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Coleridge, Samuel Taylor - The Nose
Identifier
002418
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
In this poem Coleridge is experiencing heat sensations and cold sensations, he is also suffering from breathlessness, a tight chest and symptoms similar to angina. His nose is on fire too – which is often what precedes the nose bleed. These are the symtoms of extreme spiritual experience - one in particular. Although some may think he was just suffering from a bad cold!
A description of the experience
Samuel Taylor Coleridge – The Complete Poems
From The Nose
The furies to madness my brain devote -
In robes of ice my body wrap!
On billowy flames of fire I float,
Hear ye my entrails how they snap?
Some power unseen forbids my lungs to breathe!
What fire-clad meteors round me whizzing fly!
I vitrify thy torrid zone beneath,
Proboscis fierce! I am calcin'd! I die!
Thus like great Pliny, in Vesuvius' fire,
I perish in the blaze while I the blaze admire