If we could listen as a child does

The word "melancholy" which is used throughout Coleridge's poem in my opinion is the best description of the tone of the poem as a whole. Coleridge starts by criticism towards using that word towards the songs of the Nightingales and from my standpoint he is right about the fact that there is nothing melancholic about it. Through the use of that word in the chain of thought in Coleridge's poem the author is showing us how the civilized, or else human, world has impacted our perception of nature. The development of the criticism, in my opinion, culminates when author writes about the aeolian harp. The harp could be understood as a civilization's attempt to interpret nature and also as a symbol for poetry. The harp takes the sounds of the blowing wind and transforms them into sounds which are an outcome of human development, the harp. There is a visible connection between the harp as a interpretor of nature and poetry as a interpreted of nature. Poets can only hear melancholy in the bird's singing because poets just lake the harp are a product of the civilized human world which, as it appears can only interpret nature in a broken way, and mirror its melancholy, depression and overall feeling of being detached to everything around it. The biggest symbol, however, appears at the end of Coleridge's poem. It is the child. Child which a symbol of purity. Not yet diseased by civilization and the human world, the child can listen and hear nature in a way that it is meant to be heard. Only the child can engage into a conversation, or a close connection with nature.I think that the image above illustrates nature through the twisted and mislead eyes of the civilized man best.