“This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”
Amelia Breihan
McCaffrey
English 1210
3 March 2014
“This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”
Romanticism was one of the largest movements in poetry to this day. As stated by William Wordsworth, Romantic poems outlined three key effects that an active imagination engaging with nature can achieve. Wordsworth’s three ideas were to soothe and restore a person later, encourage acts of love and kindness, and make a person aware of a spiritual unity in the world. One of the most well known poems from the Romantic Era is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge called, “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”. In this poem, William Wordsworth’s ideas of to encourage acts of love and kindness and to make a person aware of a spiritual unity in the world are exemplified. The poem begins with the speaker upset that he is unable to join his friends on a nature walk. Although the speaker is extremely bitter at the beginning of the poem, his visions of the nature walk hit a climax, and he realizes that all of his friends are happy, especially his good friend, Charles. The speaker’s opinion is that Charles deserves to be happy and deserves the beauty of this day, which is an encouraging act of love and kindness. “Yes! they wander on In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad, My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined And hungered after Nature, many a year, In the great City pent, winning thy way With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain And strange calamity!” (l.27-33) He often refers to Charles as “gentle-hearted” which displays to the reader that the speaker really cares for Charles and shows the audience why he is going out of his way to presents acts of love and kindness.
The speaker remembers a terrible tragedy that struck his friend, so he orders nature to produce the greatest sunset ever for Charles. “Ah! slowly sink Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun! Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb, Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds! Live in
McCaffrey
English 1210
3 March 2014
“This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”
Romanticism was one of the largest movements in poetry to this day. As stated by William Wordsworth, Romantic poems outlined three key effects that an active imagination engaging with nature can achieve. Wordsworth’s three ideas were to soothe and restore a person later, encourage acts of love and kindness, and make a person aware of a spiritual unity in the world. One of the most well known poems from the Romantic Era is a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge called, “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”. In this poem, William Wordsworth’s ideas of to encourage acts of love and kindness and to make a person aware of a spiritual unity in the world are exemplified. The poem begins with the speaker upset that he is unable to join his friends on a nature walk. Although the speaker is extremely bitter at the beginning of the poem, his visions of the nature walk hit a climax, and he realizes that all of his friends are happy, especially his good friend, Charles. The speaker’s opinion is that Charles deserves to be happy and deserves the beauty of this day, which is an encouraging act of love and kindness. “Yes! they wander on In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad, My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined And hungered after Nature, many a year, In the great City pent, winning thy way With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain And strange calamity!” (l.27-33) He often refers to Charles as “gentle-hearted” which displays to the reader that the speaker really cares for Charles and shows the audience why he is going out of his way to presents acts of love and kindness.
The speaker remembers a terrible tragedy that struck his friend, so he orders nature to produce the greatest sunset ever for Charles. “Ah! slowly sink Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun! Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb, Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds! Live in
Cited: Coleridge, Samuel. “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison.” The Norton Anthology: English Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013. 254-256. Print.