Poem Analysis: Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Nightingale

Your Name
Subject and Section
Professor’s Name
August 13, 2020
Poem Analysis – Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Nightingale
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem entitled The Nightingale is one of the most interesting and refreshing poems to read due to its free-flowing structure and its conversational tone. In his poem one of the best excerpts that has caught my attention was stanzas 53 through 56, which says “And the trim walks are broken up, and grass; thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths. But never elsewhere in one place I knew; so many nightingales; and far and near”. The reason for this is because the phrase seems to show the mighty yet delicate force of nature in contrast to the reign on mankind. Let us examine this in further detail.
The first reason why this excerpt is very interesting is that fact that it provides that readers a visual imagery of the entanglement of nature and human creation. In the immediately preceding stanzas before this, the author has depicted this place as a grove where a previous high and mighty castle once stood. On the one hand, it could be seen that the author used the image of a broken and abandoned castle by using easily understood words when he said “the trim walks are broken up”. As the reader follows through the other stanzas of the poem, this image of a trodden man-made structure is reiterated in the mind of the audience. On the other hand, the subsequent phrase also depicted nature with the use of other colorful words as he said “thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths”. Notice how this image is a stark contras...