This essay explores the imaginative journey and how it is demonstrated through coleridge's poems "This Lime Tree Bower My Prison" and "Frost at Midnight"

After an imaginative journey the mind frame of the person who undertook the journey has altered due to a new understanding, therefore they are unable to return to the same mind frame that they previously had. Similarly, the imaginative journey that Samuel Taylor Coleridge embarks on during his conversational poems, "Frost at Midnight" and "This Lime Tree Bower My Prison" transforms his mind. With the use of thematic juxtaposition, melodrama, language techniques, the tone and mood, symbolism, and varied forms of imagery, Coleridge evokes within the responder a certain empathy which allows the responder to experience the journey of development, and hence altering the responder's perception as their minds undergo a transformation.

In "This Lime Tree Bower My Prison" the persona is left behind while his friends go for a walk in the country. As Coleridge sits beneath a lime-tree bower the negative and sulky tone shows that he is morose and frustrated at being left behind.

English: Draft of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem K...

Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken", 1874 - 1963

English: Samuel Taylor Coleridge at age 42. Franç...

Disappointed and glum he sits beneath the lime tree bower and describes the prison that surrounds him. Jealous of his friends' experience, he begins to imagine it as they 'wander in gladness' and 'wind' their way down into a 'roaring dell'. By imagining the route his friends would take, he is able to take the journey with them. The persona becomes so ecstatic about the sights they would be seeing that he almost forgets he is not there himself.

He returns from his imaginative journey no longer pessimistic but enthusiastic which is emphasized through the use of exclamation marks. The persona's enlightened mood is conveyed by the change to a positive and joyful tone created by the positive word choice, e.g. 'magnificent' and 'delight', 'A delight comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad as I myself were...