Although many great names are associated with Romantic literature, two poets who stand out as immensely influential figures are William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Friends during their own lifetimes, Wordsworth and Coleridge collaborated near the end of the eighteenth century to create "a volume that many literary historians consider to be the opening statement of Romanticism in England" (Matlak and Mellor, 681). In the Preface of this volume, titled Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems, Wordsworth describes the key elements that constitute Romantic literature, among them the role of the Imagination. However, before one can understand the role of the Imagination in Romantic literature, it is vital to understand what constitutes the Imagination as described by Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria, and how this definition ties in with Wordsworths comments in his Preface. Although Wordsworths "Preface" and Coleridges definition of Imagination illuminate the meaning and purpose of Romanticism, the extent to which Romantic poems truly express their vision varies. Thus, an analysis of the relationships between nature and physical sensations, and their roles in the formation and function of imagination in Wordsworths "Tintern Abbey" and Anna Barboulds "A Summer Evenings Meditation," demonstrate the ways in which these poems constitute Romantic lyrics.
Coleridges dual definition of the Imagination, combined with Wordsworths comments on Romantic literature, is conveniently divided into three simple functions. Essentially, the Imagination is a mode of memory, a mode of perception, and a mode of projection. As a mode of memory, the imagination "dissolves, diffuses, [and] dissipates, in order to recreate" (Coleridge, 750). It has the power to "conjure" up images from the past in order to recreate the feeling or the experience in the present, "For our continued influxes of feelings are modified and directed by our thoughts, which are indeed the representatives of all our past feelings" (Wordsworth, Preface, 577).
