strophe, the poet predicts the onset of a storm on the night of the poem’s writing. He does this through a comparison of the moon’s appearance to its appearance in the ballad of Sir Patrick Spence, noting that they are similar. After a vivid description of a tempestuous storm, the poet reveals his hope in the concluding couplet that now perhaps their wonted impulse give, / “Might Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live!” (1.19-20). These lines offer the first indication of the poet’s emotional desolation. His misery and impaired capacity for deep emotion are such that he hopes for the onset of a storm to this dull pain” simply so that he can “startle experience some profound feeling and it live!” “make Beginning with the final couplet of the first stanza, we begin to see a description of melancholy emerge throughout the ode that destabilizes melancholia as a form of insanity as it was defined in Coleridge’s time. The poet’s idiosyncratic brand of pain is expanded upon in the opening lines of the second stanza, which read: A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpassion’d grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, In words, or sigh, or tear— (2. 21-24) The experience described by the poet in this stanza takes what we know to be defining symptoms of depression, hopelessness and loss of pleasure (Jamison 3), and makes it emotionally resonant and vicariously accessible. The succession of void, dark, and drear” conjures a sensation “pang, of hollowness and absence of any stimulating emotion. The pairing of and relief,” “grief” “no and and impresses upon the reader the feeling of melancholy as an oppressive “drear” “tear,” force. It robs one of not just feeling, but the capacity to feel, and offers no relief. It is not, however, a kind of delirium or, with the truth” which was an inextricable feature of “break
strophe, the poet predicts the onset of a storm on the night of the poem’s writing. He does this through a comparison of the moon’s appearance to its appearance in the ballad of Sir Patrick Spence, noting that they are similar. After a vivid description of a tempestuous storm, the poet reveals his hope in the concluding couplet that “Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give, / Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live!” (1.19-20). These lines offer the first indication of the poet’s emotional desolation. His misery and impaired capacity for deep emotion are such that he hopes for the onset of a storm to “startle this dull pain” simply so that he can experience some profound feeling and “make it live!” Beginning with the final couplet of the first stanza, we begin to see a description of melancholy emerge throughout the ode that destabilizes melancholia as a form of insanity as it was defined in Coleridge’s time. The poet’s idiosyncratic brand of pain is expanded upon in the opening lines of the second stanza, which read: A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpassion’d grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, In words, or sigh, or tear— (2. 21-24) The experience described by the poet in this stanza takes what we know to be defining symptoms of depression, hopelessness and loss of pleasure (Jamison 3), and makes it emotionally resonant and vicariously accessible. The succession of “pang, void, dark, and drear” conjures a sensation of hollowness and absence of any stimulating emotion. The pairing of “grief” and “no relief,” and “drear” and “tear,” impresses upon the reader the feeling of melancholy as an oppressive force. It robs one of not just feeling, but the capacity to feel, and offers no relief. It is not, however, a kind of delirium or, “break with the truth” which was an inextricable feature of
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