Ode to Dejection Questions and Answers
1. Explain the title of the poem Dejection: An Ode.
Or
Justify the title of Coleridge’s poem Dejection: An Ode.]
Coleridge’s poem is an ode. In the modern sense, an ‘ode’ is a form of lyric poetry, with certain characteristics to mark its difference from general lyrical poetry. What is more, an ode is essentially in the form of an address, which may be to a human being, dead or living, a natural object, an inanimate object or an abstract idea. This address differentiates an ode from other lyrical forms and gives it an individual identity. What is more, in an ode, as in all lyrical or subjective poems, there is the presence of subjectivity. An ode is a subjective poem in which the poet rather out himself.
Coleridge’s poem is called an ‘ode’ and this is addressed to ‘dejection’ . Of course, the poet originally intended to write a verse-letter , rather of some 339 lines. That letter was, no doubt an address to a person whose identity is now somehow confused.
The poet writes an ode and this is supposed to be addressed to dejection’, a mental feeling of ‘sadness or low spirits’ (O.E.D). The poem is definitely subjective, for the poet here speaks of a lot of his own mental state—the lack of his spirit and joy. But the poem is hardly addressed to dejection, except that the poet speaks of his own mental agony—his state of unhappiness , weariness and torment. But dejection is not at all addressed in the poem. The state dejection is only stated.
Subjectivity is enough in the poem to make it an ode, but it can hardly be called ‘Ode to Dejection’, as his own ode ‘To France’is or Keats’ and Shelley’s odes are. This confusion, perhaps, has arisen out of the transformation of a verseletter to a subjective poem. It would have been better to drop the term ‘ode’ in the title in this perspective to make the title simplysimply.
2. Bring out the central thought or theme of the poem Ode to Dejection.
Coleridge’s poem, originally written as a verse-letter of some 339 lines, composed in 1802. In the same year it was revised and much shortened by dropping personal references to a purely subjective poem of 139 lines. The title of the poem is mainly ‘dejection’ and that gives expression to the poignant mood of pessimism and mental agony with which the poem is concerned. Coleridge has a number of poems that expresses his sense of failure and sterility, such as ‘Youth and Age, ‘Work without Hope’ and ‘Dejection: An Ode! The last named poem, perhaps, stands foremost among his poems of despair and depression. The poet laments here his loss of spirits, his joy and creative faculty. The poem seems abound in the poet’s helpless agony for his failure to what he aspired for, in the sense of despair , in his failure to possess that which he value most.
What constitutes the central aspect of the poem is this dejection of the poet-his deep sense of sorrow and depression. This is finely echoed in the first four lines of the second stanza
A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear
The sense of dejection is continued and the poet refers to and admits, time and again, how he is haunted with despair and depression.
He seems to work under a heavy weight that paralyses his genial spirit and does away with his effort to find delight in the world of nature or in the life around him. The third stanza of the poem is wholly on that very spirit of dejection that haunts and torments the poet
My genial spirits fail:
And what can these avail
lift the smothering weight
To from off my breast?
It were a vain endeavour,
Though I should gaze for ever
On that green light that lingers in the west: I May not hope from outward forms to win
The passion and the life, whose fountains are within. The theme
While admitting his suffering, under the impact of dejection on him, the poet refers to his past to a time when he retained his joy and hope, though his life was beset with hardship and difficulty. In those days, even his misfortune could be handled with hope and spirit. That was a time when hope grew around him and enlivened him. But thereafter has come the change. His joy and hope are gone forever. He is now crushed by sorrows and despair and robbed of his joy and liveliness. What particularly grieves him is that his creative power of imagination has become inert. His dejection have grown around him and become a usual habit or practice in his living.
So far the poet’s personal life is concerned, seems lost in gloom and despair. Yet, towards the end of the poem, he tries to inspirit himself with good wishes and blessings to others and that is struck in the concluding stanza of the poem, too. Of course, there is no hint of the passing away of the poet’s own deep dejection, but the restoration of his human wishes for his fellow beings. That is a slight part of the main them of dejection, that is of the poet’s own, in the
3 How far is ‘Dejection: an Ode’a poem of despair? Discuss precisely and illustratively.
Or,
“Dejection, An Ode is a sort of dirge on the poet’s genial spirit and imagination.” -Discuss.
‘Dejection, according to the O.E.D. means a ‘downcast state, low spirits’. actually a state of depression in which mind loses all its interests and activities and is devitalized and reduced to sterility. This leads to the lack of energy and spirit and the mental faculty seems diseased and paralysed. On this matter of mental disease and despair, Coleridge’s poem Dejection: an Ode is actually based. Though originally planned as a verse-letter of disappointed love for Sarah Hutchinson, the poem has ultimately turned out to be an Ode on the mood of the poet’s dejection that seems his nature and spirit, mind and mood.
The poem, of course, has a background formed of diverse affairs of the poet’s personal life. His hasty marriage with one, entirely of a different mentality and his own physical ailments, his consequent subjugation to acute bodily pains, and his fatigue and frustration are definitely to be noted and remembered in this respect. The poet’s spirit was further weighed down by his unfortunate, though deeply emotional, attachment to Sarah Hutchinson. It is to be admitted, in this connection, that a considerable space is given to her in the poem.
