The Dungeon
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
English romantic poet, philosopher and critic. His works include Poems on Various Subjects (1796), Lyrical Ballads (1798) written with Wordsworth and which includes The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, conversation poems Fears in Solitude, Frost at Midnight, This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, The Nightingale and the "dream" poem Kubla Khan (1797-8). His love poems include Love (1799); Dejection: an Ode (1902) was about his addiction to opium. Sibylline Leaves (1817) was the first of his collected works. His major work the Biographia Literaria was written after his rediscovery of Christianity and Aids to Reflection (1825) and Church and State (1830) are religious prose. Along with Wordsworth, Coleridge was one of the founders of the Romantic movement. Other romantic poets include Byron, Keats, Burns and Wordsworth.
The Dungeon
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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And this place our forefathers made for man!
This is the process of our love and wisdom,
To each poor brother who offends against us -
Most innocent, perhaps -and what if guilty?
Is this the only cure? Merciful God!
Each pore and natural outlet shrivelled up
By Ignorance and parching Poverty,
His energies roll back upon his heart,
And stagnate and corrupt; till changed to poison,
They break out on him, like a loathsome plague-spot;
Then we call in our pampered mountebanks -
And this is their best cure! uncomforted
And friendless solitude, groaning and tears,
And savage faces, at the clanking hour,
Seen through the steam and vapours of his dungeon,
By the lamp's dismal twilgiht! So he lies
Circled with evil, till his very soul
Unmoulds its essence, hopelessly deformed
By sights of ever more deformity! With other ministrations thou, O Nature!
Healest thy wandering and distempered child:
Thou pourest on him thy soft influences,
Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,
Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters,
Till he relent, and can no more endure
To be a jarring and a dissonant thing
Amid this general dance and minstrelsy;
But, bursting into tears, wins back his way,
His angry spirit healed and harmonized
By the benignant touch of Love and Beauty.
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