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Ode to a Nightingale-key

Essay 2: The Timelessness of a Publication: John Keats Ode to a Nightingale

Essay 1: A Suicidal Aesthetic and The Gift of Immortality

The Chimney Sweeper-image

The Shepherd-image

Ancient Mariner-image

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The fragments of ice that continue floating through in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner are reminiscent of Kubla Khan: the well-spring spoken of here in A spring of love gush'd from my heart, may represent a double-edged sword: for as the water plays on the imagination of the Romantic heart, bubbling up and streaming forth, it easily slips into the rather hellish scenario seen here:

The Shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

For the water which once seemed so alive and unending freezes up immediately, granting us no time to reconsider. Like the addict, the originality of experience is lost upon subsequent revisit, until all that remains are desolation and fear. Coleridge finds himself a man disoriented and fearful of what he might become after tapping into such a infinite well, What once represented life appears suddenly transformed into a deep dark chasm. Perhaps, audience played a role in the metamorphosis

Furthermore, all that remains for the Romantic in this paradoxical slippage, is the solitary hope that one day, returning from this terrifying journey, one might have the unique opportunity to relate the powerful experience to subsequent generations, as a Mariner might to his Wedding Guest: