Kubla Khan

For something different this week, I've decided to sort of live blog my reaction to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan." I've already listened to the poem once, but as I listen to it a second time, I'm going to pause and record my immediate feelings/reactions. Here goes nothing...

End of 1st complete verse: I would love to go to this pleasure dome place that Coleridge is describing. My initial thought is back to the commune on the Susquehanna, but not quite so westernized. Wherever he is describing is very much surrounded by nature, with the ground, gardens, trees and flowers.

Five lines into second verse: Here we go with the moon again. The "romantic chasm" I originally thought of as a scenery piece, which is may still be, but after reading "woman wailing for her demon-lover," maybe the chasm also alludes to a divide between the lady and her lover? Maybe that's too far reaching...

Four lines into third verse: This "shadow" floating on the waves gives me the idea of a daydream. Regardless of what else I've read so far, these few lines make me picture someone standing and watching a river or an ocean while daydreaming. They daydream about this pleasure dome, but now the daydream is floating away on the waves while reality comes back to the person.

End of poem: I think the "he" at the end is Kubla/speaker? It could just be an evil entity I suppose.

Final thoughts: Maybe I'm reading this poem wrong, but it doesn't seem to make sense to me. It sounds like one giant drug trip, which is possible with the kinds of drugs that Coleridge allegedly used. Ultimately, I think it's a story/dream or even multiple dreams that have all been connected and written about, and all revolve around the same topics. I think it may be an expansion on the commune idea, like he is internalizing his thoughts and this is what comes out in his dream state? Or maybe it's just the drugs.

Frosty Scenes

In class, we had briefly discussed the idea of "secret ministry" that I, without having read the poem, began to gather my own thoughts about. After reading only the first line, "The Frost performs its secret ministry,/ Unhelp'd by any wind," I had concluded, for myself and at the time at least, that ministry was an action, such as teaching or advising (ll 1-2). Ministers advise patrons, in religious, governmental and authoritative contexts. I didn't completely agree with that definition however, so I kept thinking. I liked ministry as an action, but more as a mediator, which is similar to what the class came up with. So now, I had the frost mediating between weather, Mother Nature if you will, and something in the scene of the poem, which is presumably a window. I decided I liked that explanation the best, the frost was quietly and unsuspectingly mediating between the cold and the window, which held the heat from inside the house.

Later in the poem, "secret ministry" is used again. "Or whether the secret ministry of cold/ Shall hang them up in silent icicles," is the second usage of this phrase (ll. 77-78). Ministry in this use, I think, still refers to mediating, only this time it is the cold mediating between the weather and the eaves that have dropped, and this mediation may lead to icicles. Again, the formation happens quietly, and it's not a process that can be watched or followed, it occurs in secret.

I like Coleridge's fusion of the elements of nature and the physical world within the poem. I think his use of "secret ministry" is a great way to demonstrate the interaction that happens between the ethereal nature and the present environment.

Love in a Yew Tree

"Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree" is not the first poem we've read where nature and people are opposed. In "Expostulation and Reply" as well as in "The Tables Turned" Wordsworth argued that nature could teach a person more than books and science and art can. The difference is that this poem combines the two ideas, rather than directly argue that one is better than the other.

The man in "Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree" expects the world to be a great place but he cannot handle the hatred, anger, insults and jealousy of the people (ll. 16-17). He leaves. He goes to live in nature at the yew-tree but finds that he has no purpose and is "unfruitful" (ll. 29). This man seems sad in two ways. First, that he experiences and appreciates the beauty of nature that so many others don't. He can stare at the scene around him and continually admire the beauty, but the people he left do not understand it. The second way is that others "felt/ What he must never feel" (ll. 39-40). Though this statement is said to be in conjunction with "mournful joy," I think it's more sorrowful that he did not have the connect with other people (ll. 39). He could experience nature but not friendship and camaraderie.

The speaker of the poem goes on to instruct the readers that those with pride are thoughtless and little (ll 46-51). Wordsworth writes, "The man, whose eyes/ Is ever on himself, doth look on one, /The least of nature's works," where I think he is trying to say if you seclude yourself from the world and only think of your own person, you'll be missing so much of what "nature" really intended you to see (ll 51-53). There must be a balance between a person's interest in self and nature, and in others. Knowledge cannot be found in only one place, and you will be lonely if you isolate yourself from society. The man in this poem died alone, without any connections to anyone, and though he may have lived in a beautiful area, he missed out of all other forms of beauty in the world.

The Haunted Beach

"The Haunted Beach" by Mary Robinson feels like a side tale to "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere." Robinson even uses the term, "Shipwreck'd mariner." Again we has this visual of dead crew members and their spirits on board a ship while they are still sailing. The connection to "Ancyent Marinere" makes me wonder if Robinson and Coleridge knew each other, or if one person used the other poem as inspiration. If "The Haunted Beach" is a type of continuation, are the characters related? Who or what is the fisherman representing? In the other poem, the mariner had been the cursed one, cursed to tell his tale forever, but in Robinson's poem, the fisherman is doomed to "dwell on prospects dreary" for 30 years on that slate of land.

