Both unharnessed movement and painful stagnation are prevalent in Coleridge's work. Discuss.

The problem of harnessing energy is at the heart of Coleridge’s writing.  In his poetry, he battles both to control powerful emotions and also revive crippling forms of writer’s block.  In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798)  and Dejection: An Ode, he explores the extremes of chaotic movement and negative stillness.  Near the beginning, the Mariner describes how on a voyage across the Southern Ocean an albatross appears, ‘hail’d in God’s name.’  However, after inexplicably shooting the bird, the voyage seems doomed, the crew suffer from a terrible drought and the ship is becalmed in the middle of the ocean: ‘Day after day, after day,We stuck, nor breath nor motion;As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.’
The powerful simile conveys the absolute nature of their stillness; the ship is just as flat and lifeless as a painted depiction of the scene.  It is difficult not to connect the allusion to art with Coleridge’s own creative turmoil, hinted at in his many drafts and versions over several years as he struggled to finish the poem.  The arrival of supernatural forces throws the Mariner into chaos, contrasting with the previous stagnation of the ship:  ‘Slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea’ and ‘death-fires danced at night; The water, like a witch’s oils, Burnt green, and blue and white.’  These supernatural elements manifest the torment of guilt in the Mariner’s soul after his sin against nature, which now in turn revolts against him.  Movement on the horizon brings some hope, however, the rapidly approaching vessel with its veering unnatural movement becomes increasingly unsettling as the Mariner notices a peculiar woman on the deck: ‘Her skin was as white as leprosy,The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,Who thicks man’s blood with cold’
The stagnation of his situation penetrates everything, from the sea to the very blood within him.  The mysterious woman and her partner throw dice for the crew’s lives; the woman is triumphant.  As she celebrates victory, frenzied movement is expressed in the sequence of short clauses: ‘The Sun’s rim dips; the stars rush out’, and the Mariner is left in darkness, foreshadowing the deaths about to occur:‘Four times fifty living men… With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,They dropped down one by one.’
The mariner’s isolation is intense, the only living person, surrounded by corpses, on board a motionless ship upon a motionless ocean.  The extent of his isolation is shown through the almost manic repetitions:‘Alone, alone, all, all alone,Alone on a wide wide sea!’
His solipsism has severed his relationship with God.  In an attempt to regain this connection, he tries to pray:  ‘I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;But or ever a prayer had gusht, A wicked whisper came, and made My heart as dry as dust.’  
In place of grace sent by the Holy Ghost comes a ‘wicked whisper’. Without an awakened faith, the Mariner is unable to believe in God’s forgiveness – or to see it in psychological as opposed to religious terms, he cannot break out of depression and achieve any kind of re-integration with self or other people; his prayer is in vain.  Elements of both destructive chaos and stagnation have plagued the Mariner’s journey, destroying his sense of self. ‘Seven days, seven nights’ continue his suffering, until the curse is lifted by the arrival of wind – the significance of which in Coleridge’s poetry will be addressed later. Ultimately, this is a poem about reintegration and recovery after a forbidden act, about the harnessing of potentially destructive energies.
Strong parallels can be drawn between the Mariner’s stagnation, and Coleridge’s own battle with creative isolation in Dejection: An Ode.  This poem explores the crippling effects of an inability to express himself.  The form of the Ode is disjointed and fragmented, with the iambic lines ranging in length from trimeter to pentameter.  He longs for a wild storm, or perhaps another Pentecostal wind, to replace the tranquil night in order to spur his imagination and ‘startle this dull pain, and make it move and live!’.  As it blows, and sometimes roars through Coleridge’s poems, wind becomes associated with thought.  His appeal to a ‘Lady’ suggests that heartbreak is the cause of his crippling creative stagnation.  Coleridge has appealed to the stars and nature to reawaken his feelings but the attempt fails:
‘Have I been gazing on the western sky, And its peculiar tint of yellow green: And I still gaze-and with how blank an eye’.
Coleridge can no longer feel or internalize the beauty of nature as he previously could, reflecting with anguish on his failure: ‘I see them all so excellently fair, I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!’.  A parallel instance can be found in The Rime, when he describes the sea-creatures first as ‘slimy things’ and later as having a ‘rich attire’, internalising the beauty of nature, freeing him from his physical and spiritual stagnation, enabling him at last to pray and lose the albatross from round his neck.