All outward actions, all inward wishes, all thoughts and admirations will be the same--_are_ the same, but--aye, there remains an immedicable _But_." "Dejection" is distinguished from the other poems in this volume by containing, along with its wonderful interpretation of outward nature into harmony with his own else unutterable sadness, Coleridge's--and perhaps all poets'-- essential philosophy of poetry.

It was natural that the metaphysics in which he had been immersed should color his thought; but literature affords few if any instances of metaphysics so transformed into poetry in the crucible of feeling as is afforded by stanza V.of this ode.
"YOUTH AND AGE" AND "WORK WITHOUT HOPE" In these two poems Coleridge has left a record of the sadness of a life lived "In darkness, with the light of youth gone out," or returning only in glimpses that showed what he had lost.

In these latter years he was busy enough in an incoherent, visionary fashion, and did even write and publish (though in characteristically fragmentary form) a work that made a great impression on young men in the second quarter of the century, his "Aids to Reflection"; but his activity was philosophical and theological, not poetic, and even in that field the product fell far short of his plans and promises.

The inner and real life of the man is revealed, now as always, in his poetry; and amidst what profound dejection it glimmers on, these two brief poems show.
"Youth and Age" was written in 1823--"an _air_ that whizzed ...

right across the diameter of my brain ...