Page 147 - DENG402_HISTORY_OF_ENGLISH_LITERATURE

History of English Literature

Notes We in ourselves rejoice!
And thence flows all that charms our ear or sight;
All melodies the echoes of that voice,
All colours suffusion from mat Light.
Unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge was a victim of protracted spells? the darkest melancholy arising
from a feeling of guilt and from the gnawing consciousness of the approaching demise of his
always certain poetic inspiration. Coleridge was an opium addict living alternately in the Arabian
Nights world of utter despair fast approaching with its monstrous jaws wide open. His Ode to
Dejection is a soul-rending dirge on the death of his poetic talent. What distinguishes it as a poem
of melancholy is its overwhelming sincerity.

Notes The Coleridge of KublaKhan, Christabel and The Ancient Mariner was dead and
only a mental wreck remained behind.

18.3 Shelley

Shelley was, essentially, an optimistic dreamer. He was used to visualising and giving expression
to the golden age which he believed was always round the corner. All of his long poems, like
Queen Mab, Prometheus Unbound and The Revolt of Islam, are permeated with a remarkable
spirit of optimism which makes light of all conceivable hurdles. Nowhere in them does he strike
a note of pessimism, melancholy, or disillusioning scepticism. However, his lyrics are almost
invariably melancholy in their predominant tone. Therein we find him always lamenting and
complaining,
O world! O life! O time!
On whose last steps I climb.
Trembling at that where I had stood before;
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more—Oh, never morel
And listen to the “lyric cry” in the following lines from Ode to the West Wind:
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d-
One too like thee:
tameless, and swift, and proud.
According to Ian Jack “Shelley’s lyrics are the utterance of a solitary.” They, he further says, “are
soliloquies, not dramatic monologues.” The longer poems and lyrics are reflections of the two
opposite moods-the moods, respectively, of optimism and pessimism. According to Ian Jack, there
is no basic contradiction between these two moods. “Shelley, “says this critic, “was optimistic
about the future of the human race, pessimistic (almost always) about his own future as an
individual.” Being the most directly personal of all his poems, his short lyrics are naturally the
most melancholy. Religion has been described as what man makes of his solitude: the same
description might he applied to Shelley’s lyrics. As Mary Shelley pointed out, “It is the nature of
that poetry...which overflows from the soul oftener to express sorrow, and regret than joy; for it is
when oppressed by the weight of life, and away from those he loves that the poet has recourse to
the solace of expression in verse.”
At times Shelley’s melancholy arises from objective observation rather than personal feelings. A
good example is to be found in To a Skylark:

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