I chose to look at Coleridge’s poem, Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, in the context of “Preface to Lyrical Ballads”. This poem does fit the purpose of the preface and can serve as a model of the stated objectives of both Wordsworth and Coleridge. In this preface Wordsworth highlights the importance of common language defining their new experimentational poetry. This seems to serve two objectives, the first, perhaps, to humble the poet and the second to cast a wider net for the targeted audience. This second objective isn’t stated outright, but seems a likely consideration. Coleridge doesn’t employ abstract metaphor or complicated poetic devices. Instead the lines and concepts are direct and presented as a stream of consciousness. An example of this can be found in lines 49-51, “Pale beneath the blaze Hung the transparent foliage; and I watch’d Some broad and sunny leaf.” In this style Coleridge captures a pure, unadulterated style that directly delivers emotion and experience to the audience. His words do not elude to some hidden message or context, but are meant to be taken as straight-forward, literal experience.
“Preface to Lyrical Ballads” outlines that common language will be coupled with common events, which will be accentuated to “throw over them a certain colouring of imagination.” This concept seems central to Coleridge and Wordsworth, and in this way, they aimed not to create common art, but to obtain it through common means. This idea is clearly portrayed throughout the stanzas of Lime-Tree Bower My Prison. In line 62 Coleridge states, “That Nature ne-er deserts the wise and pure.” This simply stated line, can provide deep internal contemplation. For instance, it is no error that nature is capitalized. These subtleties color the work of Coleridge and Wordsworth and I believe their poems were designed to inspire rigorous internal reflection.
It seems that Coleridge wanted to flirt with the obligations of blank verse poetry, without rigid adherence. This too is another element outlined in the “Preface to Lyrical Ballads”. Coleridge mostly employs ten syllable stanzas, which are generally displayed in iambic pentameter. However, while both distinctions are characteristic of blank verse, Coleridge never commits fully to either attribute. Wordsworth declares in the preface, “that by the act of writing in verse an Author makes a formal engagement that he will gratify certain known habits of association.” However, later Wordsworth states that Coleridge and himself “have not fulfilled the terms of an engagement thus voluntarily contracted.” Why does Coleridge loosely adhere to the rules then, at least hinting at the form of blank verse? Perhaps, this is because (as Wordsworth asserts) a poem will be read repeatedly, while prose only once. It can be argued that neither Coleridge or Wordsworth wanted to abandon every poetic rule, but wanted to loosen the rules and allow free-will and inspiration to take precedent.
The final distinction I would like to make is that Lime-Tree Bower My Prison isn’t just about nature in an experiential and emotional way. More importantly, the poem is about the effect of nature as a transformational catalyst. When the poem begins the author is forlorn and sees his isolation in the lime tree bower as a prison sentence. Throughout the poem we get to see a metamorphosis, which I believe is due to the purification delivered through nature. The more he praises the beauty around him, the more beauty he can see. In this regard, experiencing nature is delivered as cathartic and medicinal. It is more than just an observance of beauty, but actually a process of evolving beautifully. I think this active process, shared between human and nature, was elemental to both Coleridge and Wordsworth’s work.
Brit Lit 2020 