In the sonnet “Life” I assume by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the rhyme scheme seems to be written like a Spenserian sonnet but quickly takes a turn in the last quatrain. The two words “display” and “ray” agree with each other in that they rhyme but “portray” and “advance” do not agree with each other. This disagreement in rhymes kind of changes the original quatrain of CDCD to maybe CCDC. In the first quatrain, he is dreaming about crossing over a wide plain “where a native Otter sports his scanty stream”. He then goes on to say “Musing in torpid woe a sister’s pain” and then discovers that he is dreaming after the “glorious prospect” awoke him. In the next quatrain, he is speaking on his dream and how the “wood, meadow, verdant hill, and dreary steep” did his “eye ravished sweep”. The next quatrain and last couplet is mainly about him comparing his dream to his actual life. He states “May this (I cried) my course through life portray! Then goes on to say that knowledge and wisdom will come to him with each step that he takes. Coleridge portrays his life through a dream by using diction and persona.
One literary element that stands out is diction. Throughout the poem, Coleridge uses a mixture of old English and English to show how this dream he had relates to his coming life. In the first quatrain he uses “o’er”, “scanty”, “musing”, “torpid”, and “woe”. At first he is profound in his dream until he approaches the beautiful scenery which he refers to as the “glorious prospect”. The next quatrain uses diction such as “meadow”, “verdant hill”, “dreary steep”, and “ravished” to illustrate why he woke up from this dream and also how his life should be. The last quatrain and couplet uses “undarkened ray”, “dart”, “expanse”, “rapture”, “blissful”, and “trance” to demonstrate where his life is taking him. By using these words throughout the entire poem, Coleridge takes the readers through his dream and how his life should intertwine with his dream. “May this (I cried)” is an example to show how he wants his dream to become his life sometime in the future.
Another literary element that was presented in the poem is persona. Even though Coleridge only uses “I” twice in the entire sonnet, he still wants the readers to be captured in his sonnet that relates his dream to his life. The first quatrain begins with “As late I journeyed o’er the extensive plain”. Already he starts to incorporate his dream into his life as if he accomplished the goal of traveling across a plain. The second quatrain moves to him describing the “glorious prospect”. He starts to describe the scenery which contained “wood, meadow, verdant hill, and dreary steep”. The last quatrain which is connected to the couplet states “May this (I cried) my course through life portray! Basically his dream is fortune telling his life to come. He then goes on to state “New scenes of wisdom may each step display, And knowledge open as my days advance! This relates to quatrain two where he states “At every step it widened to my sight, wood, meadow, verdant hill, and dreary steep”. The “it” in quatrain three refers to “wisdom” in the second quatrain and the “wood, meadow, verdant hill, and dreary steep” in quatrain two are the stepping stones to his knowledge opening as his life progresses. By using persona, Coleridge illustrates how the dream foreshadows his life to come.
Throughout the poem, Coleridge uses diction and persona to demonstrate his ideology of his dream foreshadowing his actual life. Diction is used wisely with most of the appealing words in the first and second quatrains. Persona is only used twice, once in the first quatrain and once in the third quatrain but plays a major role entwining his dream into his actual life. The first line of the couplet states “My eye shall dart through infinite expanse” which means he will keep going on with his life with his eyes wide open. The second line of the couplet states “And thought suspended lie in rapture’s blissful trance” which means he will keep his mind open waiting for that heavenly dream to come true.
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