I would bet a fair amount of money there have been lengthy essays written connecting these two poems, but I’ll still take a crack at forming my own connections between the two in this blog post. Immediately—perhaps because I presented on “Ode: Intimations of Immoratily—”Dejection: An Ode” struck me as very similar to said Wordsworth poem. Both poems deal with the narrator’s struggle with depression and despair, but specifically, that depression as it is shown through the inability to feel the beauty of nature. Though both narrator’s can see the beauty of nature, neither feels an overwhleming joy or happiness from it—both speakers still feel empty and desperate. Coleridge’s narrator states “I see them all so excellently fair, / I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!” with “them” reffering to the beauty of nature. Wordsworth’s narrator can also see the beauty of nature with his eyes, but it does not bring him the same joy as it once did: “That there hath past away a glory from the earth.”
Continuing on similarities, both poems rely heavily on the theme of light—both metaphorical “light” and metaphorical “dark,” as well as literal light, and in both poems, there exists a connection between the two types of light. In Wordsworth’s poem, the light metaphor mostly revolves around the sun, which exists as a larger metaphor within the poem, but whenever the poem uses light in the context of the sun, the light brings joy to the narrator. He describes the earth when he was a child as seemingly “Apparelled in celestial light.” Coleridge uses the light from the moon: “the New-moon winter-bright! / And overspread with phantom light.” Coleridge refernces light again in terms of a metaphorical light—one that drives the human spirit: “from the soul itself must issue forth / A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud.” In both poems light represents a sort of driving force that pulls the narrator out of their depression. Though neither narrator fully cures their respective sadness, both dwell and think about ways to better deal with their unhappiness and feel the beauty from nature.
I don’t think both poets come to the same conclusion—in fact both poems are increibly cryptic about what their solutions are, though though both narrators seemingly solve their depressions. In Wordsworth’s, as we talked about in class, the narrator accesses the happiness and joy of his childhood through remebering what childhood merriment was like. For Coleridge’s, joy in and of itself solves the problem of depression, because joy is the meaning behind life. To be entirely honest, I was as confused about Coleridge’s solution as we were about Wordsworth’s and would love to adress it more in class. I just thought the similarities were very obvious between the two poems.
