Coleridge's Conversation Poems - The Complete Collection

By Samuel Coleridge

"Coleridge’s Conversation Poems – The Complete Collection" features all eight of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poems dubbed ‘conversation poems’ by George McLean Harper. The poems included in the collection are The Eolian Harp (1796), Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement (1796), This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison (1797), Frost at Midnight (1798), Fears in Solitude (1798), The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem (1798), Dejection: An Ode (1802) and To a Gentleman (To William Wordsworth) (1817). The collection explores themes of love and marriage, human nature and external nature, faith and God, and poetic inspiration. This book is the ideal gift for lovers of English poetry and the Lake Poets, and should not be missed by those interested in Romanticism.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 –1834) was an English poet and literary critic and is considered a founder of the Romantic movement alongside William Wordsworth and Robert Southey. His work is well-known for its reflections on nature and human relationships to each other, the world and God. Other famous examples of his work include Kubla Khan (1817) and his critical essays and lectures on William Shakespeare. Read & Co.’s Ragged Hand imprint is proud to be publishing a high-quality pocketbook as part of the Remembering Series, and hope fans of Coleridge will enjoy the complete collection of the Conversation Poems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ragged Hand
• Release date: Oct 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528792684

Samuel Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) was an English poet and influential figure in the Romantic Movement of the nineteenth century. Born into a large family, Coleridge was the youngest of his father’s 14 children. He attended Jesus College, University of Cambridge with aspirations of becoming a clergyman. Yet, his goals changed when he encountered radical thinkers with different religious views. He befriended several writers and began a new career, publishing a collection called Poems on Various Subjects. Over the years, Coleridge would work as a critic, public speaker, translator and secretary all before his death in 1834.

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COLERIDGE'S CONVERSATION POEMS

THE COMPLETE COLLECTION

By

SAMUEL

TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Copyright © 2021 Ragged Hand

This edition is published by Ragged Hand,

an imprint of Read & Co.

This book is copyright and may not be

reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library.

Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd.

For more information visit

www.readandcobooks.co.uk

Contents

INTRODUCTION

THE EOLIAN HARP

REFLECTIONS ON HAVING LEFT A PLACE OF RETIREMENT

THIS LIME-TREE BOWER MY PRISON

FROST AT MIDNIGHT

FEARS IN SOLITUDE

THE NIGHTINGALE

A CONVERSATIONAL POEM

DEJECTION: AN ODE

TO A GENTLEMAN

(TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

The Conversation Poems are a collection of eight poems penned by English Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written between 1795 and 1807. In 1928, George McLean Harper coined the term ‘conversation poems’ in reference to a selection of eight of Coleridge’s poems that followed a similar form. He borrowed the term from the poem of The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem, written in 1798. The poems in the collection lack strict form, with each written in blank verse. Blank verse poems do not rhyme, but Coleridge guides the reader in which syllables should be stressed, often dividing sentences across multiple lines and therefore providing the poems with structure and rhythm. This results in what can be perceived as a written conversation or soliloquy.

The Conversation Poems are all highly personal and draw from emotional, first-hand experiences in the English poet’s life. The earliest poem in the collection, The Eolian Harp, Coleridge began writing, on 20th August 1795, whilst engaged to Sara Fricker. He was visiting the house in Clevedon that would become his and Fricker’s marital home. The poem was originally published in 1796 under the title ‘Effusion 35, Written at Cleveden’ in Poems on Various Subjects, but Coleridge edited it numerous times after the first publication. At the centre of the poem is an instrument that produces music when touched by the wind. Coleridge uses this image as a metaphor for the three main strands of conversation. Firstly, alluding to the physically intimate aspects of marriage, the poem’s speaker compares the wind’s caress of the harp to a ‘coy maid half yielding to her lover’. The music is then used as a symbolic representation of poetic inspiration. The speaker compares the breeze playing