Samuel Taylor Coleridge is one of the greatest romantic poets and his Kubla Khan is one of those three poems which have kept his name in the front of the greatest English poets. The poem is the shortest but in some ways the most remarkable of the three. Kubla Khan is a romantic poem. It is a concentration of romantic features. The romantic qualities of the poem are as follow:
Though we are asked to find out Romantic elements of the poem entitled 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', I think it is better to have a light idea about romanticism. "Romanticism is derived from the word 'romance'. It means to give full play imagination. It refers to the Romantic Movement in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. This movement is indicated by C. H. Herford as the liberty of imagination without the flight of imaginative sensibility we may have anything else except romanticism.
In English Literature Coleridge is one of the extraordinary writers of Romantic Movement. His contemplations are philosophical. In any case, his style is straightforward and clear. His unique field is Supernaturalism. He expounds on extraordinary components and occasions and depicts what is inconspicuous and past nature. However, he portrays them so that they seem regular and life like. In the field of world English Literature supernaturalism makes Samuel Taylor Coleridge unique.
Coleridge's Kubla Khan is the best example of unadulterated verse, an outcome of sheer fancy. It is a fantasy rhyme, a rhyme of unadulterated enchantment. The Poem embodies Coleridge's dominance over powerful poetry.
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.
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.
The form of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is that of a ballad. A ballad is a narrative song poem, usually relating a single, dramatic incident, in a form suitable for singing. There are two types of ballads: folk ballads (whose authors are unknown) and literary ballads written by modern poets, in imitation of the folk ballads. Folk ballads are characterized by simplicity of language, terseness of expression, directness of narration, abrupt transitions, the use of archaic words and repetition of phrases and lines to achieve a cumulative effect. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is one of the best literary ballads of English language.
In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge here combines many of the features of the old form with the modern. Some of these may be noted here.
