Jeremiah is talking to God and he says ” Ah, Lord God! You have made the heaven and the earth by your great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for you.”…
Then later God speaks to Jeremiah and says: “Look , I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there anything too hard for me?”
Jeremiah 32:17…..27 ( This is the God we are waiting for an all powerful God)
Looking straight ahead this is the home and address of romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. (born 1772 and died 1834)
This is where Coleridge and Wordsworth wrote the founding text for Lyrical Ballads 1798. The house was run down and damp. Sarah his wife with their new baby had a difficult time here.
Why did he move here? Coleridge was a gripping public speaker and spoke against the slave trade. It was at the time when the French Revolution had just ended. There was concern that those seeds of revolution were in Britain and because of this he felt watched, so much so that he left Bristol to live in this cottage made available to him by Mr Bolt who also gave him £40 a year to live on. Coleridge said he wanted to work the land and grow food for his family. He was soon patronised by the Josiah Wedgewood brothers who were philanthropists having amassed fortunes in their pottery trade.
Coleridge soon had a no strings attached minimum of £100 a year to live on.
During the three years in this cottage he went with his friends to learn German and attend philosophy lectures leaving his wife and child. In the words of our guide in this house “Coleridge was not husband material”. He was also said to have not returned when he heard of the death of his second child from smallpox, who was born and died in his absence.
After this the family went on to live in the Lake district with the Wordsworths and they had a further two children. Sarah and William Coleridge later seperated and it is believed he had a very close relationship with another Sarah, Wordsworth’s wife’s sister. Due to ill health Coleridge had been taking an opium type drug for most if his life which eventually lead to him living
with his physician until he died in 1834.
This is a poem they know was written in this house…
The Frost performs its secret ministry
This poem focuses on several themes of r0omantic poetry: the importance of learning in childhood, how it shapes who we become, and the role nature plays in our lives.
The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud-and hark again! loud as before
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully...
written in 1798
Here are some of his sayings:
Advice is like snow – the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.
The most happy marriage I can picture or imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.
He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Thank you for visiting this little house with us. Here is a romantic version of the kitchen where as the guide said “Sarah spent her time.”
Love those Bible verses.
What a loser Samuel Coleridge was! I didn’t know all that. Ai…most fascinating
I guess the best way to put it is “he wasn’t husband material”. He was on medication most of his life.
Nice i really enjoyed reading your blogs. Keep on posting. Thanks