This analysis captures the heart of Coleridge’s creative and emotional crisis in Dejection: An Ode:

• Dejection as paralysis: The speaker’s grief is not sharp or dramatic but a dull, immobilizing numbness that prevents him from experiencing inspiration or emotional response to nature.

• Inner world shapes perception: Joy is framed as an internal, generative power. Without it, even the most beautiful external scenes—the night sky, the landscape—fail to inspire, rendering the world cold and lifeless.

• Imagination as the “shaping spirit”: Coleridge portrays the imagination as the source of both joy and creative vitality. Its absence leads to a profound inability to engage with either life or art.

• Contrast with the past: Previously, imagination transformed misfortunes into dreams of happiness, showing its restorative and transcendent power. The present state of dejection highlights the loss of this internal faculty, underscoring the Romantic view that the mind’s inner vitality is essential for experiencing and creating beauty.