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Dario Abram

Mr. sc. Irena Grubica

7 February 2011

Symbols and Images: Water, Wind, Moon

Among all Romantic poets, Coleridge is the most influential and, in terms of symbolism

and imagery that will be dealt with in this paper, the most significant poet. There is one

particular problem behind Coleridge’s work – he also developed his own philosophy of nature

and poetry, thus shedding new (metaphysical) light on his poems. Because of that, there are

several possible levels of interpretation. Before elaborating on the two most important terms this

paper is concerned with, I should explain what (poetic) symbols and images are. Basically, a

symbol is “anything which signifies something”, but when it comes to discussing literature the

term is applied to “a word or phrase that signifies an object or event . . . beyond itself” (Abrams

320). In other words, the term “symbol” in literature signifies something greater (beyond itself),

as it will be revealed in Coleridge’s poetry analysis. On the other hand, the term “imagery” is

used to “signify all the objects and qualities of sense perception” (Abrams 129) and as such

represents what we perceive while reading the poem(s). The main difference between symbolism

and imagery in literature, proposed by some literary theoreticians, is that the former has a higher

purpose and the latter stands for mental pictures in our minds (including auditory, tactile,

olfactory qualities). In this paper I will try to compare the three symbols and images of water,

wind and moon in Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” with those in three of his

“Conversation poems”: “Dejection: An Ode”, “Frost at Midnight” and “The Nightingale”, and

try to explain their function in some of the finest Coleridge’s verses.

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The symbols (some of which are ambivalent and can be taken both as images and

symbols) take a great deal in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, where they act as, how

Coleridge put it, “a living part of that unity of which it is the representative” (qtd. in Rahme 621)

and as such exist on the allegorical level on which this poem can be read. There is an idea of two

worlds in Coleridge’s poems – the physical (imagery) and the metaphysical (symbolism) world –

and that idea dominates this poem. For example, Coleridge writes, “The fair breeze blew, the

white foam flew, / The furrow followed free; / We were the first that ever burst / Into that silent

sea” (186). When read from the first to the last line of this particular quote, the image of wind

can be interpreted as a force of nature which leads the Mariner to the silent sea, but when put into

the context of the poem and read along with other lines, it can also be interpreted as one’s life

when taken as a symbol: it is empty and evanescent and it gradually takes the Mariner and his

crew to the place of their damnation where “Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, /

’Twas sad as sad could be; / And we did speak only to break / The silence of the sea!” (Coleridge

186).

When it comes to discussing the meaning of water in Coleridge’s poem, it is even more

ambivalent than that of wind – Lau asserts that “Coleridge did not for long maintain his tranquil

faith in a benevolent and harmonious universe” (544). In the beginning, the sea was stormy and

was the Mariner ship’s path to the unknown area of frost and mist and it can also be

comprehended as a representation of the struggle between the Mariner and the Albatross; the

argument is that the Mariner calls the storm “he”, mentioning the storm’s wings, as in, “And now

the STORM-BLAST came, and he / Was tyrannous and strong: / He struck with his o’ertaking

wings, / And chased us south along” (Coleridge 184), personifying it to that extent that it

functions on at least three levels of interpretation. On the literal level, it is just an event sending
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the Mariner far away to a distant place. On the moral level, it is the Mariner’s punishment for

even thinking of killing the Albatross (by some theoreticians taken as a symbolic representation

of original sin), and finally, on the allegorical level, the storm is a punishment for every man who

ever committed a sin. Later, when he killed the Albatross, the Mariner and his crew found

themselves becalmed somewhere quiet and still but all alone, surrounded by “Water, water,

every where” but it was all seawater – salty and deadly – and were left without a single rainy

cloud in the sky “Nor any drop to drink” (Coleridge 186). In the end, when the agony of all the

sailors ceased, the rain began to pour, the tide rose with the help of the moon and when the south

wind began to blow, they all set sail for home; the sea, once a great symbol of whether Christian

God or a pagan one’s wrath, turned into tranquil imagery reflecting the power of a more

benevolent deity.

