Samuel Taylor Coleridge

One of the major figures of English Romanticism, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) created works of remarkable diversity and imaginative genius. The period of his creative friendship with William Wordsworth inspired some of Coleridge's best-known poems, from the nightmarish vision of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the opium-inspired Kubla Khan to the sombre passion of Dejection: An Ode and the medieval ballad Christabel. His meditative conversation poems, such as Frost at Midnight and This Lime-Tree Bower Mr Prison, reflect on remembrance and solitude, while late works, such as Youth and Age and Constancy to an Ideal Object, are haunting meditations on mortality and lost love.