THANKS to a new exhibition about Coleridge we can see yet again that poetry is a continuing wonder.

As Ukraine suffers, we fortunately still have places of calm: such as the library, a chapel, a garden bench, and in Taunton the Museum of Somerset (MoS).

Both poetry and calm are prominent in the Museum’s rendering of Coleridge’s In Xanadu Coleridge in the West Country running until June 25.

The poem, known as Kubla Khan, presents a vision of paradise. In an Exmoor farmhouse Coleridge’s imagination worked its wonders aided by two grains of opium taken to heal his ‘dysentry’.

The exhibition has on show the only autobiographical manuscript of the poem and secondly one of three known copies of the first printing of The Lyrical Ballads, 1798, thanks to the British Library.

The latter, poems by Coleridge and Wordsworth, changed British poetry and started a Romantic movement which is still felt today.

In addition to these artefacts, direct links with the past, you can see the big bible used by Coleridge when he preached in the Unitarian Church, Mary Street, Taunton. Another direct link with our past.

This coming together of these Coleridge memorabilia and the accompanying video, prints, paintings and supporting material, enriches our understanding of Coleridge’s fruitful stay in Nether Stowey from 1797.

We can imagine his walks and conversations with Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, who rented Alfoxden House, and his blossoming friendship with Thomas Poole, farmer and tanner, who found him the nearby cottage. And we can visit it, thanks to the National Trust.

This combining of his poetry and life in late C18 Quantock Somerset is vividly achieved with soothing wall pictures and with great presentational skill by the Museum’s team and advisers.

It is a visual delight, a quiet wonder, another cause for thanks in a bewildering, uncertain world. And the Friends of Coleridge have a delightful leaflet which tells us more.