Typically this type of lyric begins with a description of the landscape, moves into a sustained meditation which involves the speaker's past, present, and future, and ends in a return to the outer scene, but on a higher level of insight.
Clearly this circular pattern is reminiscent of the Hegelian dialectic or spiral discussed earlier. (See the notes on Wordsworth.)
Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode" is, perhaps, the best example of the "conversation poem." Others include "The Eolian Harp" (the first of the poems of this type), "Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement," "This Lime-Tree Bower, My Prison," "Fears in Solitude," and "The Nightingale."
© Scott Foll 2000. All rights reserved.