09/08/2026
📖 Samuel Taylor Coleridge
👉 English Literature Gems
“We receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does Nature live:”
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Dejection: An Ode (1802; published 1802)
📚 Source
Dejection: An Ode
🗓️ Publication
1802 (first published in The Morning Post on 4 October 1802)
🌿 Context
Coleridge wrote Dejection: An Ode during a period of deep personal and emotional turmoil. The poem reflects his struggle with creative loss and spiritual despondency. He argues that the beauty of nature alone cannot bring joy unless the human mind possesses the inner capacity to respond to it.
💡 Meaning
The lines suggest that our experience of the world depends largely on our inner emotional and spiritual state. Nature does not create happiness by itself; rather, we project our own feelings and imagination onto it. Joy, hope, and beauty come from within, and only then can we truly appreciate the natural world.
✨ Literary Significance
These lines express one of the central ideas of Romanticism—that imagination and the inner life of the mind shape our perception of nature. The poem marks Coleridge's mature Romantic philosophy and is one of his finest lyrical achievements.
Themes: Romanticism • Nature • Imagination • Inner Life • Self-Reflection
