Coleridge: Poems (Pocket Poets Series)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was the master impresario of English Romanticism -- an enormously erudite and tireless critic, lecturer, and polemicist who almost single-handedly created the intellectual climate in which the Romantic movement was received and understood. He was also, in poems such as 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,' 'Christabel,' and 'Kubla Khan.' the most uncanny, surreal, and startling of the great English poets.

"Kubla Khan." "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." "The Eolian Harp." Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a genius who wrote some of the greatest poems in the history of the English language. Together with his friend William Wordsworth, he provided the best articulation of Romanticism, as well as some of the most powerful examples of that aesthetic. This collection, from the excellent Everyman's Library Pocket Poets series, includes not only Coleridge's poetry, but also some selections from his insightful essays and letters about poetry. But of course, it's the poems that count the most, as evidenced by this excerpt from one of Coleridge's less legendary works, his beautiful tribute "To William Wordsworth," which was written after hearing his friend give an especially moving reading. These sentiments could easily apply to the author himself: "The tumult rose and ceased: for Peace is nigh / Where Wisdom's voice has found a listening heart."