...feel, But to be still and patient, all I can ; And haply by abstruse research to steal From my own nature all the natural man—- This was my sole resource,...: Till that which suits a part infects the whole, VII. Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind, Reality's dark dream ! I turn from you, and listen...

...craving. Five years later, in often quoted lines, he describes how by abstruse search to steal From my own nature all the natural man ; This was my sole resource,...whole, And now is almost grown the habit of my soul. The course of political events loosened him from his Unitarian moorings. He was swept into the stream...

...philosophy, as he expresses himself in the same ode : " And haply by abstruse research to steal From my own nature all the natural man ; This was my sole resource, my only plan." A year before that he had already expressed this same openly in. a letter to Godwin, owning that he...

...must feel, But to be still and patient, all I can; And haply by abstruse research to steal From my own nature all the natural man — This was my sole resource,...whole, And now is almost grown the habit of my soul. Dejection: an Ode lines 87-93: PW (EHC) i 367. Cf also CL iv 893. 5 Until 1800-2, when he was twenty-eight...

...paralysis ("and still I gaze — and with how blank an eye" [30]) becomes a function of psychic infection: "that which suits a part infects the whole, / And now is almost grown the habit of my soul" (92-93; italics mine). 8. So too, at times, even Coleridge: "all must have observed in common life,...

...must feel, But to be still and patient, all I can; And haply by abstruse research to steal From my own nature all the natural man This was my sole resource,...whole, And now is almost grown the habit of my soul. (PW, i, p. 367, lines 87-93) What is it that the speaker can't help feeling but mustn't think about?...

...feel, But to be still and patient, all I can; And haply by abstruse research to steal 90 From my own nature all the natural man — This was my sole resource, my only plan: 75/76 VI] V UP, 1817 proofs (changed to VI in the proofs); IV T2 75/76 Yes, dearest Sara! Yes! H; Yes,...

...patient, all I can; And haply by abstruse research to steal From my own nature all the natural man — 90 This was my sole resource, my only plan: Till that...the whole, And now is almost grown the habit of my sou1. VII Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind, Reality's dark dream! 95 I turn from you,...

...literary pleasure. So Coleridge, in "Dejection," speaks of being taken over by his analytic temper: "Till that which suits a part infects the whole,/ And now is almost grown the habit of my soul" (92-3). To this point, I think, much of academic literary criticism has now come. But it need not stay...

...all the natural man — This w as my sole resource, my onh plan: Till that which snits a part infests the whole, And now is almost grown the habit of my soul. ~ The connection between 'abstruse research' and the failure of poetic power is stated with such conviction...