ABSTRACT
In a diary entry of 1930, W. B. Yeats contemplates Coleridge's metamorphosis from a poet into a sage: From 1807 or so he seems to have some kind of illumination which was, as always, only in part communicable. It is this that fixes our amazed attention on Oedipus when his death approaches, and upon some few historical men. It is because the modern philosopher has not sought this that he remains unknown to those multitudes who thought his predecessors sacred. The sense of Coleridge's metamorphosis from young poet into older sage is not a modern perception, but was observed at the end of his lifetime. Typically, Coleridge's sagacity is plotted as a sort of ideological destination in the evolution of his thought. Hence Coleridge does not merely achieve a general resemblance to the weary Oedipus, but attains sagacity in a similar manner through tlemosyne, heroic endurance of what he feels as crises.
