Wordsworth and Coleridge

The stress in the rhyme emphasizes the meaning and argument – nothing is more ‘fair’; ‘silent, bare’; the ‘smokeless air’; ‘calm so deep’ and ‘houses are asleep’ – rhyme is assisting us to build this picture of the silent city of London in the morning that Wordsworth is experiencing. He is directing the eyes and the ears of the reader to the emphasized words so they can picture the vision he is trying to create. This poem is a ‘conversation poem’, a style that was becoming quite prominent for romantic poets, especially Coleridge.

The Eolian Harp in the poem can be seen as a metaphor – ‘the harp comes to represent the natural world in general, and the breeze that brings it to life if the spirit of God’(16 hipwell). Hipwell states that in most of Coleridge’s poems ‘the natural scenery that he experiences suggests to the poet some wider truth about his own life’(14). Throughout the entire poem, he uses visual imagery to paint his experience of London in the morning. Meter is also used to direct the readers attention to particular words to emphasize meaning. Through imaginative thought you are able to engage in and respond to the visionary experiences that nature provides. Although Wordsworth tries to reconcile city with nature, I feel that nature still comes first in Wordsworth’s eyes, as the beauty of the city is only temporary, for once the people wake up, the city will wear a new garment. Poems were written on his flowers and trees…and on the nightly sky where men may see the unimpaired perfection of creation’(essay). This poem, however, shows that Wordsworth has created a way to love the city – by observing it when ‘the all mighty heart is lying still!’

Benard Groom stated that Wordsworth’s poetry was a ‘growing intimacy with earth, air and sky and with the plants and the animal life. His most exalted experiences and his periods of deepest insight were deeply connected with them’(89 Havens).

David Ferry commented that ‘The city is a collection of men and all their ordinary experiences, their common loves and attachments’. Coleridge is using the natural environment as a symbol for human qualities and emotion. Many lines in the poem end with masculine rhyme – rhyme that end on a stress, for example, bare, air, hill, will, still.