Coleridge is known as one of the great writers of the Romantic Movement which was between 1798-1837. Romantic poetry was a form of entertainment and was a reaction against the Age of Reason. Instead of living by the values and rules imposed by a philosophy of reason, the romantics urged man to discover the uniqueness of self and to express it.  

Coleridge was only seventeen when the French Revolution began. It continued till 1799, when he was twenty-seven. The French Revolution was the over-throw of the monarchy that held absolute power and established the first republic.  This was a very bloody time with 1,376 individuals being guillotined in only 47 days.   This is apart of Coleridge’s discourse and effected some of his writings.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in 1772 in England. He was the youngest of ten children and son of the vicar of Ottery Street Mary. Coleridge was adored by his parents but when his father died, he was sent away at age nine to Christ’s hospital school which resided in London . There, he studied at Jesus College. His studies were abandoned at age twenty-one to join the reformist movement of the French revolution. He then left the reformist after being pressed by debt and an unhappy love affair and join in the army . Coleridge left the army soon after under insanity claims. In 1795, he married Sara Fricker but he was not in love with her. Coleridge also met and became good friends with famous poet William Wordsworth. In 1799, Coleridge fell in love with Sara Hutchinson, the sister of Wordsworth’s future wife. He became addicted to Opium as early as 1797   and was known as “a kind, good soul, full of religion and affection and poetry and animal magnetism,” but “a great and useless genius ” because of the addiction.

Coleridge mostly wrote about his love for nature in his poems until he met Sara Hutchinson when he started writing about her and for her. Coleridge grew up in a strong Christian home and his belief in God was deeply routed into his life and this was shown in his many poems dedicated to God.  

When his son was born in 1796, he wrote a sonnet expressing his confusion, the pressure of raising a child and his desire for his son to also be a born again Christian. The poem is called “Sonnet: On receiving a Letter informing me of the Birth of a Son”. (Read now)

This prayer has an intense mood of overwhelming desperation and his hearts cry is displayed for all to see. Towards the end, the mood changes and Coleridge writes as though he has found peace and trusts in the Lord to protect his son. This sonnet is written in the traditional writing scheme and is very simple. As is with most sonnets, this poem has fourteen lines and has a rhyme scheme of three quatrains and 1 couplet. It contains one alliteration in line eleven, with the words ‘groan’ and ‘grace’.

This poem was definitely influenced by Coleridge’s personal life and also the society around him. Because his son was born in the midst of the violence of the French Revolution, his concern for his son’s physical and spiritual wellbeing increased dramatically and thus explains Coleridge’s desperation in the sonnet.

A contemporary artist was Keith Green. Keith Green was a famous Christian musician and was born into an era of hippies, drugs, compromising Christians, and the search for spiritual encounters of any kind. Flower power and the burning of bras were very common in the seventies. Society started rejecting organized religions and turned towards the notion of ‘free love’. ‘Free love’ was the idea of “if it feels good, do it!” which included people living together before marriage and also open marriages. The traditional morals that used to be so precious started breaking down. In an unstable society, Keith Green had something solid to stand on and this affected the way he wrote his songs.

Keith Green was born in 1954, and at nine months he could hum ‘Rock a Bye Baby’ on perfect pitch. His career started when he was two and a half years old when he won a ‘kiddie’ talent show by singing ‘love and marriage’  His parents believed in Christian science and were also apart of the music industry. As a child, Keith was incredibly talented and continued to write and perform music. On many occasions he was extremely close to being signed up for a record label. When Keith was fifteen, he grew dissatisfied with everyday living and wanted more from life. In the years that followed, he ran away from home three times and started using drugs . Keith knew tat there was more to life than just living so he wrote out a list of all the different religions and finally found fulfillment at the end of the list with Jesus. Through this spiritual journey, he married Melody Steiner and they became Christians together. Keith had an ‘all or nothing’ attitude towards everything in his life and this was no exception to his walk with God. Keith witnessed to everyone he met and gave everything he had to God, including his music. God used his talent for music to spread the gospel and Keith started ministering to thousands of people. Keith hated compromise and his concerts were very convicting as Keith poured out his heart, talking about how God has called us to live pure lives and not to compromise and deny God. Many people were challenged with Keith’s words. Keith had such strong convictions that he couldn’t ignore and he lived his own message of not compromising, even if it made people uncomfortable. Keith and his ministry reached thousands upon thousands of people throughout the world and continue to touch people even after his death at age 28.

A couple of years before his death, he wrote a song called “Grace by which I stand”. Keith was almost embarrassed about this song because he knew most people thought he almost entirely ignored the subject of grace in his preaching and ministry.  Keith explained in his album, “The whole last year has been one endless lesson on the holy grace of God” so he wrote a song about his revelation. (Play song now)

This song states that without God our own attempts of holiness are absolutely futile. This song clearly reveals Keith’s discourse and the way he sees life and experiences. In his own life, he got too caught up in doing God’s will that he forgot that it is only by grace that he was saved and not by his works. This is shown in the words of the song.

The mood is that of sincerity, humbling himself before God and a sense of surrender to Gods love and grace. This song follows the usually style of writing with two versus and a chorus and also the end of the lines in the verses rhyme. It is a different style of language compared to the previous poem as the poem was written in a different era.

This song was not so much influenced by the era but more of his own personal discourse. It was his revelation and his experience that he wrote about.