Dejection: An Ode

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"Dejection: An Ode" is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1802. The poem in its
original form was written to Sara Hutchinson, a woman who was not his wife, and discusses his
feelings of love for her. The various versions of the poem describe Coleridge's inability to write
poetry and living in a state of paralysis, but published editions remove his personal feelings and
mention of Hutchinson.

Background
Coleridge wrote in his notebook about Hutchinson and possible poems:[1] "Can see nothing
extraordinary in her — a Poem nothing all the virtues of the mild & retired kind [...] Poem on
this night on Helvellin /William & Dorothy & Mary / —Sara & I — [...] Poem on the length of
our acquaintance / all the hours that I have been thinking of her &c."[2] During this time in 1802,
Coleridge was separated from his family and he eventually returned home during March. The
relationship between him and his wife was restarted and they had a daughter in December 1802.
However, of the poems he intended to write about Hutchinson, he managed to complete one and
an early draft was sent to her in a letter on 4 April 1802.[3]

The original draft was titled "Letter to Sara Hutchinson", and it became Dejection when he
sought to publish it. There are many differences between the versions beyond the original being
340 lines and the printed 139 lines as they reflect two different moments in Coleridge's
emotional struggle. Also, passages describing his childhood and other personal matters were
removed between versions.[4] It was published in the 4 October 1802 Morning Post (see 1802 in
poetry). This date corresponding to Wordsworth's wedding to Mary Hutchinson and Coleridge's
own wedding anniversary.[5] The poem was grouped with the Asra poems, a series of poems
discussing love that were dedicated to Hutchinson. Eventually, Coleridge cut himself off from
Hutchinson and renounced his feelings for her, which ended the problems that resulted in the
poem.[6]

Poem
The poem begins with a claim that the narrator has lost his ability to write, which fuels the mood
of dejection:[1]

Well ! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made

The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,
This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence
Unroused by winds, that ply a busier trade
 Than those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes,
Or the dull sobbing draft, that moans and rakes
Upon the strings of this Æolian lute,
Which better far were mute.
For lo! the New-moon winter-bright! (lines 1–9)

This mood of dejection makes the narrator unable to enjoy nature:[5]

O Lady ! in this wan and heartless mood,

To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd,
All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
Have I been gazing on the western sky,
And its peculiar tint of yellow green:
And still I gaze—and with how blank an eye!
And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,
That give away their motion to the stars;
Those stars, that glide behind them or between,
Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen:
Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew
In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;
I see them all so excellently fair,
I see, not feel how beautiful they are!

The poem continues by expression a state of poetic paralysis:[7]

My genial spirits fail ;

And what can these avail
To lift the smothering weight from off my breast ?
It were a vain endeavour,
Though I should gaze for ever
On that green light that lingers in the west :
I may not hope from outward forms to win
The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

The poem continues with the narrator hoping that the woman he desires can be happy:[8]

Joy, Lady ! is the spirit and the power,

Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower
A new Earth and new Heaven,
Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud—
Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud—
We in ourselves rejoice!

Themes
The poem was a reply to William Wordsworth's "Resolution and Independence".[9] It is also
connected to Wordsworth's Immortality Ode in theme and structure.[10] The poem expresses
feelings of dejection and the inability to write poetry or to enjoy nature. Wordsworth is
introduced into the poem as a counter to Coleridge, because Wordsworth is able to turn such a
mood into a benefit and is able to be comforted. However, Coleridge cannot find anything
positive in his problems, and he expresses how he feels paralyzed by his emotions. This source
of their paralysis was Coleridge's feelings for Hutchinson and problems dealing with his
marriage.[11] However, Coleridge couldn't have been completely in dejection or he would have
been unable to create the poem.[12]

The poem also captures some feelings in Coleridge's previous works, especially in analyzing a
problematic childhood and an exploration of religion. Partly, these feelings were fueled by his
inability to accept his opium addiction and other problems. The poems also contain Coleridge's
desires for Hutchinson, but these were later removed from the printed edition of the works. The
editions are so different that they reflect the conflict and division that Coleridge felt during 1802.
The tone of the poems are different, as the original was passionate and emotional, and the printed
version was organized and philosophical.[13]

There is a connection between Dejection and Frost at Midnight in everything but its form. This
is primarily true of the original version, but many of the personal elements of the poem continue
over into the published version. The trimming of the poem allows for Coleridge to emphasize the
most important poetic aspects of the original and to create a separation of the form from the
subject area which allows for a strong incongruity not in the original.[14]

Sources
Coleridge is responding and interacting with many of Wordsworth's poems. Coleridge's views on
dejection and inability to find a positive in such feelings is connected to Wordsworth's
Expostulation and Reply. The poem's describing about nature and unable to enjoy natural scenes
anymore is connected to the inability to see nature in the same way as previously possible within
Wordsworth's Immortality Ode.[15] Like the Immortality Ode, Dejection is a Pindaric Ode.[16]

Critical response
George Watson claims that the trimming of the poem "set forth upon the world as one of the
oddest compromises in English poetry: an intensely, bitterly, almost indecently private poem of
an unhappily married poet, cast into the most public of all forms, the neoclassical Pindaric. The
language swirls upwards and downwards from a studiously conversation opening [...] to passages
of a grave sublimity that Coleridge had scarcely ever achieved."[14] He continues, "Not since 'The
Ancient Mariner' of four years before had his doctrine of deliberately incongruous form realized
anything so arresting. It is by this startling contrast of the formal and the informal that the poem
lives, and for just this reason there can be no doubt of the superiority of the final version".[14]

