Note 209 — Chapter II · INDICATIONS OF A NEW ATTITUDE TOWARD NATURE IN THE POETRY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Reading edition
Cf. Milton’s, “sweetest, saddest plight;” or “most musical, most melancholy;” and Shelley’s, “melodious pain;” and Keats’ “plaintive anthem;” and Matthew Arnold’s, “Wild, unquenched, deep-sunken, old-world pain.” Coleridge speaks once of “pity-pleading strains,” but in another poem contends for the “merry nightingale,” and refuses to hear anything but “love and joyance” in the song.