Analysis of ‘This Lime-tree Bower my Prison’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The poem ‘This Lime-tree Bower my Prison’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge elucidates the complex joy of friendship and a man’s mystical union with the natural world. The poem is powered by an imaginative walk that allows the narrator to be a part of a journey that he could not physically make. Leaving the narrator home due to his injury, friends William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, and Thomas Poole go for a nature walk. The poem describes the scenes they might encounter in a walk taken without him. In this poem, imagination enables the narrator to embark on a visionary journey of anticipation and return with a heightened awareness.
The poem follows the same structure of the many conversation poems of the era. First, the physical environment is described in minute details. After that, the immediate setting gives way to a private meditation inspired by the natural scenery. Subsequently, the poet returns back to the physical setting where it all began with increased awareness. The natural landscape described so vividly by the poet serves to describe Coleridge’s soul along with the physical environment. The first part of the poem, above all else, delineates the frustration of the poet, left behind, immobilized, and in the garden, while his friends get to enjoy the scenic beauty of Quantock Hills. Shaded by a beautiful lime tree, he imagines the walk from within its shade and the possible sights his friends must be seeing. In the beginning, the lime tree represents a prison that has held him back from enjoying nature’s beauty.
“Well, they . gone,.
He not only resents being unable to have the pleasure of the moment, but also adds that he is deprived of beautiful memories, which would cheer him when he becomes old, and his eyesight is diminished. His dismay and annoyance mount when he thinks about the things his friends are enjoying, like the springy heath, hilltop edge, and roaring dell. He even thinks he might not see his friends again. The friends in this poem are there and yet not there, and this intensifies the isolation felt by Coleridge.
In the second stanza, though, Coleridge celebrates nature through the eyes of his like-minded friends. He imagines his friends emerging out onto open land and seeing the magnificent view of the meadows and the sea. He compares the sky to heaven and the hilltops to Church’s steeples. He also thinks that maybe his friends would see a ship sailing between two islands that would appear purple at this time of the day. Coleridge’s imagined nature walk comes to an end when he almost shouts loud, “Yes” at the image of a sailboat.
He goes on to list out the sceneries and the beauty, and here the tone of the poem changes. While he thinks of all the joy his friends would acquire, his heart goes out for his friend Charles Lamb. He thinks of the sadness Charles Lamb carries in his heart. Lamb has to deal with a sister, who in a fit of madness had murdered her own mother. He thinks of how Lamb had led his life patiently in London, carrying in his heart the weight of his family problems. Then, he imagines the beauty of the evening’s sunset and the multitude of colors the sun brings on the land, seas, and clouds. He hopes that his friend finds peace of heart in this scenery like him. He believes that the almighty spirit of the nature would lift the spirits of his desolate friend.
According to Coleridge, Lamb has been imprisoned in the city, and the natural landscape should offer him peace and liberation. This stanza highlights the poet’s love for his friend Charles Lamb. It also offers a picture of Lamb, who is characterized as a gentle-hearted and patient human being, and one who has lived through lot of pain and malevolence. Of all the friends taking that walk, Coleridge opines that Lamb deserves most the happiness that the beauty of the evening brought with it. He wants that moment to last, for the sake of himself and his friends. He asks the sun to sink slowly and spread some more beauty in the flowers, clouds, and the ocean. In the last stanza, Coleridge, actually, feels happy for his friends, and his resentment is all but gone. His thoughts make their way back to the comfort of the lime tree bower, which has sheltered him. Now, he takes a closer look at the beauty of the tree under which he had his imaginative walk. He notices the beautiful leaves of the lime tree and the surrounding walnut and elm trees. He also listens intently to the sounds of a bat and a distant bee.
“Through humble-bee”
The sudden awareness of the beauty surrounding descends on him, and his heart turns to what he has, rather than to what he missed. As the night approaches, his appreciation for surroundings undergoes a sudden change. He realizes that he has witnessed some wonderful scenes himself in the past couple of hours. Coleridge also has an epiphany that beneath this tree he has experienced some amazing things that has soothed his annoyed heart.
He was at two places at the same time and has experienced the beauty of the walk through his imaginative eyes and the beauty of the garden through his physical self and presence. He is no longer frustrated about the things in life he missed but rather feels happy about the things he had to enjoy. He concludes that it was a good thing that he did not accompany his friends on their walk. He sees a bird fly across the moon, which is now rising, and hopes his friend Lamb gets to see it too, wherever he is. Thus, the poet begins by feeling frustrated and lonely on missing a walk, but then he expresses sympathy for his friend Lamb, and finally concludes feeling happy for both of them. In this entire journey, both imagined and real, nature has been his constant companion and a teacher, revealing him, subtly, the truths of life. Even when he felt low, nature had the power required to rejuvenate him again.
“ I shall know;”
The language used in the poem is close to everyday conversation, and the narrative flows as a thought process of the poet. He addresses his audience (or Charles) occasionally with words like “behold” and “wander”. But mainly it is a re-telling of his private thoughts. The second paragraph steers the poem towards its main theme. When the poet starts recounting the grief and the joy his friend’s might find through this walk, the tone of the poem becomes less resentful, and the colloquialism is replaced with thoughtful verses. He makes use of poetic vocabulary such as “betwixt,” “thou,” and “doth”. He becomes more assertive, and he not only just comments on the beauty of the day but also commands the sun to shine and the clouds to burn.
The physical landscape described in the poem, both the garden and the sceneries witnessed during the walk, act as a source of security, happiness and a lasting enchantment with life. The garden and the lime tree, which initially denote the enclosure and entrapment of the poet, later becomes a symbol of liberty, happiness, and exhilaration of exploration. The bower here provides the space for introspection and inspiration. The poem, thus, recounts two different phases of the same journey. One, the gentle-hearted Charles and the other friends take from the bower to the surrounding landscape, where they move from the darkness of the dell and out into the brightness of the sun. The other is the one taken by Coleridge himself, who stays in the bower, but his journey too ends in contemplation of the sun.
“For thee, Charles,”
Works Cited
Benzon, William. "Metaphoric and Metonymic Invariance: Two Examples from Coleridge." MLN, Vol. 96,No. 5, Comparative Literature (1981): 1097-1105. Web. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2906237 >
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. This Lime-tree Bower my Prison. 1797. web. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173248>. 6 November 2014.
The European Graduate School. Charles Lamb - Biography. 6 November 2014. web. <http://www.egs.edu/library/charles-lamb/biography/>. 6 November 2014.
