This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison Themes

Romantic poets such as Coleridge often protested that the abstractions of earlier times (such as Virtues and Principles) lacked meaning for their age. Accordingly, when they attempted to describe and define great issues and forces, they took great pains to describe those forces in concrete situations, often in the actual situations and places in which the poets themselves learned about them. It is therefore very important in “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” that Coleridge sets the scene literally in the backyard of the house he and his wife were renting in Nether Stowey, Somerset. One has no reason to doubt the outlines of the story; in June, 1797, the poet had something like the experience he describes in which his mind moved from irritation, to imagination, to sympathy, to vivid sensations of the backyard in which he was sitting. This is the way a person has such thoughts; this is the way Coleridge (and other contemporaries, such as Wordsworth) believed these ideas should be presented to be most effective.

The poem takes very seriously the importance of friendship. Coleridge is unhappy about being left behind. He is hurt by the thought that he may never see his friends again, but his spirits revive when he thinks of Lamb. Just as important is the poem’s insistence on the value of experiencing nature. Coleridge envies his friends’ sensations; he remembers the places they will visit, then he looks at the heavens and at the trees in his own bower....