Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Eolian Harp" uses the concept of a musical instrument to represent imagery of the creative mind. An Eolian harp, or more commonly Aeolian harp named after the Greek god Aeolus, the god of the wind, is a musical instrument intended to be played by the wind. It is easy to see why such a beautiful model would draw the mind of a poet. Not only that, he even uses this inspiration to bring life to an otherwise abstract concept: the imagination. Coleridge decided to use wind and the Eolian harp as his main portrayal of the mind and the imagination with descriptions of the movement of air, imagery of crossing paths, and God's ability to control wind.
Firstly, the poem alludes to wind as being the imagination, and the harp as the mind. "Where the breeze warbles and the mute still Air/ Is Music slumbering on its instrument" (Coleridge, 627, 32-33). Here, the poem suggests that the breeze possesses an ability to produce music, but in order for this to happen there needs to be a medium through which its gentle movements can be converted into the fundamental vibrations of particles, or in other words, the creation of sound; the wind has the potential to sing. The Eolian harp is what allows for this capacity to manifest into an audible and perceptible form. This strongly reflects how the mind and imagination work. The mind is an instrument used to carry out mundane tasks or the bare minimum for life, just as an Eolian harp on its own is just an unanimated instrument. Still air on the harp, like a still imagination, is an unproductive composer, waiting to let his or her symphony be played, but slumbering on the strings. Imagination is what gives the mind life, what allows the mind to express itself and escape the dullness that the mind would otherwise be confined to. The ideas that manifest from this union of the creative and inanimate are related to the beautiful nature of music.
