As a poet, Coleridge has a sure, though slender, hold upon immortal fame. No English poet has "sung so wildly well" as the singer of _Christabel_ and the _Ancient Mariner_. The former of these is, in form, a romance in a variety of meters, and in substance, a tale of supernatural possession, by which a lovely and innocent maiden is brought under the control of a witch. Though unfinished and obscure in intention, it haunts the imagination with a mystic power. Byron had seen _Christabel_ in manuscript, and urged Coleridge to publish it. He hated all the "Lakers," but when, on parting from Lady Byron, he wrote his song,
Fare thee well, and if forever, Still forever fare thee well,
he prefixed to it the noble lines from Coleridge's poem, beginning
In that weird ballad, the _Ancient Mariner_, the supernatural is handled with even greater subtlety than in _Christabel_. The reader is led to feel that amid the loneliness of the tropic-sea the line between the earthly and the unearthly vanishes, and the poet leaves him to discover for himself whether the spectral shapes that the mariner saw were merely the visions of the calenture, or a glimpse of the world of spirits. Coleridge is one of our most perfect metrists. The poet Swinburne--than whom there can be no higher authority on this point (though he is rather given to exaggeration)--pronounces _Kubla Khan_, "for absolute melody and splendor, the first poem in the language."
Robert Southey, the third member of this group, was a diligent worker, and one of the most voluminous of English writers. As a poet, he was lacking in inspiration, and his big oriental epics, _Thalaba_, 1801, and the _Curse of Kehama_, 1810, are little better than wax-work. Of his numerous works in prose, the _Life of Nelson_ is, perhaps, the best, and is an excellent biography.
Several other authors were more or less closely associated with the Lake Poets by residence or social affiliation. John Wilson, the editor of _Blackwood's_, lived for some time, when a young man, at Elleray, on the banks of Windermere. He was an athletic man of outdoor habits, an enthusiastic sportsman, and a lover of natural scenery. His admiration of Wordsworth was thought to have led him to imitation of the latter, in his _Isle of Palms_, 1812, and his other poetry.