Dejection is a deeply rooted malady to infect and deaden mind and spirit poem Dejection: an Ode, the poet shows the same. He reveals how his mind has become inert and imbecile and lost all incentive and inspiration. The poet’s past in relation to his present well bears out the impact of dejection on him. Once he used to feel inspired and hopeful amid problems and hazards. But now he misses that urge, that mental force to face the odds of life. Dejection seems to have eaten out his energy and vitality, his spirit and hope.
5. What prayer / good wishes the sleepless poet in midnight offers?
How does Coleridge conclude his Coleridge’s Ode on Dejection is a poem of despair and depression. The poet’s sense of failure and sterility is found here an emotionally profound expression. The poet seems to be haunted with the grief, ‘dark and drear’ , that is without a pang, without any natural outlet in words, sighs, or sorrows. Yet, the poet seems to get over his depressing dejection, as he comes to the conclusion of his poem. Haunted with the echoes and re-echoes of his affliction, he draws his human feeling from the world of nature – from the blowing wind, the floating cloud and the starry night.
The poet remains sleepless in the mid-night. He has least tend to fall asleep. But he prays for those who are blessed with the repose of a sound sleep. He prays to ‘gentle sleep’ to visit his friend, his dear Sarah, his most sincere friend. Let her have the full freight (T2T5 T6870) of a comfortable sleep for a heathly day next.
But this is not all. The dejected poet prays no less for the blessed effect of sleep from ‘Pole to Pole’. All may have the repose of an undisturbed sleep, like his, ‘Dear Lady’, so that they all can rise with joy and fancy, comfort and delight.
6. Attempt briefly an illustrative estimate of Coleridge’s Dejection: an Ode?
Written in 1802, the present poem Coleridge, Dejection: an Ode, has an interesting background. It was originally in the form of a bulky verse-letter of about 340 lines, supposed to be addressed to Wordsworth. But due to some estrangement (south) with him, the addressee was changed to Sarah Hutchinson. Coleridge, however, revised the work further, dropped some personal references and the whole verse was shortened to an ode of 139 lines under the title: Dejection: an Ode.
The ode is a lyric poem, addressed to some person, object, or abstract quality. This is shown as addressed to ‘dejection’ that indicates a mental state of sterility and dismay. Of course, in the poem, hardly any address is made to dejection. It rather presents the poet himself as a victim of dejection. This is, indeed, one of Coleridge’s outstanding poems of his own despair and depression. The poet is found to lament, in a poignant mood of pessimism, of his own mental state of failure and sterility. The poem bears testimony to Coleridge’s deep dejection under which he is almost crushed down. A single extract from the poem is sufficient to indicate the agonised dejection to which the poet is subjected.
A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, In word, or sigh, or tear. The Ode shows how he bears a life, utterly miserable. He admits his state in an out-spoken language And My genial spirits fail when can these avail To lift the smothering weight from off my breast?
The poem shows a flood-of Coleridge’s inner self. His selfdissection and introspection are clear enough. He admits the loss of his inspiration from his life as well as imagination. Life has nothing to offer him, nor imagination has any gift to raise him. He suffers and bears and pines for what he has not. There was a time when he could struggle, with joy and hope, amid hardship and distress. That time is no more. “But now afflictions bow me down to earth’ and “rob me of my mirth”. The picture of his own dejection is made quite clear by the poet. Indeed, the poem brings out the crisis in the poet’s life, with his poetic faculties in paralysis.
Yet, the poet in Coleridge is not lost in his Dejection. His intimacy with Nature is not severed but grown stronger here. He expresses his belief in the closeness of man to nature to give her colour, fragrance and melody in this poem. Here he goes beyond Wordsworth. The latter believes in the existence of Nature with all her sights, sounds and smells, independent of man. But Coleridge strikes a new note and claims that man receives from Nature what he gives to her. His utterance is quite categorical. we receive but what we give And in our life alone does Nature live,
Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud.”
The poet in Coleridge no less appears in the poem as a pictorial artist. The painter of Nature in him appears at his best here. In the very first stanza, his description of the phantom light of the moon, rimmed and circled with a silver thread and the tint of yellow green on the western sky needs no exaggeration:
“For lo! the New-moon winter bright
! And overspread with phantom light, (With swimming phantom light o’er spread
But rimmed and circled by a silver thread)!”
No less powerful and stirring is the poet’s graphic description of the raving wind in the mountain, the lake and the forest,
“Thou wind, that rav’st without Bare crag or mountain-tairn or blast’d tree. Or, pine-grove whilter woodman never clomb,
Or lonely use, long held the withches’ home.”
Finally, there is the music of Coleridgean lines. The long poem is written in the stanza-form with different number of lines in different stanzas. What is more, the poet well displays his skill to weave aptly long lines with short. The lines, no doubt, rhyme, but as different stanzas are made of the unequal number of lines, so are the rhymes which are not in a regular pattern.
There is not the least doubt that Coleridge’s Dejection: an Ode is one of the most exquisite romantic lyrics and successfully stands by the side of Shelleyan Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples.
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