The Full Text of “Constancy to an Ideal Object”
1Since all that beat about in Nature's range,
2Or veer or vanish; why should'st thou remain
3The only constant in a world of change,
4O yearning Thought! that liv'st but in the brain?
5Call to the Hours, that in the distance play,
6The faery people of the future day—
7Fond Thought! not one of all that shining swarm
8Will breathe on thee with life-enkindling breath,
9Till when, like strangers shelt'ring from a storm,
10Hope and Despair meet in the porch of Death!
11Yet still thou haunt'st me; and though well I see,
12She is not thou, and only thou are she,
13Still, still as though some dear embodied Good,
14Some living Love before my eyes there stood
15With answering look a ready ear to lend,
16I mourn to thee and say—'Ah! loveliest friend!
17That this the meed of all my toils might be,
18To have a home, an English home, and thee!'
19Vain repetition! Home and Thou are one.
20The peacefull'st cot, the moon shall shine upon,
21Lulled by the thrush and wakened by the lark,
22Without thee were but a becalmèd bark,
23Whose Helmsman on an ocean waste and wide
24Sits mute and pale his mouldering helm beside.
25And art thou nothing? Such thou art, as when
26The woodman winding westward up the glen
27At wintry dawn, where o'er the sheep-track's maze
28The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze,
29Sees full before him, gliding without tread,
30An image with a glory round its head;
31The enamoured rustic worships its fair hues,
32Nor knows he makes the shadow, he pursues!
The Full Text of “Constancy to an Ideal Object”
1Since all that beat about in Nature's range,
2Or veer or vanish; why should'st thou remain
3The only constant in a world of change,
4O yearning Thought! that liv'st but in the brain?
5Call to the Hours, that in the distance play,
6The faery people of the future day—
7Fond Thought! not one of all that shining swarm
8Will breathe on thee with life-enkindling breath,
9Till when, like strangers shelt'ring from a storm,
10Hope and Despair meet in the porch of Death!
11Yet still thou haunt'st me; and though well I see,
12She is not thou, and only thou are she,
13Still, still as though some dear embodied Good,
14Some living Love before my eyes there stood
15With answering look a ready ear to lend,
16I mourn to thee and say—'Ah! loveliest friend!
17That this the meed of all my toils might be,
18To have a home, an English home, and thee!'
19Vain repetition! Home and Thou are one.
20The peacefull'st cot, the moon shall shine upon,
21Lulled by the thrush and wakened by the lark,
22Without thee were but a becalmèd bark,
23Whose Helmsman on an ocean waste and wide
24Sits mute and pale his mouldering helm beside.
25And art thou nothing? Such thou art, as when
26The woodman winding westward up the glen
27At wintry dawn, where o'er the sheep-track's maze
28The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze,
29Sees full before him, gliding without tread,
30An image with a glory round its head;
31The enamoured rustic worships its fair hues,
32Nor knows he makes the shadow, he pursues!
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“Constancy to an Ideal Object” Introduction
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"Constancy to an Ideal Object" is Samuel Taylor Coleridge's examination of the illusions and pains of impossible love. The poem's speaker, in love with a lady he can never be with, finds himself locked in a tortured relationship with the "Thought" of her—a thought that swells to become an "Ideal Object," an imaginary, perfect embodiment of all that's good and loving in the world. Intense love, in this poem, is an experience inflected by both imagination and delusion. Coleridge first published this poem in his collection Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1828), but there's evidence in his letters to suggest that he wrote it considerably earlier, around the time that he had a bad falling-out with his old friend William Wordsworth (and was thus unwillingly separated from his unrequited beloved Sara Hutchison, Wordsworth's sister-in-law).
