I feel strongly and I think strongly, but I seldom feel without thinking or think without feeling. Hence, though my poetry has in general a hue of tenderness or passion over it, yet it seldom exhibits unmixed and simple tenderness or passion. My philosophical opinions are blended with or deduced from my feelings, and this, I think, peculiarises my style of writing, and, like everything else, it is sometimes a beauty and sometimes a fault. (...) And whatever man's excellence, that will be likewise his fault. Coleridge in a letter to John Thelwall, 17 December 1796 |
About the soul relationship between the Wordsworths and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
An ancient mariner shoots an albatross
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Complete poem
Each their own Ancient Mariner
Christian allegory, nightmare, self-portret and more
- What does the poet mean?
Poetry as a mirror of the reader's soul
The night is my hell
Opium, nightmares, anguish and agony
- Coleridge, the reader
'I heard and saw nothing, and read and read and read.'
Poor Hawk! O Strange Lust of Murder in Man!
Coleridge's flight to Malta
Woe to the man to whom the origin of evil is an uninteresting question
Coleridge and his preoccupation with the origin of evil
Poetry is the most philosophic of all writing.
William Wordsworth
For I am convinced that a true System of Philosophy - the Science of Life - is best taught in Poetry.
S.T. Coleridge
Watercolour landscapes are by Francis Towne |