 Hello fellow followers of Christ and welcome to the show that introduces you to the men and women behind history's greatest works of literature. Come along every week as we explore these renowned authors, the times and genre in which they wrote, why scholars praise their writing and how we as Catholics should read and understand their works. I'm Joseph Pierce and this is The Authority. Hello and welcome to The Authority. I'm Joseph Pierce and the author whose authority we are looking at this time is Samuel Taylor Colridge, the great collaborator with William Wordsworth who was the authority last time. So Wordsworth and Colridge together as we saw were collaborators in the very important volume Lyrical Ballads published in 1798 which was the launching pad for the romantic movement in England which led to the Catholic and Christian literary revival which we discussed at a greater length earlier so I won't go over that so much this time except just to remember the importance of these two poets in that regard. So Lyrical Ballads included poems by both poets probably the best known poem by Colridge from Lyrical Ballads is the long poem The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner and the first thing about that is that it's profoundly Christian so Colridge like Wordsworth recoiled from the horrors of the secularism and atheism of the French Revolution back towards an embrace of Christianity. Generally speaking by the way that as regards English history the French Revolution had quite a positive impact because the English were horrified by that proto-communist revolution just across the channel in France and it softened the attitude of the English aristocracy and the English governing class towards Catholicism they were very allowed thousands of emigres refugees from the revolution French refugees to come to England including hundreds of priests and nuns and monks and so the Catholic presence in the country increased manifold as a direct consequence of the revolution and the attitude towards Catholicism softened because they saw the way that the Catholic Church was being persecuted by these atheists revolutionaries in France so Wordsworth and Colridge were indicative of this trade change of mood to this this re-embrace of Christianity as the only sane alternative to the madness of revolution and The Rhyme of the Asian Mariner it was written in archaic English so it reads archaically now it's not surprising because it read archaically then so part of the device that Colridge was using in that poem was to evoke the past we talked about how romanticism led to neo-medievalism this is a poem that has that ambience that feel of of of being old and antiquated and the use of archaic English is one of the means but which that's that's done the ancient Mariner is someone who has a story to tell and the story to tell is a cautionary tale of the dangers of breaking taboos and I'm talk that talk about that in a moment the Christian dimension is is emphasized by the fact that the person to whom the story is told is the wedding guest and of course we are the wedding guest is one who's invited to the wedding at which the bridegroom is to be found and the bridegroom of course is Christ so there's a whole biblical allegorical dimension to the poem and in that sense in some sense the albatross can be seen as sin and the wearing of the albatross around the neck as the carrying of the cross so but what the albatross is that the kidding of the albatross the ancient Mariner breaks the taboo that all is going well until he recklessly out of a sin of just reckless pride shoots and kills the albatross so what is the albatross I said it's a taboo in his famous lecture or essay on fairy stories J RR talk Tolkien talks about the the importance of prohibition thou shalt not throughout the story of humanity the most famous of course is not not just the nap thou shalt not as regards to ten commandments but more importantly thou shalt not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden that the taboo being that the fruit from the tree should not be plucked and consumed and it was the breaking of that taboo which brought about our downfall we see in other forms in other stories perhaps another famous one would be Pandora's box that she was told that on no accounts open the box but she allowed her curiosity to get the better of her open the box and all of the sins and pestilences that plague humanity escaped in consequence with only hope left remaining in the box the only thing left was hope because of the pestilence unleashed so the importance of the taboo and we sort of live in an age which the only taboo is the taboo itself that nothing is taboo so to speak and yet if you want a healthy society you have to accept there are certain things that should not be permitted that should be taboo not going to talk in specific terms about what that might be in our own culture I think most of us will have a pretty good idea or inkling but the point of the poem is ultimately similar to what we saw in some of Wordsworth's pimes about the necessity of what Alexander Solzhenitsyn would call self-limitation we have to voluntarily self-limit if we don't voluntarily self-limit we will be involuntarily limited by others or by ourselves in fact either through addiction to sin that's the involuntary limitation of the self the becoming an addict to bad practices but the other thing is the complete absence of self-limitation where we will not have virtue where vision is viciousness prevails will have collapse and what follows on from collapse following anarchy is tyranny so if you will not have self-limitation you will have slavery there is no middle path so basically the message of the Rome the ancient Mariner is exactly that that you do not do the taboo thing if you do not want to face the consequences are so doing okay I want to now move on to what I think is one of the most beautiful poems ever written in the English language and that's a colleges him before sunrise in the veil of Chamonix and we can't read all of it unfortunately although I'd like to because it's quite long but I would like to focus on it for a large part of this episode of the authority so we spoke last time when we're discussing Wordsworth about what I call the five metaphysical senses and I shall reiterate those now because not least because it's true of everything true of your own relationship with reality the pride as the great