The moon is almost entirely a symbol in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. It can be

interpreted both as “Coleridge’s secondary imagination and higher reason” (Lau 533) or

something more divine, like “the source of Godlike force which pulsates through nature” (qtd. in

Lau 533). When the moon first appeared, Death had already inflicted a curse upon all the crew

members except the Mariner in order to take their souls and Coleridge described the appearance

of the moon in fine details:

The stars were dim, and thick the night,

The steersman’s face by his lamp gleamed white;

From the sails the dew did drip —

Till clomb above the eastern bar

The hornéd Moon, with one bright star

Within the nether tip. (189)

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Coleridge noted that “It is a common superstition among sailors ‘that something evil is about to

happen, whenever a star dogs the Moon’” (qtd. in Harding 87). That said, something sinister

does happen that was mentioned before – everyone dies except the protagonist. The Mariner

notices some lights in the water he called “slimy things” just a moment ago. When the creatures’

bodies started reflecting the moonlight, he suddenly realizes they were all “happy living things”.

According to this, the moon is an image functioning on the literal level, but also functions as an

anticipator of some of the future events. Also, the moon might represent the opposite of the sun,

the second side of the Christian God, the sun being the angry, wrathful God and the moon the

benevolent, repentant God. In fact, generally favorable things occur at night, contrasted with the

horrors that occur during the day. Mentioning the religious component of the moon, in some of

the lines Coleridge addresses the moon as “she”, adding to the femininity of that particular

symbol, as in “The moving Moon went up the sky, / And no where did abide: / Softly she was

going up, / And a star or two beside —“ (Coleridge 190). I believe it is reasonable and plausible

to propose an interpretation in which the Mariner recognizes the Holy mother in the moon which

becomes somewhat obvious in “To Mary Queen the praise be given! / She sent the gentle sleep

from Heaven” (Coleridge 191) when the reflected moonlight gives him peace and tranquility.

When it comes to the “Conversation poems”, there are several (possible) allusions to

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and the images act in a similar way but are, on the other

hand, less ambiguous – they tend to reflect the poet’s state of mind. Even the first lines of

“Dejection: An 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” (Coleridge 328), one of his

strongly emotional poems, are an epitaph about the new moon where Coleridge describes the

beauty of a moonlit night, contrasting its beauty with the speaker’s sorrowful soul. That
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resembles Coleridge’s argument “that one projects one’s own moods or feelings onto external

nature” (qtd. in Burwick 175). The wind is “introduced as [symbol] of the exterior energy and

the individual response” (Burwick 178) and expresses inner turmoils of the speaker’s mind: the

night is “tranquil” and “unroused”, and the clouds become a “dull sobbing draft” that “moans”.

Ultimately, the speaker’s dejection is reflected in the gloom of the night as it awaits the storm:

’Tis midnight, but small thoughts have I of sleep:

Full seldom may my friend such vigils keep!

Visit her, gentle Sleep! with wings of healing,

And may this storm be but a mountain-birth,

May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling,

Silent as though they watched the sleeping Earth! (Coleridge 331)

Unlike the previous one, “Frost at Midnight” is a quiet poem and “the modulation of the

active and passive is nowhere more exquisitely wrought . . . than in this poem” (Burwick 175).

Everything around the speaker is still; even nature – “Sea, hill, and wood” (Coleridge 225) –

seems frozen. Even though not entirely on the allegorical level, the symbol of wind is connected

to that of breath; “breath” and “breeze” are the two meanings of Latin word “spiritus” (Ferber

236) and are both images in this poem. The link between “breath” and “breeze” is quite subtle

but it is shown in several of Coleridge’s verses like “Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,

/ Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, / Fill up the intersperséd vacancies / And

momentary pauses of the thought!” (226) and “But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze /

By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags / Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds”

(226) – the narrator believes that his child, “his breath” and breeze surrounding him, should

experience a better life with more freedom and creativity. Thus, those two images represent the
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speaker’s inner thought and wishes intertwined with the natural phenomena. The water feels

almost like a cradle for the narrator’s child and the moon – its guardian. The whole poem can be

comprehended as that feeling when one’s isolated and left to his thoughts and when Nature

becomes his/her comforter.

