"This Lime Tree Bower My Prison" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Essay by xonikxo@hotmail.comHigh School, 12th gradeA+, February 2007

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Overview

The poem is a celebration of the power of perception and thoroughly explores the subjects of nature, man and God. Coleridge addresses the poem specifically to his friend Charles Lamb and in doing so demonstrates the power of the imagination to achieve mental, spiritual and emotional freedom. The poet is expresses his feelings of constraint and confinement as a result of being stuck physically in the city and communicates the ability of the imagination to escape to a world of spiritual and emotional freedom, a place in the country. He is able to trace their journey through dell, plains, hills, meadows, sea and islands. This imaginative journey allows Coleridge to escape all aspects of mental, spiritual and physical confinement and he is able to rise up above his earthbound restrictions and 'mentally walk alongside them'. Coleridge is able to change initial perspective from seeing the Lime Tree Bower as a symbol of confinement and is able to move on and realize that the tree should be viewed as an object of great beauty and pleasure.

Coleridge moves on to explain the power of nature to heal and the power of the imagination to seek comfort, refine the best aspects of situations and access the better part of life. He

communicates that imagination is one of the defining accomplishments of man that allows men to construct artworks, that is, poetry. Therefore Coleridge is able to explore imagination as a defining characteristic separating man and beast. Through this realization he is able to

conclude that the confined beauty of the Lime Tree Bower is similar to the confined beauty of nature as a whole. The conclusion of his imaginative journey demonstrates Coleridge's

realization that he is able to get more pleasure from a contemplative journey than a physical

journey ever...