philosopher Jane Austen reminds us is always married to prejudice pride and prejudice go together if you have a prejudice perception you're not seeing things as they are you're seeing them in the way that your prideful prejudice presents them to you you want to see things as they are you have to get on your knees pride is the absence of humility if you have humility you would have a sense of gratitude have says gratitude you'll see with eyes wide open in wonder and then you'll be moved to contemplation and that is the dilation the dilatatio dilatatio the the opening of the mind the soul into the fullness of reality this is what happens in this poem so just do it to set the scene the poet is in the veil of chamonix so in the Alps in Europe and he's looking at Mont Blanc I don't know if that's the highest mountain the Alps if it's not the highest it's certainly almost the highest certainly one of the most famous the most beautiful and it's not yet daylight and what he's about to experience as he looks at the mountain the majesty of the mountain is the mountain being transfigured by the rising of the Sun and everything on the mountain being transfigured by the rising of the Sun and because the poet has this humility in this sense of gratitude he is seeing this transfiguration of the mountain by the light of the sunrise that he is moved in wonder to contemplation and the dilation that leads to the writing of this beautiful poem so he talks about has there a chance to stay the morning star in his deep course so long he seems to pause on thy bold awful head of sovereign Blanc so the mountain it's sovereign it's like a king he's got a bold awful head of course it's so there's nothing grows it's only snow up that high has such power that even the morning star does not want to leave it seems that the Sun itself is waiting then we'll move on because it's only so much of this we can read so let these lines this is dillatatio par excellence oh dread and silent mount I gazed upon thee till thou still present to the bodily sense this vanish from my thought entranced in prayer I worshipped the invisible alone so in seeing the beauty and the majesty of the mountain in the moment he's transfigured himself so that he's entranced in prayer worshipping the invisible capital I the God who grants him the presence of such beauty and he even uses the phrase a few lines for the town to the dilating soul and wrapped transfused into the mighty vision passing there as in her natural form swelled vast to heaven the dilating soul the soul opens out so it's wet sweating to the vastness of heaven itself into the presence of God awake my soul not only passive praise thou ohist not alone these sweating tears mute thanks and secret ecstasy awake voice of sweet song awake my heart awake green veils and icy cliffs all join my hymn that the moment demands his not just passive response but his creative response he needs to sing a hymn of praise in thanksgiving for the glorious moment of beauty the kiss of beauty he's received and he's going to call upon the rest of creation to join him in the song there's some questions who sank by sunless pillars deep in earth who filled thy countenance with rosy light who made the parent of perpetual streams and you if I white Torrance fiercely glad who called you forth and who commanded and the silence came here let the billow stiffen and have rest he's talking about the five Torrance the five rivers that flow down the side of the mountain that are now frozen they're still who commanded the waters to be still and then the praise begins because of read a part of it and then we probably need to move on ye ice falls motionless Torrance silent cataracts who made you glorious as the gates of heaven beneath the keen full moon who bade the sun close you with rainbows who with living flowers of loveliest blue spread garlands at your feet God let the Torrance like a shout of nations answer and let the ice planes echo God God sing ye meadow streams with gladsome voice ye pine groves with your soft and soul like sounds and they too have a voice yon piles of snow and in their perilous full shall thunder God and I just read the concluding lines rise oh ever rise rise like a cloud of incense from the earth thou kingly spirit throned among the hills thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven great hierarchy tell thou the silent sky and tell the stars and tell yon rising sun earth with her thousand voices praises God so that the mountain rises like a cloud of incense from the earth you know the incense in in in in the the sacred liturgy rises as a metaphor for our own prayer for our own praise of our own souls and prayers rising towards heaven well the mountain rises towards heaven and and we in looking up at the peak of the mountains and to the sunrise beyond we are looking up to heaven definition of prayer is lifting up the my than heart to God when we lift up the eyes to God in looking at the heights that mountain peaks sunrises and sunsets we are joining the sunrise and the sunset and the mountains in praising the God that gave birth to them and to us here I think now we've absolutely ascertained without any doubt the Christian spirit the profoundly Christian spirit of Samuel Taylor Colridge I would say by the way that I see him in some senses paralleling a GK Chesterton Chesterton sometimes called himself GKC Samuel Taylor Colridge sometimes called himself STC they parallel each other almost exactly so Colridge was born in 1772 and died in 1834 Chesterton was born in 1874 and died in 1936 in other words they lived for 62 years exactly 102 years apart so Colridge if you like is almost exactly a century before Chesterton lives for exactly the same length of time and they both serve within their respective centuries as a mountainous presence that is so influential upon what comes after Colridge amongst other things as well as being a great poet was a great critic particularly a critic of Shakespeare and it's upon his formidable shoulders that the romantic presence in English culture in the first half of the 19th century rests and certainly a debt of gratitude and influences is is is made manifest by Newman amongst others to his presence so he serves the same catalytic role in the 19th century as Chesterton did in the 20th in some ways he was a weaker character in some sense however not least because he fell prone to addiction to opium and that was in those days by the