মেরিনারের জাহাজ ডুবে যাওয়ার সময় প্রচণ্ড শব্দে চারদিক কেঁপে ওঠে। পাইলট ভয় পেয়ে ভাবে সে ভূত দেখছে। মেরিনারের কণ্ঠস্বর তাকে আরও আতঙ্কিত করে তোলে।

• The Harp and the Mind: The Aeolian harp produces music when the wind passes over its strings. Similarly, the poet’s mind is receptive, “played upon” by external forces—nature, emotion, and divine inspiration—to produce poetry.

• The Wind as Inspiration: The wind symbolizes the intellectual and spiritual force that animates both nature and the poet’s creative faculties, highlighting that true poetic creation comes from a higher, external source rather than deliberate effort.

• Romantic Emphasis: This metaphor reflects the Romantic ideal that the poet is a passive vessel, connected intimately with nature and the universe, through which transcendent beauty and insight are expressed.

• Tension with Orthodoxy: In the poem’s final stanza, the speaker tempers his pantheistic musings to align with Sara’s orthodox Christian views, showing the conflict between imaginative freedom and conventional belief.

In short, the Aeolian harp elegantly captures the interplay of passive receptivity, natural forces, and spiritual inspiration in the Romantic creative process.

In the final, tender stanza of Dejection: An Ode, Coleridge offers a selfless blessing to Sara Hutchinson, the "Dear Lady" of the poem. Though the speaker remains mired in his own unimpassioned grief and sleeplessness, he wishes her the happiness and vitality he himself cannot feel. The lines convey his hopes that she may experience:

• Healing rest, as in "gentle Sleep! with wings of healing."

• Renewed joy and lightness of spirit, rising "With light heart" and "Gay fancy, cheerful eyes."

• Lasting delight, with "Joy lift her spirit, joy attune her voice," so that she may "ever, evermore rejoice."

This closing stanza emphasizes the poet’s altruistic love, contrasting his own despondency with his desire for her enduring happiness.