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“Constancy to an Ideal Object” Summary
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Since everything that wanders around in the natural world either changes or disappears, why is it that you remain the only constant thing in a world full of change, o you longing Thought—you that only live in my mind? Call out to the Hours, who are playing around at a distance—those enchanted people who are the future—but no, o foolish Thought! Not one single member of that shining crowd of Hours will breathe on you and bring you to life. That can never happen until (like a couple of strangers hiding from a storm) Hope and Despair at last meet at Death's door. And yet, you still haunt me. Though I fully understand that my beloved isn't you, and you are the only version of her I can speak to, I still behave as if Goodness and Love themselves had been given bodies and brought to life, as if they stood here attentively, ready to listen to me, and I grieve to you: "Oh, my most beautiful friend! If only the reward for all my hard work might be that I could have a home—a home in England—and you!" But there's no point in saying that: for "Home" and "You" mean the same thing. Even the most peaceful cottage that the moon ever shone on, lullabied by thrushes and awakened by larks, would be nothing but a ship lost at sea without you—a ship whose steerer is all alone on a dreadful, empty ocean, sitting speechless and pale beside his rotting ship's wheel.
But are you nothing at all? You're the same sort of thing that a woodsman sees as he makes his way to the west through a little valley on a winter's dawn. Here, over the winding paths of the sheep, an almost invisible frosty mist makes a glittery haze—and the woodsman sees plainly before him, walking without making a sound, a figure with a shining halo around its head. The lovestruck woodsman adores its gorgeous colors—without ever realizing that it's his own shadow he's chasing.
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“Constancy to an Ideal Object” Themes
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The Haunting Pain of Impossible Love
In "Constancy to an Ideal Object," Samuel Taylor Coleridge explores the agony of falling in love with someone you can never be with. This poem's speaker is a man in just such a predicament. Though he knows his love for his lady is impossible, he also can't give it up; the "Thought" of the lady becomes, for him, the "only constant in a world of change." To be kept away from the person one loves, in this poem, is to become a homeless wanderer, always haunted by the ghostly image of one's beloved.
The poem's speaker knows his love is hopeless: "not one" of the hours of the future, he declares, can ever bring him and his lady together. But that doesn't mean he can put his impossible passion aside and move on with his life. Though his lady can't (or won't) be with him, he can't help but carry the "Thought" of her with him perpetually, addressing it as though it could hear him and respond.
One of the worst parts of loving unrequitedly, this poem thus suggests, is enduring a paradoxical predicament: one's beloved is always there and never there. Though the speaker can talk endlessly to the personified "Thought" of his lady, he knows that this idea "liv'st but in the brain," not in the real world. He can never find the "home" he longs for with her—for, as he tells her in his imagination, "Home and Thou are one"—and he's thus perpetually homeless and adrift, lost as a sailor in a "becalmèd bark" (a stalled ship).
The unhappy speaker thus maintains a strange "constancy" (or faithfulness) to the idea of his lady, even though the real lady isn't there. His vision of her "haunt[s]" him like a ghost, no matter what he does or where he goes.
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Love and Fantasy
Profoundly in love with a woman he can't be with, this poem's speaker is honest enough to admit that at least part of what he loves is a figment of his own imagination. As he confesses to the personified Thought of this lady, "She is not thou, and only thou are she": the speaker's image of the lady is a projection of his own "Ideal," his deepest ideas of "Good" and "Love." The speaker's adoration turns his beloved into an "Ideal Object," a figure who lives only in his mind, as perfect as she is imaginary.
The speaker unfolds this idea in an elaborate simile. Having lamented that he can never be with his beloved in real life, but also can't escape the haunting "Thought" of her, he observes that this Thought has a lot in common with a natural phenomenon known as a Brocken spectre. A Brocken spectre is a gigantic shadow that sometimes appears in "snow-mist," seeming to wear a "glory round its head" (an iridescent halo). A wandering "woodman" who sees such a shadow, the speaker says, might imagine it to be an angelic visitor and "worship[] its fair hues," little realizing that he "makes the shadow, he pursues."
This, the speaker says, is exactly the situation he's in with the "Thought" of his beloved. Like the woodman in love with his own shadow, the speaker "mourns to" his Thought as if the real live lady were standing right in front of him "with answering look," listening and responding. But unlike the woodman, he knows he's idealizing and imagining this lady. He understands that he sees her as "some dear embodied Good, / Some living Love": the embodiment of goodness and love themselves. In other words, he knows that his vision of the lady is built from the projection of his own highest ideals.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Constancy to an Ideal Object”
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Lines 1-4
Since all that beat about in Nature's range,
Or veer or vanish; why should'st thou remain
The only constant in a world of change,
O yearning Thought! that liv'st but in the brain?Readers approaching this poem for the first time might be struck by its almost academic title. "Constancy to an Ideal Object" will be a love poem of a sort. But its title makes it sound like a dissertation, an exploration of a phenomenon.
