Claim: Coleridge took years to finish his poem The Destiny of Nations.
Evidence: Coleridge continued trying to finish the poem in 1798, but he abandoned it at the end of 1799 until taking it back up again in mid-1814. The poem was not published in full until 1817. The idea for Destiny of the Nations originates during mid-1795 while Coleridge gave lectures and was working with Southey on Joan of Arc. At the beginning of 1797, Coleridge attempted to complete the poem for a 1797 edition of his poems. However, he was unable to finish and was discouraged by Lamb's words. Charles Lamb's response to Coleridge's reuse of the lines was to say in a letter on 5 February 1797: He soon replaced the poem with Ode to the Departing Year in the collection. The Destiny of Nations was expanded and those lines were published in the 26 December 1797 Morning Post as The Visions of the Maid of Orleans: A Fragment. While working on the epic, he set many of the lines he wrote aside for his own poem.