The last poem in which I will try to resolve the ambiguity of the images is named “The

Nightingale” and somewhat resembles “Frost at Midnight” but here Coleridge twists a bit his

philosophy of nature mentioned at the beginning of this paper. The setting is, once again, calm

and dramatic, but the Nightingale’s song awakens the sleeping Nature as “A pleasure in the

dimness of the stars. / And hark! the Nightingale begins its song” (Coleridge 243). What is

interesting to notice in the “The Nightingale” is that the symbol of water is not as explicit as in

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” – Coleridge hides it behind a metaphor of “undropped tears”

(245), “gleam of the stream beneath” (243) or “the vernal showers / That gladden the green

earth” (243). It symbolizes how short and meaningful our life is although we are not fully aware

of it, as well as the pace of life and the productivity of our thoughts. The moon is perceived as

“God’s presence, . . . either directly or indirectly” (Lau 542). As for the image of wind, it is a

carrier of the Nightingale’s song – it becomes Nature’s messenger. In this particular poem, the

imagery does not reflect the speaker’s feelings. On the contrary, Coleridge explicitly states, “A

melancholy bird? Oh! idle thought! / In Nature there is nothing melancholy” (243) and wants to

explain that if one feels melancholy, that does not mean that the Nightingale’s song is

melancholic. The birds sing only when provoked by a natural force (a celestial body, the Moon)

and “their singing is not a duplication but a unique personal response to the moonlight” (Lau

543). Hence, Nature has its own “immortality” and this poem is, in fact, in contrast with “Frost at

midnight” – in this one, the speaker celebrates the Nightingale’s melody (the joy of living)
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whereas in the other one he is concerned with the mute frost and the silent moon (the fear of

dying).

As a conclusion to this paper, I believe it would be wise to mention Rahme’s assertion

that “Coleridge sees analogies between the natural and supernatural worlds and between man’s

spiritual life and his physiological or physical life” (624) which I completely support. “The Rime

of the Ancient Mariner” used the symbols of water, wind and moon as three separate entities that

became a part of the poem’s narrative structure and exist on three different levels: the literal level

(imagery), the moral level (the poem is a fable Christians should draw their moral values from)

and the allegorical level (the Mariner is every single man on this planet who must pay the price

for killing a living being and seek redemption). The other three (out of eight) “Conversation

poems” use water, wind and moon as imagery to supply the reader’s imagination with just

enough information to ‘feel’ it. Moreover, in them they exist on the literal and the interpretive

levels, both of which do not explicitly state whether the initial images correspond “between . . .

[entities] of the spiritual and natural worlds” (Rahme 624). In the end, Coleridge’s water, wind

and moon as “material objects in nature become a symbolic language [one] must be able to

interpret” (Moreno 39) and that perfectly proves what Coleridge himself tried to propose and that

is, “Art imitates what is essential in nature” (qtd. in Rahme 629). His use of imagery is

sometimes easily mistaken for symbolism, even though the distinction is not always as clear. The

excessive use of figurative language is what drives these poems and his other work, and I firmly

believe that the symbols and images of water, wind and moon are that frequent in his poetry

because of the similarity to the imagination: it can be as still or as rough as water is, as light or as

fierce as wind, and can become our guiding light even in our darkest hours – just like the moon.
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Works Cited

Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Boston: Thomson Wadsworth, 2005. Print.

Burwick, Frederick. Coleridge’s Conversation Poems: Thinking the Thinker. Romanticism 14.2

(2008): 168-182. Project MUSE. Web. 8 Dec. 2010.

Coleridge, S. T. The Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 2001. Global Language Resources, Inc.

Project Gutenberg. Web. 7 Jan. 2011. <http://ebooks.gutenberg.us/DjVu_Collection/

DJEDS/COLERIDGE/POEMS/Download.pdf>.

Ferber, Michael. A Dictionary of Literary Symbols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2007. Print.

Harding, D. W. Experience into Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Google

Books. Web. 9 Jan. 2011.

Lau, Beth. Coleridge’s Reflective Moonlight. Studies in English Literature 23.4 (1983): 533-548.

JSTOR. Web. 8 Dec. 2010.

Moreno, Cristina F. The symbolic poetic act in S. T. Coleridge’s “Conversation Poems”.

Cuadernos de investigación filológica 27-28 (2001-2002): 31-42. Dialnet. Web.

10 Jan. 2010.

Rahme, Mary. Coleridge’s Concept of Symbolism. Studies in English Literature 9.4 (1969): 619-

632. JSTOR. Web. 8 Dec. 2010.