poet before philosopher

Here Coleridge encounters, in thoroughly existential fashion, anxiety itself. He cannot pin down this anxiety, cannot attach it to any definite object, event, or person; it is the revelation of void or non-being:

  A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
    A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
    Which find no natural outlet, no relief,
      In words, or sight, or tear—

All the German idealism, with which poor Coleridge’s head was crammed had nothing to say to him about this experience; it did not even provide the terms necessary for its philosophic comprehension. Kierkegaard had no yet introduced the analysis of dread into philosophy. Coleridge the poet, however, saw and knew before Coleridge the philosopher.

—William Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study of Existential Philosophy (Anchor Books/Random House, 1962)