Determinism collides with free will in the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In the following work I look at how Samuel Taylor Coleridge deals with the conflict\ud between free will and determinism in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner??? and in his\ud political poems, "France: An Ode," "Fears in Solitude," and "Fire, Famine, and\ud Slaughter." Is the Albatross fated to die or is "The Rime" a story about choice and\ud what happens when one man makes a bad decision? And how can the poet question\ud the morality of a human will that claims to serve the cause of Liberty when he,\ud himself, frequently seeks refuge in a deterministic worldview where human\ud culpability is not a factor because personal behavior is preordained? While I argue\ud in this work that the collision between free will and determinism impacts\ud Coleridge???s poetry, I go a step further and make the case that this tension shapes his\ud personal life as well. In the end, I conclude that in spite of intellectually embracing\ud the notion of free will, Coleridge never lives his life as though he does, and an\ud analysis of his late sonnet "Work Without Hope??? confirms this