Page 17 - GALIET INSIGHT IN THE LIGHTNING: Coleridge IV

every form of nature and beauty, every suffusion of light 3⁄4 God 3⁄4 but also with imagination’s spirit child within 3⁄4 the very child that he declares to be ‘Father of the Man’ (The Rainbow, 7-10). And yet, not far-off from the falling hours, this taut, umbilical rope begins to transform to myriad hues of greens, violets and blues, fractals of light, becoming, not the frail wings of Iκαrος, but Iris, the rainbow goddess: pure enchantment. And he wishes to behold her, beyond the flood, as the beatific covenant in its entire span: its message of renewal, of hope and of steadfast love for all times. This iridescent rainbow’s seven-fold magic,10 bringing heaven and earth in restored harmony, is the visionary light of imagination upon which gods and mortals, traverse, the way and the path, from dejection, from paradise lost to joy, to paradise regained binding his days, each to each, in “natural piety.” (The Rainbow, 9). Yet, Wordsworth is relieved “from that thought” (IO, III, 23) of loss of visionary gleam by a “timely utterance,” windy and mysterious, by which strength is regained, the very timely wind that will stir Coleridge’s lute away from the lifeless forms of nature, incapable of stirring his dejected spirit whose living springs are within (DO, III, 45- 46).
Elsewhere. Moreover, the power of the faculty of imagination, leading the poets to light and revelation, saves them, too, from
10 Medieval Christian symbology associated the rainbow’s seven colours to the seven sacraments and seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. It also symbolized the Virgin Mary, bringing heaven and earth together in harmony. Hans Biedermann. Cultural Symbolism. New York: Meridian Book, 1992. 277
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