Adress to a young Jack-Ass

           In this poem "Address To A Young Jack-Ass “ its Mother the poet Coleridge speaks of the foal as part of an "oppressed" race, who s face looks very patient and resigned to its lot in life. Perhaps this is a type of personification and political comment on the state of people of low stature in life and their resign to their personal lot in life and lack of upward mobility. We know that the Romantic poets , such as Coleridge and Wordsworth believed in a more utopian society or "pantisocracy", a communal life style of great equality. The poet speaks of the animals head hung low to the ground in remorse or sadness. Coleridge expresses surprise that such a young animal, unlike humans perhaps, can fathom it's station in life and feel depression even as a youngster at its lowly lot in life. He goes onto state that the animal will have a childhood and life of misery with aches and pain and even work until starvation and the obvious morose of the animal is due to its ability to perceive its coming fate. The poet states the poor jackass must see its mother who was long ago "tethered "chained to a log upon a narrow spot where there is no grass hardly left to eat. Next, Coleridge goes on to state that this hungry animal is much like himself and others who live in a just land but are not of the privileged or chosen ones in society who are able to live a life of sustenance and luxury, even tho it is available and exists all around. Only the wealthy partake of this lifestyle in empirical society of Coleridge. So this poem consists of commiserating with the beast and his old tired out mother to make a political point about the life in England and its need for reform. These images are known as "linkages" impressions which trigger ideas associated with it to make a further point by the poet. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an originator (with Wordsworth) of the Romanticism movement which wrote prose and poetry which started with description of landscape which would than evoke a long ago or forgotten memory which would evoke an emotional response. In the informal poem "Address to a Young Jack-Ass and Its Tethered Mother" the poem is less formal and more s spontaneous as compared to the later writers or Coleridge’s' "Conversation Poems" which would follow the more formalized poems in the Romantic movement. In fact, these "Familiar Verse" poems became more well read after the Conversation poems such as Nightingale" and" Frost at Midnight". In "Address to Young Jackass" clearly Coleridge is using the suffering and lack of freedom in the animals future to juxtapose the suffering and lack of freedom in the life of the average or poor man with the lifestyle and almost caste system of the rich or empowered of Coleridge lifetime. Wordsworth and Coleridge and the Romantic movement would go on to a belief in transcendentalism and the writings of Kant, who believed in a utopian society or commune type of life. These socialistic lifestyle would ideally bring equality to all people and meet the needs of society without prejudice to the poor or average working class.