The Hunting of the Snark letters asking for the meaning of the poem, Carroll often replied that he did not know. However, in an 1896 reply to one letter, he agreed with one interpretation of the poem as an allegory for the search for happiness. Widely varying interpretations of "The Hunting of the Snark" have been suggested: an allegory for tuberculosis, a mockery of the Tichborne case, a satire of the controversies between religion and science, the repression of Carroll's sexuality, and a piece against vivisection, among others. According to Cohen, the poem represents a "voyage of life", with the Baker's disappearance caused by his
The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem idea of nightingale as melancholic, the poem relies on the tradition and gothic descriptions to guide the poem. Eventually, the nightingale is what brings the narrator back to his topic after diverging from it in a manner similar to John Keats's use in "Ode to a Nightingale". Unlike tradition, the nightingales represented an experience that Coleridge had with his friends, the Wordsworths. During the moment within the poem, a female is described that seems to be a combination of Dorothy and the title character of "Christabel". There is no mention of Coleridge's wife, Sara, which separates "The Nightingale" from the