Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Poetry

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poetry gives imaginative experience forms ranging from the supernatural tale to the quiet conversation poem. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner joins a strange voyage to guilt, blessing, and the burden of retelling. Frost at Midnight begins in domestic stillness and turns toward a father's hopes for his child's relation to the natural world. Kubla Khan presents an intensely patterned vision whose fragmentary form is part of its effect. Across these works, sound and changing perspective connect external scenes with inward movement, making imagination a means of discovering relationships as well as producing striking images.