The man in the Yew-Tree becomes melancholy and eventually dies as he contains himself within a natural setting which he assigns a "morbid pleasure". The most important thematic idea of this poem is that nature should not be described as an embodiment of human feelings. The fact that a melancholy man seems to recognize his own feelings in the "gloomy boughs" does not mean that they are in fact melancholy. Similarly, The Nightingale explores the characteristics of nature and its relationship to mankind. By exploring the scenario of a poet who "filled all things with himself/ And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale/ Of his own sorrows", Coleridge relies on the central metaphor of the nightingale to deliver his view of nature. In doing so, Coleridge effectively transgresses two traditions of poetics. He rejects the melancholy strain of eighteenth century verse in which nature became merely a backdrop by which to express the morose sentiments of sensibility. For him, nature has its own "immortality", freed from the inaccurately projected human feeling that would "profane" it. Nature is joyous and should be used to inspire joy, rather than the gloomy emotions inherent in previous poetry and poetics. Furthermore, he rejects the Greek myth that describes the nightingale as a transformed maiden of "Philomela's pity-pleading sighs". In repudiating the Greek myth he undermines the classical sources which had dominated much of the eighteenth century poetry prior to the Romantics. He rejects the manipulative emotionalism that these contrived mediums entailed. Wordsworth also denounces gross and violent stimulants when he talks derogatorily of the "German Tragedies" that doubtless included such Gothic works as Teuthold's The Necromancer. For him, nature is by far preferable as a stimulus for human joy. Simple settings and the ordinary language of conversation that reground feeling and expression in the basic and human replace the previous studied aesthetics of British poetry.