Richard Holmes emphasizes the differences and the positives of both versions of the text as he
argues:
 The movement of the verse in the first version is swift and spontaneous, a true letter, and
the tone is simultaneously exalted and self-pitying; while in 'Dejection' the verse is
cunningly shaped into eight irregular stanzas, and the outpouring of grief is carefully
controlled and led into a climax of joy and blessing. The first version overwhelms the
reader with its intimacy, its torrent of lament and letting-go, which is both shocking and
compulsive. The final version holds the reader in an act of high, rhetorical attention,
around the proposition that external nature cannot heal the poet (as Wordsworth believed
it could) whose own powers are failing [...] Yet however much 'Dejection' is to be
preferred as a finished work of art, the 'Letter' draws more directly on Coleridge's true
imaginative life. It is richer in, and closer to, those irrepressible sources of imagery which
fill his Notebooks and private correspondence:[17]

Rosemary Ashton believes that "Coleridge's special genius scarcely surfaced, though it would do
so once more in his great poem 'Dejection: An Ode'

Dejection: An Ode”
Summary

The speaker recalls a poem that tells the tale of Sir Patrick Spence: In this poem, the moon takes
on a certain strange appearance that presages the coming of a storm. The speaker declares that if
the author of the poem possessed a sound understanding of weather, then a storm will break on
this night as well, for the moon looks now as it did in the poem. The speaker wishes ardently for
a storm to erupt, for the violence of the squall might cure his numb feeling. He says that he feels
only a ‘dull pain,” “a grief without a pang”—a constant deadening of all his feelings. Speaking to
a woman whom he addresses as “O Lady,” he admits that he has been gazing at the western sky
all evening, able to see its beauty but unable fully to feel it. He says that staring at the green sky
will never raise his spirits, for no “outward forms” can generate feelings: Emotions can only
emerge from within.

According to the speaker, “we receive but what we give”: the soul itself must provide the light
by which we may hope to see nature’s true beauty—a beauty not given to the common crowd of
human beings (“the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd”). Calling the Lady “pure of heart,” the
speaker says that she already knows about the light and music of the soul, which is Joy. Joy, he
says, marries us to nature, thereby giving us “a new Earth and new Heaven, / Undreamt of by the
sensual and the proud.”

The speaker insists that there was a time when he was full of hope, when every tribulation was
simply the material with which “fancy made me dreams of happiness.” But now his afflictions
press him to the earth; he does not mind the decline of his mirth, but he cannot bear the
corresponding degeneration of his imagination, which is the source of his creativity and his
understanding of the human condition, that which enables him to construct “from my own nature
all the natural man.” Hoping to escape the “viper thoughts” that coil around his mind, the speaker
turns his attention to the howling wind that has begun to blow. He thinks of the world as an
instrument played by a musician, who spins out of the wind a “worse than wintry song.” This
melody first calls to mind the rush of an army on the field; quieting, it then evokes a young girl,
lost and alone.

It is midnight, but the speaker has “small thoughts” of sleep. However, he hopes that his friend
the Lady will be visited by “gentle Sleep” and that she will wake with joyful thoughts and “light
heart.” Calling the Lady the “friend devoutest of my choice,” the speaker wishes that she might
“ever, evermore rejoice.”

Form

The long ode stanzas of “Dejection” are metered in iambic lines ranging in length from trimeter
to pentameter. The rhymes alternate between bracketed rhymes (ABBA) and couplets (CC) with
occasional exceptions.

Commentary

In this poem, Coleridge continues his sophisticated philosophical exploration of the relationship
between man and nature, positing as he did in “The Nightingale” that human feelings and the
forms of nature are essentially separate. Just as the speaker insisted in the earlier poem that the
nightingale’s song should not be called melancholy simply because it sounded so to a
melancholy poet, he insists here that the beauty of the sky before the storm does not have the
power to fill him with joy, for the source of human feeling is within. Only when the individual
has access to that source, so that joy shines from him like a light, is he able to see the beauty of
nature and to respond to it. (As in “Frost in Midnight,” the city-raised Coleridge insists on a
sharper demarcation between the mind and nature than the country-raised Wordsworth would
ever have done.)

Dejection: An Ode”
Coleridge blames his desolate numbness for sapping his creative powers and leaving him without
his habitual method of understanding human nature. Despite his insistence on the separation
between the mind and the world, Coleridge nevertheless continues to find metaphors for his own
feelings in nature: His dejection is reflected in the gloom of the night as it awaits the storm.

“Dejection” was written in 1802 but was originally drafted in the form of a letter to Sara
Hutchinson, the woman Coleridge loved. The much longer original version of the poem
contained many of the same elements as “The Nightingale” and “Frost at Midnight,” including
the same meditation on his children and their natural education. This version also referred
explicitly to “Sara” (replaced in the later version by “Lady”) and “William” (a clear reference to
Wordsworth). Coleridge’s strict revision process shortened and tightened the poem,
depersonalizing it, but the earlier draft hints at just how important the poem’s themes were to
Coleridge personally and indicates that the feelings expressed were the poet’s true beliefs about
his own place in the world.
A side note: The story of Sir Patrick Spence, to which the poet alludes in the first stanza, is an
ancient Scottish ballad about a sailor who drowns with a boatload of Scottish noblemen, sailing
on orders from the king but against his own better judgment. It contains lines that refer to the
moon as a predictor of storms, which Coleridge quotes as an epigraph for his ode: “Late, late
yestreen I saw the new Moon / With the old Moon in her arms; / And I fear, I fear, my Master
dear! / We shall have a deadly storm.”