way it was it was like people take aspirin today and the slightest thing wrong with you and they they they prescribed opium unaware of its addictive qualities and Colridge lived with opium addiction which weakened him and who knows what he might have achieved had he not had that flaw in his character however he still achieved a great deal I want to read this translation of his of the virgins cradle him which was copied from a print of the virgin in the Catholic village in Germany I'm going to read the original in Latin and then Colridge's translation of it dormi yezu blandulay seen on dormis marti plawat interfila cantants orat blanday veni somnulay sleep sweet babe my cares beguiling mother sits beside the smiling sleep my darling tenderly if thou sleep not mother mourneth singing at her wheel she turneth come soft slumber Barmely and by the way I'm also quoting from from poems every Catholic should know published by tan books which I compiled this is some of the selections from there after that I have a him before sunrise Nevada Shamali how could I not I don't have the the rhyme the ancient Mariner because it is simply too long the virgins cradle him follows then is that there's a poem called a him which I'm not going to read but the final three poems I am going to to focus on in the time we have left I should have perhaps also mentioned however I mentioned Colridge as a as a critic of Shakespeare and as a Christian presence he's also actually still a fairly particularly in the Anglican circles an influence both in terms of his theology his theological writings and his philosophical writings okay so to nature and this again is how does romanticism meet Christianity well perhaps in nature itself we've seen it how nature in terms of Mont Blanc and the Alps causes this him a praise but here's a poem to nature it may indeed be fantasy when I essay to draw from all created things deep heartfelt inward joy that closely clings and trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie lessons of love and earnest piety so let it be and if the wide world rings in mock of this belief it brings nor fear nor grief nor vain perplexity so will I build my alter in the fields and the blue sky my fretted dome shall be and the sweet fragrance that the wildflower yields shall be the incense I will yield to thee thee only God and thou shalt not despise even me the priest of this poor sacrifice that would be a grave error to believe that somehow this is pantheistic that he's setting his altar in the fields he's not worshiping nature but the God of nature but what he is seeing is God as the creator the poet and should remember that the Greek word paesis means to make or to create if God is the creator or the maker he's also the poet that that's why following the Boethias who also is following Plato and Pythagoras seeing the cosmos as as music not in the audible sense but in the sense that the hold of the cosmos is somehow harmonious it it it it sings forth the music of God in the music of the spheres that the natural mandana that the music of the world the music of the cosmos the music of the spheres that the very movement the very order of nature is itself music that within us we have the musical humana that we are made in the image of God and therefore we are actually ourselves music although because we've fallen we have brought discord into the harmony of the Imago dei the image of God in which we're made and then is there and then there's music instrumentals the incarnation of this beautiful harmony in incarnate forms in a form that can be heard audibly through the ears we only think of music as the final one of those music instrumentals but it's a much deeper sense so what Coleridge is doing here is seeing that deep music that order that harmony that beauty in God's poetry that the fields the the flowers the sunrise is itself actually an altar where God if you like pours himself forth to us shining forth his beauty to us and the only appropriate response by us to such pouring forth of him in creation is to give back to the giver of the gift the fruits of the gift given that's exactly what Samuel Taylor Coleridge is getting at in this poem to nature and I'm going to read now my baptismal birthday God's child in Christ adopted Christ my all what that earth boasts were not lost cheaply rather than forfeit that blessed name by which I call the Holy One the Almighty God my father father in Christ reliving and Christ in thee eternal thou an everlasting we the air of heaven henceforth a fear not death in Christ I live in Christ I draw the breath of the true life let then earth sea and sky make war against me on my front I show their mighty master seal in vain they try to end my life that can but end its woe is that a deathbed where a Christian lies yes but not his to his death itself that dies so my baptismal birthday what happens at baptism that we die there's a there's a symbolism of drowning in order to live that we die in order to live we bury the old self that we may live in Christ there's a resurrection but the resurrection is only possible because of the death that precedes it and this resurrection transcends and triumphs over death itself it's death itself that dies in the deathbed where a Christian lies and I've got to finish appropriately enough a very few people write their own epitaph it sometimes said that Shakespeare wrote his because there's an epitaph on his grave in the first person I don't believe for a moment Shakespeare read his own epitaph I think someone penned those lines after he died but Coleridge did pen his own epitaph I'm not sure of the spirit of whimsy but it's nonetheless very good and it would seem an appropriate place to end our discussion of Samuel Taylor Coleridge with an epitaph that he penned to himself so we shall do that now epitaph but Samuel Taylor Coleridge stop Christian passerby stop child of God and read with gentle breast beneath this sod a poet lies or that which once seemed he oh lift one thought in prayer for STC that he who many a year with toil of breath found death in life may hear find life in death mercy for praise to be forgiven for fame he asked and hoped through Christ do thou the same and on that hopeful note we'll end this episode of the authority thanks as always for joining me I'm Joseph Pierce please do join me next time until next time goodbye and God bless this has been an 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