Coleridge's Poem "Dejection: An Ode", Critical Appreciation:

In 1802 Samuel Taylor Coleridge written the poem "Dejection: An Ode". Original form of the poem "Dejection: An Ode" was written to Sara Hutchinson, a lady who was not his wife and converses his feelings of love for her.

Dejection: An Ode is the swan song of S.T. Coleridge. It is a very sad poem. In the poem the poet mourns his spiritual and moral losses. It records a fundamental change in his life and it is a lament on the decline of his creative imagination.

"Dejection: An Ode", Critical Appreciation:

As we go through the poem, we see that the poet sees in a tranquil night the old Moon in the lap of the new Moon. The poet sees that the moon is overspread with phantom light. It suggests the death of his poetic imagination which is the central theme of the poem.

Critical-Appreciation-of-Coleridge's-Dejection-An-Ode

The poet then describes the kind of grief that has taken hold of his mind. We find an expression of that grief in the following lines:

A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,

A stiffed, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,

Which finds no natural outlet no relief

In word, or sigh, or tear,

The poet sees the charm and beauty of the sky, the clouds, the stars and the moon; but he thinks that he has lost the capacity to feel that beauty because his heart is in the grip of grief which has rendered him completely cheerless and spiritless:

I may not hope from outward forms to win

The passion and the life whose fountains are within.

There was a time, says Coleridge, when he possessed this Joy within him. But now he has been crushed by the misfortunes of life. His life is full of untold miseries. The afflictions of life have bent him down. He stoops and staggers under the heavy weight of troubles and sufferings which darken the very glow of life in the poet. Each blow of grief kills his creative imagination. In the words of the poet:

But now afflictions bow me down to earth: Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth: But oh! Each visitation

Suspends what nature gave me at my birth, My shaping spirit of Imagination.

Attitude to Nature Coleridge Express in Dejection: An ode

In the above lines of the poem Dejection: An Ode by S.T Coleridge, the poet further speaks that he is in a mood of deep sorrowfulness. No beautiful thing of nature can appeal him. In the absence of the internal happiness in his soul, he does not feel the loveliness and attractiveness of natural objects.

To conclude we may say that the summary of poem "Dejection: An Ode" enacts an interesting paradox. The loss is bewailed in such a beautiful manner that the very act of bewailing falsifies the confession that the poet has suffered any loss. Whereas the earnestness and intensity of the feeling is undeniable, the feeling itself is baseless. Coleridge's poetic powers were never fully sapped; they were suspended, and if he could not bring them to realization, the reasons will have to be sought elsewhere.

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