That phenomenon is the speaker's faithful dedication (his "constancy") to an "ideal object": that is, a goal or a desired thing that might be at once perfect and imaginary. (The word "ideal" can carry both meanings.) This poem's speaker, with a mixture of agony and scholarly curiosity, will examine his own hopeless devotion to a perfection he knows he can never, ever attain. For this speaker, the Ideal Object is a lady—or, more precisely and more strangely, the thought of a lady. In this poem, Coleridge will explore what it means to be haunted by the idea of someone one loves.
The speaker begins this poem with an apostrophe: the speaker questions a personified "Thought" on its nature. There's something peculiar about this Thought, he observes. Everything else in "Nature's range" (everything in nature) either "veer[s]" or "vanish[es]," changes or disappears altogether. (The pointed /v/ alliteration of "veer" and "vanish" makes these reflections on Nature's changeability and impermanence stand out sharply.) The only thing that remains a "constant in a world of change" is the "yearning Thought" the speaker addresses.
Already, there's a sense that the speaker is in a curious relationship with something that he himself admits "liv'st but in the brain":
- He's talking to his own "yearning Thought" as if it were another person, something that could answer him and tell him why it's always there before him, always exactly the same.
- But there's also a confusion between the identity of the speaker and the Thought. For, as readers will see, it's the speaker who's "yearning" here. If his Thought is "yearning," it's only because the speaker is yearning for the woman he's thinking of!
The speaker's constancy to his ideal object, this poem will reveal, means he's in constant torment. The unchanging, personified Thought of a lady he can't be with is always in his mind—or, more precisely, in his "brain," a word choice that emphasizes the speaker's claustrophobic isolation. It's just him and the tormented organ in his head. The changeless Thought is necessarily (and painfully) separate from the lady herself: the speaker is never without the Thought, but always without the lady.
This impossible situation was Coleridge's own. Coleridge fell desperately in love with a woman named Sara Hutchison, who, for many reasons, could not love him back. (More on that in the Context section of this guide.) This is only one of many poems Coleridge wrote exploring the strange and terrible effects of hopeless love on the human brain.
Here, Coleridge explores his dilemma in two stanzas of iambic pentameter (lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "O yearn- | ing Thought! | that liv'st | but in | the brain"). The long first stanza will explore what it's like to find oneself in a relationship with the idea of a beloved; the short second stanza will capture experience in one haunting, elaborate simile.
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Lines 5-8
Call to the Hours, that in the distance play,
The faery people of the future day—
Fond Thought! not one of all that shining swarm
Will breathe on thee with life-enkindling breath, -
Lines 9-10
Till when, like strangers shelt'ring from a storm,
Hope and Despair meet in the porch of Death! -
Lines 11-12
Yet still thou haunt'st me; and though well I see,
She is not thou, and only thou are she, -
Lines 13-19
Still, still as though some dear embodied Good,
Some living Love before my eyes there stood
With answering look a ready ear to lend,
I mourn to thee and say—'Ah! loveliest friend!
That this the meed of all my toils might be,
To have a home, an English home, and thee!'
Vain repetition! Home and Thou are one. -
Lines 20-24
The peacefull'st cot, the moon shall shine upon,
Lulled by the thrush and wakened by the lark,
Without thee were but a becalmèd bark,
Whose Helmsman on an ocean waste and wide
Sits mute and pale his mouldering helm beside. -
Lines 25-30
And art thou nothing? Such thou art, as when
The woodman winding westward up the glen
At wintry dawn, where o'er the sheep-track's maze
The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze,
Sees full before him, gliding without tread,
An image with a glory round its head; -
Lines 31-32
The enamoured rustic worships its fair hues,
Nor knows he makes the shadow, he pursues!
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“Constancy to an Ideal Object” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Apostrophe
An apostrophe, in poetry, is a speech directed at something that can't respond—perhaps a person who's dead or far away, perhaps something that can't respond (like a vase or a season). This poem's central apostrophe manages to be addressed to something that belongs to both these categories, and it therefore feels particularly painful.
