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Imaginative Aptitude The poets of the Romantic period wrote during the tumultuous era of the French Revolution. It is because of the time period in which they lived and created that these writers came to value that which is common and serene and beautiful. One of the elements that the Romantics valued is the imagination. Poets like Samuel Taylor Coleridge called upon the powers of imagination to bring relief and peace to their chaotic worlds.
John Keats illustrated what effects the imagination can have when it is allowed to permeate reality. Both of these poets demonstrate how imagination shapes reality and how these images are projected onto the natural world. In Frost at Midnight, Samuel Taylor Coleridge sees nature as a support for his imagination. In the poems opening, Coleridge is sitting alone in the dead of night. The only other thing that stirs is the film which fluttered on the grate? the sole unquiet thing, a piece of soot in the fireplace.
This is when imagination takes hold of him. It exaggerates and amplifies his senses, freaks the idling Spirit? and makes toy of Thought. His imagination is able to augment his world.
He goes on to more abstruse musings and begins to daydream about his youth. In his dream, he remembers the bells that signified the start of the fair in his childhood. It is the sound of these bells, not the fair that they announced, that brings back a feeling of joy for Coleridge. They bring him imaginable pleasure, which for him is preferable to actual pleasure, a kind of happiness that might lead to disappointment. Coleridge finds himself imagining that he was again in his youth; that he was again wishing for the fair to come, feeling that anticipation that came from the bells. The regrets of his own childhood bring his thoughts to his son.
Coleridge wants his son to have a better life than he did. He hopes that his son will learn far other lore / and in far other scenes? [and] wander like a breeze / by lakes and sandy shores. Coleridge wants his son to have the joy of nature all his life, so that he will have no trouble hearing that eternal language, which thy God utters. This is an example of how imagination provides comfort in a darker reality. Coleridge's wishes gave him hope for his son, but simultaneously it created a sense of yearning in the poet. In imagining what could be for his son, he also regretted what he missed in growing up.
The realization of his own deprivation is what gives Coleridge the determination to pave a greater way for his son. For Coleridge, his imagination would not shape his own life, but the life of his son. In a way he is very idealistic, something that often leads to disappointment. He wishes what every parent wishes: that his child, whom thrills my heart, have nothing but happiness. He commands, All seasons shall be sweet to thee. What is in Coleridge's mind is so much better than the real world that he is unsatisfied with what he sees and feels in reality.
The elements of an idealistic imagination can be dangerously disappointing, as they potentially are in Coleridge's poem. Coleridge does not focus on this disappointment, but rather on the comfort that these hopes bring him. John Keats, contradictorily, demonstrates how imagination can truly be dangerous. What one imagines can sometimes cause regrettable actions in reality, as in the case of Madeline in The Eve of St. Agnes. Madeline's dream in reality is only a stratagem thought up by Porphyro, but it is this dream that is directly responsible for Madeline's consequent actions.
Because she believes that on St. Agnes Eve, young virgins might have visions of delight / and soft adoring's from their loves receive, Madeline falls easily under Porphyro's spell and trusts that he is her true love. In her dream, Porphyro is perfect, but in reality, the once vivid scene loses its hues, and he becomes pale as smooth-sculptured stone. When her eyes were open, there was a painful change, and Madeline finds herself disappointed by her reality. She begs Porphyro to bring back the feeling she from her dream, and she is able to feel that same passion again, a passion which causes her to sleep with Porphyro.
In this situation, imagination is almost treacherous. Porphyro has obviously tricked Madeline through her belief in the superstition of St. Agnes Day only to get her into bed. He is not so easily swayed by fancy as Madeline, and though he loves her, his love is very selfish and he uses Madeline to feed his desires. Because Madeline wants so desperately to make her fantasy a reality, she easily falls prey to Porphyro's plan, though the reality is not quite as romantic as she had imagined. She is nearly in tears because she wants to continue to believe in the dream, even though the sculptured stone reality is right before her eyes.
Although they run off together in the end, it seems as though Madeline never fully resolves the situation in her own mind, as she hurried at his words, beset with fears? like phantoms? Each of these poets illustrates how imagination can shape reality. It can distort the natural world, or bring uncertain hope to one who regrets the past. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and John Keats each display the power imagination through their poems, and whether it is an escape, a comfort, or a poison, imagination exudes an incredible force over human values and what is perceived as real.
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