CHAPTER III.

Coleridge and Wordsworth--Publication of the _Lyrical
Ballads_--The _Ancient Mariner_--The first part of
_Christabel_--Decline of Coleridge's poetic impulse-
Final review of his poetry.

[1797-1799.]


The years 1797 and 1798 are generally and justly regarded as the
blossoming-time of Coleridge's poetic genius. It would be scarcely an
exaggeration to say that they were even more than this, and that within
the brief period covered by them is included not only the development
of the poet's powers to their full maturity but the untimely beginnings
of their decline. For to pass from the poems written by Coleridge
within these two years to those of later origin is like passing from
among the green wealth of summer foliage into the well-nigh naked woods
of later autumn. During 1797 and 1798 the _Ancient Mariner_, the
first part of _Christabel_, the fine ode to France, the _Fears
in Solitude_, the beautiful lines entitled _Frost at Midnight_,
the _Nightingale_, the _Circassian Love-Chant_, the piece known
as _Love_ from the poem of the _Dark Ladie_, and that strange
fragment _Kubla Khan_, were all of them written and nearly all
of them published; while between the last composed of these and
that swan-song of his dying Muse, the _Dejection_, of 1802, there
is but one piece to be added to the list of his greater works. This