Throughout the poem, the speaker talks to his own "Thought": the thought of a beloved lady he can't be with. This "embodied" Thought, as he muses at length, isn't his beloved—but it's not not her, either. Through his apostrophes to this Thought, the speaker makes the point that an obsessive love can become a presence of its own, a shadow of one's beloved that lives "but in the brain," endlessly desirable and endlessly tormenting.
The speaker reveals one of the essential problems with loving his Thought in the poem's first apostrophe:
Since all that beat about in Nature's range,
Or veer or vanish; why should'st thou remain
The only constant in a world of change,
O yearning Thought! that liv'st but in the brain?Unlike a living thing, the speaker observes, the shadow of his beloved neither "veer[s]" (swerves from its course) nor "vanish[es]." It's a constant presence in his "brain," always exactly the same. Of course, as the poem's title reflects, this constancy reveals as much about the speaker as it does about the mental image of his beloved. It is he who is unswervingly dedicated to an "ideal"—a dream of perfection, taken from a living beloved, but only embodied in his "brain." To be worshipfully dedicated to a mental image of someone is, in some sense, to be in love with one's own mind.
The speaker is quick to admit this dilemma—though he admits it in another apostrophe to the Thought:
[...] still thou haunt'st me; and though well I see,
She is not thou, and only thou are she,Here, the speaker's apostrophe gets at the serious problem that keeps this beloved Thought hovering in his mind. He knows that this Thought is not "she," is not the same thing as the woman he loves. But the Thought is all he can have of this woman: "only thou are she," as he puts it. She can't or won't be with him, so the Thought is the closest he can get to her. No wonder he's so terribly dedicated to it.
But the speaker's distinction between the Thought and the beloved herself starts to crumble as he goes on, "mourn[ing]" to his Thought that he can't have "a home, an English home, and thee!" In this apostrophe, the speaker is imagining that he can speak to his beloved, telling her that "Home and Thou are one": that to be with her is to be home, and that to be without her is to be like a mariner adrift in a "mouldering" boat. But of course, he's still only talking to his Thought. His "Ideal Object" of desire can never meet and merge with his real object of desire, with the lady who inspired his ideal.
Once again, the apostrophe reveals the speaker's predicament. It's the beloved lady, not the Thought of her, that can bring him a sense of homecoming; if the thought could bring him home, he'd already be there, emotionally. But it's only the Thought he can speak to—and it's the Thought he's stuck speaking to, endlessly.
His final apostrophe to the Thought suggests that he's reflected deeply on its nature. "And art thou nothing?" he asks it, then answers: no, you're a something, if only an illusory something. The Thought, he concludes, is like a Brocken spectre, a gigantic shadow thrown on a mist, wearing a "glory round its head." The Thought, in other words, is an idealized and glorified version of the speaker's own shadow, a creation of his own mind, imagined as an other.
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Simile
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Metaphor
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Imagery
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Repetition
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Alliteration
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"Constancy to an Ideal Object" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- All that beat about in Nature's range / Or veer or vanish
- Should'st
- Thou, thee
- That liv'st but in the brain
- Fond
- Life-enkindling breath
- Shelt'ring
- Porch
- Answering
- Meed
- Toils
- Vain
- Peacefull'st
- Lulled
- Becalmèd
- Helmsman
- Waste
- Mute
- Mouldering
- Art thou
- Woodman
- Glen
- O'er the sheep-track's maze
- Viewless
- Glist'ning
- A glory
- Enamoured
- Rustic
- Fair hues
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In other words: "everything in Nature either changes or disappears."
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Constancy to an Ideal Object”
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Form
"Constancy to an Ideal Object" is divided into two unequal stanzas, both written in iambic pentameter (lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "An im- | age with | a glor- | y round | its head"):
- Over the long first stanza's 24 lines, the speaker grapples with his relationship to the "Thought" of his beloved—an "Ideal Object" to which he is always "Constan[t]" and faithful, but also one that haunts and provokes him. This "Thought," he knows, is not and cannot be his beloved herself. But, unable to be with his beloved in real life, he clings to (and speaks to) the thought of her as if it were itself alive.
- In the short 8-line closing stanza, the speaker encapsulates his experience in a simile. To feel such intense love for one's imagined vision of a person, the speaker reflects, is to be like a wandering "woodman" who's bewitched by a Brocken spectre: that is, his own gigantic shadow thrown on a winter mist, crowned with an iridescent halo. The speaker's spectre-like imagined beloved isn't nothing, then, but nor is she exactly a something: she's part of the speaker appearing as something separate from him.
The movement between these two different stanzas suggests a revelation. In the first stanza, the speaker grapples with his difficulty in the first stanza, summoning all sorts of different images to try to describe what he's going through. The second stanza, by contrast, is a single concentrated dream, painfully simple.
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Meter
"Constancy to an Ideal Object" is written in iambic pentameter. That means that each of its lines uses five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. Here's how that sounds in line 30:
An im- | age with | a glo- | ry round | its head;
This natural, flexible rhythm is one of the most common meters in English-language poetry, and it's one that Coleridge often reached for in his philosophical poems.
Like many who write in iambic pentameter, Coleridge sometimes switches up the rhythm a little for effect—as in line 5, whose rhythm runs like this:
Call to | the Hours, | that in | the dis- | tance play,
The first foot here is a trochee: the opposite foot to an iamb, with a DUM-da rhythm. This stress-first foot feels fitting for a line describing a desperate, hopeless "call"—a cry to the "Hours" to bring the speaker's beloved "Thought" to life in the future.
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Rhyme Scheme
The rhyme scheme of "Constancy to an Ideal Object" shifts as the poem moves along. The first ten lines rhyme like this:
ABAB CC DEDE
After that point, the rhymes click into a new pattern: the rest of the poem uses nothing but rhymed couplets (AA BB CC, and so on).
The rhyme scheme, then, separates the first 10 lines from the rest of the poem. And taking a look at the language of those first 10 lines, readers might see why:
- The first 10 lines describe the speaker's longing for his unreachable, immaterial "Thought," then introduce his sad resignation: he knows in his heart that there's no chance his "Thought" will come to life any time before "Hope and Despair meet in the porch of Death."
- For the rest of the poem, the speaker moves into a new mode. First, he reflects on why on earth he should continue feeling so hopelessly attached to his "Thought," even though he knows it's never going to come to fruition. Then, he paints a series of variously grim and poignant pictures of his life in the shadow of this haunting fantasy.
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“Constancy to an Ideal Object” Speaker
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The poem's speaker is a voice for Coleridge himself. Like Coleridge, this speaker is impassioned, thoughtful, and trapped in a hopeless love for a woman he can't be with.
Coleridge wrote many poems exploring his agony over his unrequited love for Sara Hutchison, his friend Wordsworth's sister-in-law. In this one, the speaker marvels at how simultaneously real and unreal the thought of an unattainable beloved can be. Though the speaker can't help but stay "constan[t]" to the tantalizing dream of the woman he loves, he also can't help but be perpetually frustrated by the fact that (as he tells this dream) "she is not thou, and only thou are she": the dream is all he can get.
This very Coleridge-like speaker is capable of describing heartbroken agony with philosophical precision. Even as he writhes in pain, he remains curious about the implications of his love for an "ideal object"—a turn of phrase that might equally mean "a perfect object" and "an imaginary object." He also has Coleridge's visionary turn of mind. His haunting simile describing his imagined beloved as a Brocken spectre (a kind of gigantic, illusory, rainbow-crowned shadow that sometimes appears in mountain mists) suggests a fertile mind ready to convert experience into poetry.
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“Constancy to an Ideal Object” Setting
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There's no clear setting in this poem beyond the speaker's own misty mind. Readers get glimpses into that mind as the speaker invents fantastical scenes to capture his feelings, from a gentle dream of what a peaceful, moonlit "English home" with his beloved would look like to a grim vision of how that home would feel without his beloved: like an idle ship "mouldering" on a slimy sea.
