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Wordsworth's Two Replies to Coleridge's “Dejection: An Ode”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Milton Teichman
Milton Teichman*
Affiliation:
Marist College, Poughkeepsie, N. Y.
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Abstract

Wordsworth's answer to Coleridge's “Dejection: An Ode” is fuller than has been recognized. In “Resolution and Independence,” Wordsworth indirectly suggests to his friend that he turn to God for the comfort he formerly found in natural objects and that he discover through God the extraordinary strength within himself to master sorrow. He reminds Coleridge, who laments the loss of Joy, of the visionary power of pain and of the spiritual insight and trust that may come from suffering itself. In addition, he asks Coleridge to remember that while storm may follow calm, sunshine may also follow storm. In “Stanzas Written in My Pocket-Copy of Thomson's ‘Castle of Indolence,’” written immediately after “Resolution and Independence,” comic innuendo and affectionate solicitude replace sober teaching as means of arguing against Coleridge's dejection. Alluding to Thomson's satiric portrait of a poet's melancholy companion, Wordsworth suggests to Coleridge that he is unlike this morose and speechless figure who thanks heaven the day is done. Wordsworth reminds Coleridge of his unusual capacity for delight in common things and of their mutual good fortune in being able to devote themselves to friendship and to art: like Thomson's pilgrims they have been dwelling in the “happy Castle.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 86 , Issue 5 , October 1971 , pp. 982 - 989
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1971

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References

Notes

Note 1 in page 988 Wordsworth began “Resolution and Independence,” writes George McLean Harper, “not, we may well believe, without a deep consciousness that he was developing some of the thoughts suggested by Coleridge's Ode.” William Wordsworth: His Life, Works, and Influence, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (New York: Scribners, 1929), ii, 383. To G. W. Meyer, Wordsworth's poem is an answer to Coleridge's Ode, an indirect sermon on “one of Wordsworth's favorite subjects—despondency corrected,” the Leech-gatherer being “a personified reaffirmation of the Philosophy of Joy” in answer to Coleridge's poem. “‘Resolution and Independence’: Wordsworth's Answer to Coleridge's 'Dejection: An Ode,'” Tulane Studies in English, 2 (1950), 66, 71. Similarly, H. M. Margoliouth observes that “ 'The Leech Gatherer' is partly a reply to ‘Dejection.‘” William and Dorothy, he states, “must to some extent have shared the growing general view that irresolution and dependence were irremediable elements in Coleridge's character.” Wordsworth and Coleridge, 1795–1834 (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1953), pp. 108–09.

Note 2 in page 988 Tulane Studies in English, 2,74.

Note 3 in page 988 Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. E. L. Griggs, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956–59), ii, 966–73. The letter was first published by B. Ifor Evans, “Coleorton Manuscripts of ‘Resolution and Independence’ and ‘Ode to Dejection,‘” Modern Language Review, 46 (1951), 355–60, who saw in it a “confirmation of the close relationship of Wordsworth's poem with that of Coleridge” (p. 355).

Note 4 in page 988 Citations are to the original verse letter as it appears in Collected Letters, ii, 790–98.

Note 5 in page 988 The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: The Early Years, 1787–1805, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, 2nd ed., rev. Chester L. Shaver (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), p. 366.

Note 6 in page 989 Citations from Wordsworth's poetry are to The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, ed. Ernest de Selincourt and Helen Darbishire, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940–49).

Note 7 in page 989 A similar thought is conveyed in Burns's “To a Mouse.” It is interesting that Burns is one of the poets Wordsworth mentions in his poem (ll. 45–56) when he considers the unhappy fate of poets.

Note 8 in page 989 More than anything else Wordsworth wrote through 1802, “Resolution and Independence” has a distinctly Christian flavor. In the words of Alan Grob, “it might well be described as Wordsworth's first genuinely Christian poem.” “Process and Permanence in ‘Resolution and Independence,‘” ELH, 28 (1961), 100.

Note 9 in page 989 The disillusioned and melancholy figure in “Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew Tree” sees in the lovely scene before him “an emblem of his own unfruitful life” (l. 32). See also the early poem “Incipient Madness,” ll. 7–11.

Note 10 in page 989 “The Tables Turned,” l. 20; “Tintem Abbey,” ll. 47–49.

Note 11 in page 989 In the 1805 version, xi.279–326, 346–89; iv.400–504; vii.607–22. The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet's Mind, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, 2nd ed., rev. Helen Darbishire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959).

Note 12 in page 989 The reader may suggest that as sunshine follows storm so storm may well begin the cycle over again. Wordsworth's closing lines foresee the psychic storm returning, but the poet hopes the example of the Leech-gatherer will prepare him for that eventuality.

Note 13 in page 989 The Unmediated Vision: An Interpretation of Wordsworth, Hopkins, Valéry, and Rilke (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1954), p. 33.

Note 14 in page 989 See R. A. Foakes, The Romantic Assertion; A Study in the Language of 19th Century Poetry (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1958), pp. 69–74, for Wordsworth's use of water imagery in The Prelude to suggest states contrary to those of vision and aspiration.

Note 15 in page 989 For additional examples, see Hartman, The Unmediated Vision, pp. 29–32.

Note 16 in page 989 “The Ancient Mariner,” ll. 297–326; “Kubla Khan,” ll. 17–24. See also Humphry House, Coleridge (London: R. Hart-Davis, 1953), p. 121.

Note 17 in page 989 Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. Helen Darbishire (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1958), p. 159.

Note 18 in page 989 G. W. Meyer offers evidence to suggest that Coleridge's feelings were hurt at being preached to in “Resolution and Independence” but that his sense of injury was short-lived. Tulane Studies in English, 2, 72–73.

Note 19 in page 989 Wordsworth and Coleridge, 1795–1834, p. 109.

Note 20 in page 989 From The Complete Poetical Works of James Thomson, ed. J. L. Robertson (London: H. Frowde, Oxford Univ. Press, 1908).

Note 21 in page 989 See The Prelude (1805), x.905–08.

Note 22 in page 989 The happy state Wordsworth pictures is not, it is true, one of “Indolence,” of doing nothing; but we may recall that Thomson himself does not portray his paradisal abode consistently as one of indolence. As George Sherburn points out, Thomson's Castle becomes, at times, simply “a House of Good Fun.” A Literary History of England, ed. A. C. Baugh (New York: Appleton, 1948), p. 941.