With "The Visionary Hope", Samuel Taylor Coleridge romanticizes the oppressive state of desire without excluding the turmoil it causes in human life. Coleridge develops for the reader an almost picturesque set of emotional impulses and handicaps that are anything but abstract and obscure only in the question of their true source. The reader of "The Visionary Hope" must decide whether the individual meaning of that vision is rooted in the naive hope of an end, or whether, in reality, the fantasy remains an end in itself. While presenting two sides of an argument concerning the validity of human aspiration, the author believes that hope itself is the only and necessary lifeblood for the spiritually thirsty soul. At the same time, however, Coleridge's fantastic surrender to the power of a single hope at the end of the poem provides a subtle prompt for self-examination; the reader must ask whether the value of an elusive prospect lies in the vague possibility of its being fulfilled, or simply in its ability to foster a cleansing outpouring of brilliant emotion and feeling. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay At the beginning, Coleridge makes it clear what the outcome of his poetic debate between reason and emotion will be. Opening with “Sad, have no hope!” (Line 1), the author proclaims that the reigning source of living value is hope, however “visionary” it may actually prove to be. For Coleridge, he who "would form a prayer in his breast" (2) lives a courageous existence by submitting to blind faith. While acknowledging the utter baseness of his “kneeling” (1) before an unrealistic desire, the speaker, struggling to find relief, simultaneously understands his own ignorance while experiencing a surreal solidarity with his spiritual psyche: “I would beg for some sweet breath of healing, / That his sick body might find relief and rest; / In vain he strove!” (3-5) Supporting Coleridge's stark contrast between emotional magnificence and subsequent all-consuming conflict, his character acts in a "fatuous" plea to the powers that be. In full awareness of his impotence in the face of the hope that limits him and yet drives him through life, he continually strives to develop that unsatisfied desire which has now become more real than concrete reality. Ironically, what for the rational person is a meaningless search driven by fleeting emotions, for the speaker is nothing other than the true meaning of his life. Although the speaker's object of desire provides the guiding force in his life, the poem's character submits to the pain. disarmament, in all human reality: «The dull sigh from his chest / In spite of himself the suffocating weight it reveals» (5-6). While the speaker's indulgence in his imaginative project fills his heart with purpose, Coleridge suggests the existing counterbalance of a deliberate cry for relief from worry. Here the author thoroughly examines the weight of reason in a life of distortions; although the power of hope itself undermines the speaker's rational ability to see it fully, his earthly will still desires escape from pain as much as achievement of his vision. However, where Coleridge equates the status of reality and fantasy, he distinctly places them at separate psychological poles. The speaker's cries reveal the "choking burden" of his unattainable perspective, "though Nature forces him" (7), and no escape is possible. Coleridge's capitalization of "Nature" along with the more abstract concepts of "Hope" (17, 20, 27) and "Love" (20) in the following lines set the stage for both thephysical power of nature than by its connection with the psychological nature of the soul. Not only does this hope represent a larger entity of intangible human affections, but its power, in fact, surpasses the human effort to be realistic: "A royal prisoner at his conqueror's banquet, /A stranger's restless mood, but partially hidden" (8-9). The speaker, in this case, does not yet choose to live according to hope, but falls at its feet, helpless; stranger to her own struggle, to her attempts to repress an unreasonable aspiration she falls prisoner to the tyrannical existence of vision. “The Visionary Hope” reveals, in general, Coleridge's sense of laser beam clarity regarding the distortion of reason in the midst of an omnipotent pain expected by the speaker as it fades in the impossibility of fulfilling his hope pushes him to make a final grasp on basic reality, “The sternness on his gentle brow confessed” (10). Quite quickly, Coleridge's poetry, and therefore the speaker's twisted rationality, takes a sharp turn away from reality and into feelings whose roots are now indefinable. Illness and misery, tangible proof of the damage his imagination has done to him, become nothing more than "dark sorrows" (12) that "made his dreams cursed" (12). , the world of dreams suggests sleep, submission and surrender. Although Coleridge's speaker consciously fears that world of sleep, he cannot deny it: "every night rejected in vain, / Every night was dispersed by its own loud cries" (13-14). Sucked into the muscles of his desire, not even his sincere desire to move away from it can waver the journey into darkness. Thus, Coleridge envelops the reader in the command of the speaker's heart. The speaker is no longer tormented by “dark sorrows” (12), but recognizes that his previous conflict is only the equally magnificent residue of hope: “For the desperation of Love is nothing but the poignant ghost of Hope! " (20). In deliberation, Coleridge erases the speaker's tiny sense of rationality and creates a world in which all is vision, all is beautifully intangible, and fantasy itself provides relief from complex reality. When, one might say, the situation is reversed from reality, this condition of “Hope” (17) with a capital letter serves as a source of the speaker's pride, “his inner bliss and his boast” (17). Coleridge's speaker makes a conscious choice to live according to his dreams. Furthermore, he needs nothing more than a simple goal in and of itself to live, day after day: “For this hope groans every hour, / This alone he desires and can desire!” (21-22) Although physical human needs remain, Coleridge's primary concern is those hungers and thirsts of the soul. “The Visionary Hope” romanticizes dream yearning as a means of expressing a beautiful sensitivity to emotion. Contrasting elements of pleasure and pain represent Coleridge's ever-existing question of the realistic validity of a dream beyond the formation of an ideal perspective: "Pierced, as by the light of Heaven, before its gleams / (Thus deems the visionary struck by the 'love)" (23-24). While the visionary intrinsically falls captive to an ignorant hope of achieving the unattainable, he lives in a quiet sense of certainty, in the understanding of his own simple ignorance and blind faith, in the half-reality of imagining what it would mean to achieve his goal. In a word, Coleridge's character experiences the dream most fully in the knowledge that it is not, and may never be, realized. The concluding lines proclaim the thinker's adamant decision: "Or let him alone! Yet this hope should give / Such strength to..