Effusion 23: To the Nightingale

In "Effusion 23: To the Nightingale," Samuel Taylor Coleridge speaks to the nightingale and examines the meaning of the nightingale's melancholy song in relation to love. Coleridge acknowledges that the nightingale's song is sad: "Most Musical, most melancholy bird!" But the nightingale's song is also extremely beautiful, and although Coleridge realizes this, not everyone does. To some the nightingale's song is only sad. This is because nature can emulate our emotions and we see what we feel in nature, meaning that maybe the people who think the nightingale's song is only sad are actually sad almost all of the time. These people experience "the languishment of lonely love..." and think that love always ends painfully and alone. Coleridge acknowledges that love, like the nightingale's song, can be sad at times. Coleridge experience this firsthand throughout his life, as he had many problems with his love life. But often the nightingale's song is extremely sweet and beautiful, and Coleridge knows that love is often the same way. He knows this because he now loves his wife Sara, whom he mentions towards the end of the poem. Coleridge says that her voice, like the nightingale's, is very sweet. Since Coleridge is now happily in love, he sees that the nightingale's song is happy because he sees his own feelings in the nightingale.

Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree

"Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree" by William Wordsworth is about a man who was "pure in heart" as a youth, but as he got older society corrupted his innocence. Specifically, he is not fond of the human emotions of jealousy and hate. Because of this, he rejects society and goes to live in nature in solitude, and at first he becomes overwhelmed with the beauty of nature. However, he does not remain happy. He is surrounded by nature, which he finds beautiful and should prove to be a comfort to him (it should "lull thy mind"). But after time, instead of appreciating his surroundings, he nourishes "morbid pleasures" and is too prideful. He starts to feel sad that he is not able to experience relationships with other human beings: "Then he would sigh, inly disturbed, to think that others felt what he must never feel." He grows sadder and sadder, "his eyes streamed with tears," and he eventually dies alone.
The first half of this poem tells the story of this man, and the second half tells the moral of the story. The last stanza has a tone of warning, and advises us to find a balance between nature and human relations. Wordsworth is constantly preaching that nature is important to a human's development and has healing powers, but this poem shows that nature is not the only important thing in the world.

The Haunted Beach

The Haunted Beach by Mary Robinson is an extremely eerie poem that deals with the supernatural. It tells the story of an isolated old Fisherman that lives at a haunted beach. A shed on the beach houses the dead body of a mariner. Because of line 69, "The Murd'rer's liquid way," I have come to believe that the mariner drowned in the ocean and washed up on the beach. The Fisherman put the body in the shed, and ever since then he has "toil'd in vain" and been haunted.
This poem seems very similar to "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I wonder if "The Haunted Beach" is a sequel to this poem, and the dead mariner is actually the mariner from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." If not, the characters in each poem are definitely similar. First it is important to consider that Mary Robinson had a close professional relationship with Coleridge. She was greatly influenced by his works, and many times they actually wrote in response to each others poetry. Both poems have similar themes of isolation which lead to dark consequences. And many aspects of the two poems are the same: specters and ghosts, a dangerous sea, ominous birds, and other eerie supernatural elements. The dead man was a shipwrecked mariner, also doomed from his home. Also, both mariners make selfish decisions that get their crews killed. But the mariner in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is also similar to another character in "The Haunted Beach": the Fisherman. Both of these characters witnessed horrifying events of murder, and both are doomed to dwell on these events and be haunted. Both are trying to forget them and free their souls from this darkness.
Although I don't believe that "The Haunted Beach" is a sequel to "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," it is obvious that they are connected in some ways. It seems that Mary Robinson idolizes Coleridge's poem by writing "The Haunted Beach."