Harps and Meditations

When reading today's passages, I found it very intriguing that the physical setting surrounding the speakers of both Summer "Evening's Meditations" and "The Eolian Harp" were so similar. Both Barbauld's musing voice upon the heavens and Coleridge's own voice are reclining at the dusk hour, regarding Nature and her fading gilt of sunlight as they then internally vocalize their respective wonders of such existence. Though both speakers then venture forth on their respective topics — Barbauld to her ode on the far-reaching, wondrously unknowable Outward; Coleridge, to "phantasies" on the relationship between the physical body and its animation by the great "Soul of each, and God of all" — they are regrounded through an address to authority figures within their respective topics, and then settle contently once more with the fall of night into their human realities. Both settings also grant a sense of motion to their speakers' perspectives (day fading to night, cycle of reality » contemplation » reality), which then is amplified by each title. Barbauld's contains no article to define "Summer Evening's" as a single event, adding to the expanse of space within her poem the expanse of time, as "Summer Evening" could mean one, or each and every summer evening that has ever come to pass; Coleridge's title references a type of instrument that requires the movement of wind to produce sound, emphasizing that the marvels of Creation require that constant, eternal energy (the Soul, or God) to flourish life and meaning. All these examples of movement and energy, coupled to a sense of timelessness, convey to me the shift of comprehension that these authors were experiencing in regards to their spiritual beliefs — that one can venture out, marvel and worship the terrible and awesome power of Nature and its Engine, to wrestle with an understanding of these forces, and then return to their humanity, still broken and yet more holy for that venture.