Something else I found interesting was Robinson's use of "green billows" in the last line of almost every stanza. I was not quite sure was "billows" was referring to, because original I imagine the billows being clouds, like "that billowing cloud". Green clouds sounded ominous, so it might have worked, but all I could then picture was a tornado, which did not seem likely with their proximity to the sea. I looked it up and learned that a billow could be "A great swelling wave of the sea, produced generally by a high wind; but often used as merely = Wave, and hence poetically for ‘the sea’" (OED). This definition made more sense. The billows are just incoming waves, crashing on the shore.

The think of the addition of "green" by Robinson in describing the billows created the scene. Most of the last lines say, "Where the green billows play'd." Green could just be the actual color of the sea, but it makes me think of a sickly color. Why green? Why not blue or teal? Maybe green indicates the ills that occurred. the sinking of the ship and the murder.

The Sorrow of Charlotte Smith

At the end of Sonnet III by Charlotte Smith, there are two lines that say, "Ah! songstress sad! that such my lot might be,/ To sigh and sing at liberty- like thee!" Though I am slightly confused at to who wishes they could sing at liberty or who does sing at liberty, I read the lines under my own interpretation anyway.

I take this line as one being spoken by Smith, she is the sad songstress while the nightingale is "thee". This line is slightly in response to her sentiments in Sonnet I: those who suffer most express themselves the best. Throughout that Sonnet however, Smith hints that she wishes the situation were not so. It seems she wishes that there wasn't so much pain and sorrow involved.

I also feel like Smith understands the role of an artist in reference to the audience or those that will see her work. She understands that everyone will interpret her work, discuss why she wrote what she did, try and figure out what she meant by each word and line. That's almost a "hazard of the job." This is what I feel she is referring to in Sonnet III.

Smith writes about the nightingale (we've seen a lot of those) and how it spends it's night lamenting. I feel that she envies the nightingale's ability to sing all night and not be bothered or pestered about meaning. There is a line in Sonnet III that also mentions something being released into the wild, which I thought was about the nightingale's freedom in it's expression. Smith doesn't have the same luxury, the same "liberty"; her words will be picked apart and analyzed to learn the meanings and message. Coincidentally, this is the exact measure I have taken here to prove my own point.

Stars and Skies

In the poems I have read to this point in Lyrical Ballads, the night sky has appeared several times. Wordsworth’s use of starlight in “Sonnet on Seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams Weep at a Tale of Distress” reminded me of Coleridge’s use of the moon in “The Nightingale.” I’ll be honest in saying that I was hoping Wordsworth had written “The Nightingale” so I could compare his use of the theme over time, but that clearly didn’t work out.

In his poem Wordsworth writes, “As the soft star of dewy evening tells/What radiant fires were drown’d by day’s malignant pow’r/That only wait the darkness of the night/To chear the wand’ring wretch with hospitable light” (ll 11-14). As we discussed in class, Wordsworth possibly meant that the night sky, the stars and the moon, was a cheerful sight for a “wretch,” a sad or lonely person. I think there is definitely a sense of comfort and encouragement that Wordsworth describes in these lines. The use of “hospitable” makes me think of my grandparents; I may not always see them but for now, I know they are there and supporting me. This is what I think the starlight is for the wretch.

Coleridge’s use of the moon and nighttime is similar. When the speaker in “The Nightingale” takes his fussing son outside, the baby calms down. “And he beholds the moon, and hush’d at once/Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently,” writes Coleridge (ll 102-103). The sight of the moon has a paralleled reaction to that of the wretch in Wordsworth poem. The speaker in Coleridge’s poem also mentions a plan to “make him[his son] Nature’s playmate” as though that action would be beneficial for the child (ll 97).

Both poems use the nighttime as a crutch for their characters. For the wretch, the starlight is something that they wait for throughout the day, something to be valued. For the speaker and his son, the moon and Nature are desirable, and console the characters.

Memories and Reveries

In Observations on Man, David Hartley writes, “an attentive Person may also observe great Differences in the Kind and Degree of Relish which he has for the Beauties of Nature in Different Periods of his Life.” The sentiment here is that people will perceive of things differently at different stages in their life. The example we used in class was an adult visiting their childhood home and noticing all the changes that have happened, but realizing that those changes happened within the person and in the home. That experience is a pleasure but is also heartbreaking for us.

Personally, when I’ve gone back to my high school, I have found the experience to be conflicting even though it was only four years ago. Some of those feelings are results of the fact that I have changed, both physically and mentally. I look different, my teachers look different. Some walls have changed colors and the lockers look smaller. I’m more mature now but when I walk the halls, I can remember how I felt walking between classes. Though the trip down memory lane is nice, it is also sad because I realize how far removed I am from this place that essentially set me on the path to who I am.

The preface that was read in class about the boatman looking into the water  feels closely related to Hartley’s concept. The person having to search through “murky water” in order to remember distorted memories agrees with Hartley’s insight about our perceptions changing over time. As we get older, the water levels rise and we have more to search through to find our memories. We may misremember those memories or alter them in the current state of mind. Some memories are even lost (in the tide, if you will).

This depiction really struck me and I liked the combination of the two themes.