ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to build upon the preceding discussion by opening up the mode of Shelley's textual engagement with Coleridge to consider further both writers' conception of the poet's role and the value of poetry itself. Coleridge's transition from the replication of an experience of which he has not partaken to reflection upon his actual experience is not dissimilar to the movement of Shelley's 'To a Sky-Lark'. That movement of poetry should provide a more comprehensive illustration of 'philosophical statements about art, perception, and thought' would have come as no surprise to Shelley, who commented that such 'vitally metaphorical' language was required to create 'pictures of integral thought'. In 'This Lime-Tree Bower', Coleridge dramatizes the movement from just such a position to that recommended as an antidote in 'The Nightingale', that of 'Surrendering his whole spirit' to 'the influxes/ Of shapes and sounds and shifting elements', which allows the further progression to an active augmentation of actual experience through imagination.
