Does the Dejection: An Ode contain any elements of what comprises Romanticism? Discuss with examples
Answers
The poet is feeling down and out because he had a tough life.
Initially he used to compose amazing verses but later on fell to hard times.
In fact, he started facing financial hardships and fell to the lure of opium.
The poet had an unsuccessful marriage as his partner walked away from him.
The poem “Dejection: An Ode” by T.S. Coleridge contains elements of romanticism. The poem is about the importance of imagination in poet’s life after the state of depression. The poet tries to compensate his despair and grief with the help of the imagination and creative powers of the nature. The reflection of internal beauty which enhances the outer structure of a person was one of the characteristics of the Romanticism.
"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.”
According to the Romantics, the internal realities and imagination are the ideal conceptions which gives inspiration to one. The poet calls it “beauty-making power.”
He speaks about productive depression in which one produces the best form of poetry. For its not always the happiness that gives rise to best poetry. Sorrow and misery often help in the yield of good poetry. The lines which shows the presence of romantic features in the poem are:
“this joy within me
dallied with distress
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness”