A Complaint

“To William Wordsworth” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1807)

Although more a response to the ideas and the argument of Wordsworth’s first drafts of what would become his masterwork The Prelude, this poem reveals the depth of the bond between these two poets. Their friendship was more a symbiotic relationship in which they helped each other grow as poets. This poem, then, illuminates the reasons why Wordsworth is so devastated by Coleridge’s departure in “A Complaint.”

“Ode on Melancholy” by John Keats (1819)

Taking their cue from Wordsworth, the Romantics loved to be sad: Melancholy seemed the most honest emotion. Part of the second great generation of Romantics who found in Wordsworth their mentor, Keats here sounds what becomes one of the characteristic emotions of the movement, how a poet handles loss. Sadness for Keats is inevitable in a world in constant flux. Embrace it, he argues, and celebrate that life has given you someone that dear to miss.

“To a Distant Friend” by William Wordsworth (1809)

A sort of companion piece to “A Complaint,” this poem sounds the idea of how separation creates yearning. The poet here demands ironically that the distant friend speak, shatter the silence in which the poet has been left.