The most elaborate of these visions arrives in the poem's short closing stanza, where a wandering "woodman"—here standing in for the speaker—is transfixed by "an image with a glory round its head." This is a Brocken spectre, a gigantic, be-haloed vision of the observer's own shadow cast on a mountain "snow-mist."
These scenes all reveal more of the inside of the speaker's mind than they do of his surroundings. Many of the scenes feel quintessentially Coleridge. The helmsman's becalmed ship can't help but recall Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in which another Coleridge alter ego—the titular Mariner—is cast adrift on a becalmed ship. The wandering woodsman's encounter with the Brocken spectre is drawn from Coleridge's own experience of the phenomenon in his rambles around the mountains of the Lake District. The vision of a happy "English home," more sadly, calls to mind Coleridge's experience of just such a "cot" (or cottage): his luckier friend Wordsworth's house, where Coleridge first knew Sara Hutchison, the beloved about whom he wrote this poem.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Constancy to an Ideal Object”
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Literary Context
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was one of the most brilliant, inspired, and tormented of the English Romantic poets. A big personality and bigger talker, Coleridge privately suffered from self-doubt, bone-deep loneliness, and (eventually) opium addiction. For a time, he found balance and friendship with the more grounded and temperate William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy Wordsworth. The inspired collaboration between these thinkers would produce Lyrical Ballads, a book often credited as the founding text of English Romanticism.
In Lyrical Ballads, Coleridge and William Wordsworth took on two sides of the Romantic coin. Wordsworth's poetry focused on everyday country life and the wisdom of the natural world; Coleridge's work was wild and magical, populated by strange spirits. Both of these attitudes were deeply Romantic in their way: the Romantic poets believed that poetry should be plainspoken and down-to-earth, and that it should explore the outer reaches of the imagination.
Evidence from Coleridge's letters and life suggest that he wrote "Constancy to an Ideal Object" sometime in the early 1810s, around the time he and Wordsworth had a terrible falling-out. That rift would also separate Coleridge from Sara Hutchison, Wordsworth's sister-in-law (with whom Coleridge had fallen into an agonizing unrequited love). It is Sara who gives form to the "dear embodied Good" the speaker imagines here. But Coleridge didn't publish this poem until many years after this emotional storm: it first appeared in his 1828 collection Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Historical Context
This poem draws on a complex and agonizing episode in Coleridge's own life. Always a man of speedy (and often ill-judged) enthusiasms—and a man who perpetually felt as if he were seeking a home he could never find—Coleridge rushed into marriage as a young man, choosing for his bride his friend Robert Southey's sister-in-law, Sara Fricker. The idea was that the Southeys and the Coleridges would emigrate to America together and start an idealistic egalitarian community they called a "Pantisocracy." But these plans fell through almost immediately, leaving the Coleridges trapped in a deeply unhappy marriage. The two would eventually separate, a rare and scandalous choice in their time.
While still married, the unhappy Coleridge fell deeply in love with a different friend's sister-in-law named Sara: Sara Hutchison, sister of William Wordsworth's wife Mary. Coleridge worshiped the Wordsworths, and it's possible that a longing to be part of their happy family fed his passion for this second Sara, for whom he would write his famous "Asra" poems (see what he did there?).
Sara Hutchinson didn't return Coleridge's feelings—and even if she had, it would have been 19th-century social suicide to pursue a relationship with a still-married man. But along with the rest of Wordsworth's family, she cared deeply about Coleridge and tried to remain his good friend, a situation that gave Coleridge both comfort and enduring pain.
Coleridge's suffering would feed some of his greatest poems, including "Dejection: an Ode" (a more thoughtful, philosophical revision of a tormented and unvarnished autobiographical poem entitled "Letter to Sara Hutchison").
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More “Constancy to an Ideal Object” Resources
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External Resources
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A Brief Biography — Read the Poetry Foundation's short biography of Coleridge.
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The Friends of Coleridge — Visit the website of the Friends of Coleridge, a society dedicated to Coleridge's life and work.
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Brocken Spectres — See some images of Brocken spectres, the shadowy figures that Coleridge alludes to in the poem's vivid closing simile.
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Portraits of Coleridge — See some images of Coleridge as a young idealist (and as a sadder, wiser, older man) via London's National Portrait Gallery.
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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