In 1797 he describes himself in ill health, and as forced to
retire on that account to the "lonely farmhouse between Porlock and
London on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire," where
_Kubla Khan_ was written. [1]
Thus much is, moreover, certain,
that whatever were Coleridge's health and habits during the first two
years of his residence at Keswick, his career as a poet--that is to
say, as a poet of the first order--was closed some months before that
period had expired. The ode entitled _Dejection_, to which
reference has so often been made, was written on the 4th of April 1802,
and the evidential importance which attaches, in connection with the
point under inquiry, to this singularly pathetic utterance has been
almost universally recognised. Coleridge has himself cited its most
significant passage in the _Biographia Literaria_ as supplying the
best description of his mental state at the time when it was written.
De Quincey quotes it with appropriate comments in his _Coleridge and
Opium-Eating_. Its testimony is reverently invoked by the poet's son
in the introductory essay prefixed by him to his edition of his
father's works. The earlier stanzas are, however, so necessary to the
comprehension of Coleridge's mood at this time that a somewhat long
extract must be made.
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