Learner Resource 5: comparative close reading
From ‘The Eolian Harp’
And that simplest Lute,
Placed length-ways in the clasping casement, hark!
Why is the harp such a
rich symbol for the
speaker here? Focus
carefully on descriptive
language
How by the desultory breeze caressed,
Like some coy maid half yielding to her lover,
It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs
Tempt to repeat the wrong! And now, its strings
Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes
Over delicious surges sink and rise,
What does Coleridge’s
choice of language
show about his ideas of
romance and love?
Such a soft floating witchery of sound
As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve
Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land,
Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers,
Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,
or pause, nor perch, hovering on untamed wing!
What could the ‘one
Life’ represent?
O! the one Life within us and abroad,
Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere—
Why does Coleridge
combine different
senses? What does
this suggest about
the power of the
imagination?
Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a world so filled;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air
Is Music slumbering on her instrument.
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And thus, my Love! as on the midway slope
Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon,
Whilst through my half-closed eyelids I behold
Why is ‘tranquillity’
so important for the
poet?
The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main,
And tranquil muse upon tranquility:
Full many a thought uncalled and undetained,
And many idle flitting phantasies,
Traverse my indolent and passive brain,
As wild and various as the random gales
How does Coleridge
build up the
relationship
between the harp
metaphor and the
poetic imagination?
That swell and flutter on this subject Lute!
And what if all of animated nature
What does this
verse paragraph
show about the
relationship
between nature and
the imagination?
Be but organic Harps diversely framed,
That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of all?
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From ‘Dejection: an Ode’
I
Well! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made
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
How does the
presentation of
tranquillity in this
poem differ from
‘The Eolian Harp’?
Than those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes,
What is the poet
suggesting about
the power of the
stormy winds? How
does it compare to
the power of the
poetic imagination?
Or the dull sobbing draft, that moans and rakes
Upon the strings of this Æolian lute,
Which better far were mute.
For lo! the New-moon winter-bright!
And overspread with phantom light,
(With swimming phantom light o'erspread
But rimmed and circled by a silver thread)
How does the light
imagery here differ
from ‘The Eolian
Harp’? What
relationship does it
have with creation
and destruction?
I see the old Moon in her lap, foretelling
The coming-on of rain and squally blast.
And oh! that even now the gust were swelling,
And the slant night-shower driving loud and fast!
Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awed,
And sent my soul abroad,
Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give,
Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live!
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How does the
speaker compare
present feelings
about nature to the
past?
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II
A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
How does Coleridge
show the speaker’s
feelings of
dejection? Focus on
language, repetition
and rhyme.
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear—
O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood,
To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd,
All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
Have I been gazing on the western sky,
And its peculiar tint of yellow green:
What effect does
passivity within the
poet’s mind have in
this poem? How
does this contrast
with the role of
passivity in ‘The
Eolian Harp’?
And still I gaze—and with how blank an eye!
And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,
That give away their motion to the stars;
Those stars, that glide behind them or between,
Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen:
Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew
In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;
I see them all so excellently fair,
Why does the speaker
repeat that he can ‘see’
everything within the
natural landscape? How
does this compare with
feelings towards the
landscape in ‘The Eolian
Harp’?
I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!
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