunless sea''. Coleridge interlaces short exclamations (''but oh!'', ''a savage place!'') and exageratedly long exclamations (''as holy and enchanted as e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted by a woman wailing for her demon lover!'') reinforces the feeling of flowing which is related to the time ''ticking'' irregularly away, creating a sense of timelessness. This sense of timelessness is also reflected in the regularity in which the story is told by the mariner. The rhyme scheme in which he speaks becomes an almost funny nursery song because of the regularity of the couplets. The word ''ancient'' is often used for inanimate and natural subjects, therefore consolidating the idea of eternity, like the vastness of the ocean inwhich the mariner is stuck. It's also interesting to note that the close attention he brings to details in his story hints that it has been told many times before, as noticed in his description of the albatross, ''at first it seemed a little speck,/And then it seemed to mist''. This makes us realize that it a story that it is a timeless story of the natural world and that it wasn't told at one exact moment in time.

Coleridge probably sought to reflect nature through the Mariner's appearance. His looks are suggested to be charismatic although unkempt, as hints the repeated emphasise on his ''glittering'', ''bright'' eyes. The Mariner can also pass as a sort of 'spokesman for nature' when he is described as a ''greybeard loon''. In addition, his timelessness in contrast to the deaths of all the other crew members is symbolic of the nature he has come to represent.

However, the supposed eternity of nature is looked upon in a rather paradoxical way because a sense of the infinite is created by points which focus on events or images who symbolise of a wider natural world. In this we may guess another attempt of Coleridge to suggest the paradoxes in the natural world, when he indirectly writes about something infinite with a specific event or image.

Another view held by many romantic poets is the idea of ''religion in nature''.