Coleridge--Reading "This Lime-Tree Bower"

Some friends of Coleridge arrived at his cottage in Nether Stowey in the June of 1797. Unfortunately, he suffered an accident the morning they were to arrive and was unable to move about for the duration of their stay. One evening, the group went for a walk in the surrounding area, leaving Coleridge behind for a few hours in the garden. “This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison” was written in their absence. It is one of the most pointed and clear descriptions of the natural landscape of the West Country. It seems to have two aims. The first is a lamentation of his inability to attend the nature walk and the second is a commiseration with friend Charles, who too is unable to enjoy natural beauty as he is mired in city life. The first underlying motive comes across as the initial displeasure of a child unable to partake in the party, but as Coleridge relates to Charles, the disappointment, by the end of the poem, turns into a euphony of nature. Simultaneously at work therefore is Coleridge’s running description of the evening, and the process of thought that brings him to the realization: “Henceforth I shall know / That Nature ne’er deserts the wise and pure” (Lines 59-60).

He begins, “Well, they are gone, and here must I remain, / This lime-tree bower my prison!” (Lines 1-2) Each word seeps with bitterness, the first rush of emotion, the outburst, when we don’t get our way. Almost suggested is that it his friends’ fault for leaving him behind rather than his disability. Ironically, while lamenting missing out on the “Beauties and feelings” that nature would have provided, so powerful as to leave indelible marks on the memory for him to recall in old age, he lambasts the lime-tree bower beneath which he sits, as much a part of the nature he is unable to experience. He is so lost to his emotion, he cannot put things straight. Bitterly, he describes his friends meandering about, in “gladness,” the heath atop the hill to the sprawling dell below. From this dell Coleridge gleans detail, pondering each aspect of it, the ash, the yellow leaves which ripple with the rush of the waterfall, the profile of a rank of “long lank weeds;” and it appears that in describing the dell, his attention shifts from his friends whom he must follow with his eyes, to the natural beauty they enjoy itself. From his vantage point, forced into a seat of reflection, his anger dissipates, and the language of the poem shifts from primal force to the airiness of a daydreamer.

Again his attention is brought back to his guests, who depart the dell and “emerge” into a vast expanse, a meadow, a field, maybe a plain, still happy in their travels. Quicker than before, Coleridge shifts his attention to, this time, not nature, but friend Charles. In seeing the gladness of his guests, Coleridge feels the sadness of Charles, who is unable to enjoy this nature. In seeing this vista through Charles’ eyes, Coleridge completely loses the former sense of dissatisfaction and in its place, revels in the chance occurrence of his seat beneath the bower tree. His friends are not to be mentioned again. He follows the veins through to the sun-drenched tips of a leaf, takes in a walnut tree somewhere nearby, massive elms, and the silent fluttering of a passing bat. This last part appears to be the culmination of his long journey. What before seemed his bad luck now appears his good fortune: “’Tis well to be bereft of promised good, / That we may lift the Soul, and contemplate / With lively joy the joys we cannot share” (Lines 65-67).

It is apparent throughout Coleridge’s oeuvre, especially in the example of this poem, how he imbues his art with the landscape in his immediate setting. His description of the surrounding area, spanning more than just Nether Stowey but the Quantock Hills, to the sea beyond, put in mind the very experience he desires at the onset of the poem; so powerful an experience it would leave a mark on the memory as vivid to the sight as to the memory when sight fails. Therefore, with vividness he must capture the landscape, to secure the picture in memory, and to relate the scene to friend Charles, Coleridge becomes a middleman between nature and the reader, and his poem a consummate fusion of the element of mind with the elements.