of truth or falsehood. Whatever functions we attribute to religion can always be seen either as evidence that religion is a human invention or that it is a part of God's plan. And the agnosticism from which I have tried to write is not, in this case, simply a methodological strategy: it is a posture from which I do not intend to emerge. I fear that both Christian and atheist readers may find themselves dissatisfied with this, but there is no compensation that can be offered them except the intrinsic interest of the arguments.
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Coleridge and the Dead Infant
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 | | "Be rather than be called a child of God"
Death whispered. With assenting nod,
Its head upon its mother's breast,
The Baby bowed without demur
Of the kingdom of the Blest
Possessor, not Inheritor
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If we read this poem as orthodox Christian, which it clearly is, Death is seen as helpful, listening to the words of the baptism service and offering to go one better, and so doing the infant a good turn. But no such poem can protect itself against the defiantly atheist reader, and if we give it an unchristian reading (if we pretend, say, that it was written by Hardy) then Death becomes not helpful but sardonic, and the poem is a chuckle, saying, "If that's what they think, let's act on it." Reverse the interpretative context, in other words, and we can reverse the poem. Our knowledge that Coleridge (who was orthodox enough by 1799, when these lines were written) did not mean it that way, and would no doubt have been indignant at such a reading, is knowledge extrinsic to the text, telling us not that it will not bear this meaning but that responsible historians would not dream (or would only dream) of propounding it.
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That this reversal of meaning, if we insisted on imposing it, would not be mere whim is confirmed by the "Epitaph on an Infant" of 1811 (by which time Coleridge was even more orthodox):
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| | Its balmy lips the infant blest
Relaxing from its Mother's breast,
How sweet it heaves the happy sigh
Of innocent satiety!
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