SOURCE: "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as Prophecy," in The Sewanee Review, Vol. VI, No. 2, April, 1898, pp. 200-13.

In the following essay, Guthrie discusses Coleridge's poetry, claiming that it expresses a clear Christian ethic

I. the Allegory.

If ever a great poet set about his work with a deliberate religious purpose, Coleridge is that man. He believed a new and happier age had begun. His studies in the great philosophic systems of Germany, then new to the world, equipped him, he thought, for the task of reconciling science, political liberty, and the "Truth in Christ." He had, as he tells us in his glorious ode entitled "Dejection," the "Fancy" that made him "dreams of happiness" out of "all misfortunes;" and the "shaping spirit of Imagination" that could give living utterance to subtlest thought and feeling—utterance whereby they obtained a new dignity and a new power. Only...