Background
During summer 1797, Coleridge was surrounded by many friends, includingPoem
The poem begins by explaining how the narrator was separated from his friends: The poem then describes the journey in the Quantocks from Lamb's point of view, and then goes on to describe Lamb: Twilight is described as calming and the poem continues with night's fall:Holmes 1989 p. 155Themes
The use of blank verse is to emphasize the conversational elements of the poem in a similar manner to William Cowper's '' The Task''. Like Cowper's, Coleridge's verse allows for alternations of tone and emphasizes both country and urban environments. However, Coleridge is more concrete than Cowper in the sense that the ego stands in the foreground - in '' The Task'' the I, though dominant, purports to follow its subject matter. In "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison" Coleridge attempts to discover the environment that his friends explore because he is unable to join them. This was accomplished in the original version by first describing how his friends came to be walking and then discussing Lamb's experience on the walk. The work introduces religious imagery but in a toned down form out of deference to Lamb's Unitarianism and perhaps partly out of Coleridge's own pantheistic feelings. ''This Lime-Tree Bower'' continues the "Conversation poems" theme of "One Life", a unity between the human and the divine in nature. The poem links Coleridge's surroundings under the lime tree to the Quantocks where the Wordsworths, Lamb, and Fricker were out walking. Although they are all separated, Coleridge connects to his distant friends by their mutual experience and appreciation of nature. As the poem ends, the friends share together the same view about completion and life. The poem uses the image of loneliness and solitude throughout. The narrator is forced to stay behind, but he is glad that his friends, especially Lamb, are able to enjoy the walk. The narrator is able to relax and be accepting of his situation and of nature, and the experience shows that his prison condition is perfectly tolerable because it is physical and not mental. The image of the solitary bee is used to represent the poet continuing his work in a world overcome by peace and harmony. The final moments of the poem contain a religious element and works like an evening prayer.Sources
The poem finds its source in many of Coleridge's own poems, including ''Composed while Climbing Brockley Coomb'', ''Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement'' and ''To Charles Lloyd, on his Proposing to Domesticate with the Author''. However, it is also connected to poems by others, including Wordsworth's ''Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree'', passages from Southey's edition of ''Poems'', and verses in Henry Vaughan's ''Silex Scintillans''. He also cites from Withering's ''An Arrangement of British Plants''.Critical response
Geoffrey Yarlott points out that the narrator's description of his scenery and condition "presents a clearer picture of what rapport with nature means than do the majority of oleridge'sformal Theistic passages. He writes now with his eye upon the object rather than the clouds, and with natural feelings. Where, earlier, he had seemed too much upon the stretch, as though trying to compel acceptance, he writes now with relaxed and easy confidence." Later, Richard Holmes claims that Coleridge's description of his friends journey is contained "in a brilliant series of topographical reflections" and later that a "heightened directness of response appears in the new poem, which draws more powerfully than ever on the Quantocks imagery." According to Rosemary Ashton, "He had much to be pleased with. The poem perfects the 'plain style' he had adopted in 'The Eolian Harp'. It is certainly plain compared to 'Religious Musings' and his other declamatory poems, and yet the tone is versatile, modulating from the conversational and the chatty into something unusually arresting." In the 21st century, Adam Sisman declared that the poem "was a further development of the new style he had initiated in 'The Eolian Harp'. It was full of characteristic verbal inventiveness ..now used to accompany detailed descriptions of natural forms, in a manner surely influenced by Dorothy."Sisman 2006 p. 182Popular Culture
The song 'Lime Tree Arbour' fromNotes
References
* Ashton, Rosemary. ''The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge''. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. * * Holmes, Richard. ''Coleridge: Early Visions, 1772-1804''. New York: Pantheon, 1989. * Mays, J. C. C. (editor). ''The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetical Works'' I Vol I.I. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. * Sisman, Adam. ''The Friendship''. New York: Viking, 2006. * Yarlott, Geoffrey. ''Coleridge and the Abyssinian Maid''. London: Methuen, 1967. {{Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1797 poems Christian poetry Conversation poems Poetry by Samuel Taylor Coleridge