The Antidote—Classic Poetry for Modern Life

O! It is pleasant, with a heart at ease,
Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,
To make the shifting clouds be what you please,
Or let the easily persuaded eyes
Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould
Of a friend's fancy; or with head bent low
And cheek aslant see rivers flow of gold
‘Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go
From mount to mount through Cloudland, gorgeous land!
Or list'ning to the tide, with closed sight,
Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand
By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,
Beheld The Iliad and The Odyssey
Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)

ho hasn’t gazed at the shifting clouds above and seen a flurry of shapes emerge from nowhere? An elephant, a hat, a flying saucer and an elusive Cheshire cat smile all tumble and turn into each other, before disappearing into the air.

In Coleridge’s sonnet, the best time for watching the clouds is “after sunset, or by moonlight skies.” When light recedes and the world blurs, the imagination has the power to take over. As the outer world wanes, so the inner world waxes.

Our fantasies and whims manifest before us. If we are looking for a sign, we find one. Yet our “easily persuaded eyes” learn to see the clouds through the eyes of a friend too. Our minds commune together as we dream with our eyes wide open.

As the poem develops, our perspective shifts, so with “head bent low” we see “rivers flow of gold.” Are we looking at a stream in late evening, reflecting the deep amber gold of sunset, or are we still gazing at the sky? The “crimson banks” could be made of grass, water, or cloud. The earth and the sky seem to reflect each other. For a moment, we float in a world without any high or low.

From this strange vantage point, we travel “from mount to mount.” We have become shamans, striding among the Olympian gods. We are in “Cloudland,” where fairy tales, myths, and the silliest whimsy all appear to gather and disperse.

As the sonnet draws to a conclusion, our attention moves from the clouds to the sea. We move from the faculty of sight to the faculty of hearing. We move from the pleasures of lazy, freewheeling fun to the abiding achievement of genius.

If we walk by the shore, close our eyes, and listen to the sea, we become one with the “blind bard” on the “Chian strand.” This refers to Homer, the poet who was born, as far as we can tell, on the Greek island of Chios more than two millennia ago. He was inspired by the same “deep sounds” of the waves—deep as the soul itself.

Blind, Homer “beheld” his two epic poems "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey," which tell the story of the Trojan War, in all of its heroism and horror. The word “beheld” implies that these works were somehow given to him, fully formed. This view of creativity reminds me of Michelangelo’s startling statement: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

One of the most charming features of the poem is the way Coleridge draws a connection between the wispiest daydream and the greatest literary masterpiece. That connection is the “gorgeous land” of the imagination. It is the imagination that draws beautiful forms from chaos. It is that shared gift that binds us together in one family of readers and which binds us, right now, to the distant past.

Many of us are baffled by poetry, though none of us have any difficulty finding a face in the clouds. Yet perhaps the two activities are not that far apart. Confronted by a poem, we should allow our “easily persuaded eyes” to skim across the mysterious, cloudy words and let their “deep sounds” speak to us in silence.

For a few moments, we need to forget about being right or wrong and recover our sense of playfulness. We should allow ourselves the freedom to see whatever “quaint likeness” we fancy in the poem and ask our friends what they notice too. In conversation and in solitude, we learn to hear the “voiceful sea”: the collective unconscious of humanity that becomes conscious through art.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) was an English poet, a Romantic, literary critic, and philosopher.

Christopher Nield is a poet living in London.