S.T Coleridge was a philosopher, a critic and a romantic poet. He had the most vigorous mind among all the romantic poets.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a leader of English Romantic poet, born on 21st October, 1772 in Otter, Devonshire England. His father being a clergyman moved to London with family when Coleridge was young. S.T Coleridge, here attended school, he later attended Cambridge but left without completing his study. During the politically charged atmosphere of the late 18th century, Coleridge made a name for himself both as a political and radical as an important young poet.
After a while Coleridge befriends with William Wordsworth and became one of the most important Romantic poets along with William Wordsworth. Collaborating with Wordsworth on the revolutionary Lyrical Ballads of 1798 he helped to inaugurated Romantic era in England. Lyrical Ballads turned the established conventions of poetry upside down, privileging natural speech over poetic ornament, simply stated themes over- elaborated symbolisms, emotions over abstract thought and the experience of natural beauty over urban sophistication, the book paved the way for two generations of poets and stands as one of the milestones of European Literature.
Coleridge became the poet of imagination, exploring the relationships between nature and the mind as it exists as a separate entity. Poems such as “The Rime of Ancient Mariner” and “Kubla Khan” demonstrate Coleridge`s talent for concocting bizarre, unsetting stories full of fantasy, imagery and magic; in poems such as “Frost at Midnight” and “Dejection: An Ode” he muses explicitly on the nature of the mind as it interacts with the creative source of nature.
S.T Coleridge married Sarah Fricker but always repented so separated after a while. S.T Coleridge was opium addicted, therefore his most of the poem is written in a vision of a dream. It is said that Coleridge as opium addicted wrote his poetry after waking up half asleep.
Poems of Coleridge:
Coleridge was the most fragmentary and unsystematic poet among all the poets of 19th century. His most of the poems are incomplete because of his opium addiction habit, only The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is complete. Christabel and Kubla Khan are merely fragmentary, apart from these poems he wrote The Lime- Tree Bower My Prison is a poem of hope and joy experienced by the poet. His poem Frost at Midnight is a presence of divine spirit in nature, Dejection: An Ode and Youth and Age expresses poet`s sense of failure of creative powers. Apart from these, he also composed political poems like; France: An Ode, which underlines the disgust caused by the failure of the French revolution and subsequent reign of terror. Another poem The Destruction of Bastille extols the event where The Ode on the Departing Year fears the fall of England.
The Literary World 