“This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” and the Essence of Romanticism Grace Wong 12th Grade

The zeitgeist of Romanticism, while notoriously broad in its philosophy, had definite universal views upon the concepts of the individual, nature and imagination; which constitutes the basis of what today are known as the main aspects of the movement. Such aspects, addressed in Samuel Coleridge’s “The Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”, include the focus upon the natural world, which is associated with both its ability to transform the individual as well as its connection to religion, the potential of imagination and the position of the individual within his sphere of being. These issues are reflected in “The Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” in its treatment of subject matter as well as its structure.

Coleridge’s “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” reflects the Romantic notion of the power of the imagination and its role in the transformation of the individual. As Milton asserts in Paradise Lost, ‘the mind is its own place, and it itself can make a heaven of hell and hell of heaven,’ the Romantics believed that the imagination had the extraordinary power to initiate the transformation of the state of the individual, particularly when used in response to the natural world. In “This Lime-Tree Prison My Bower”, an examination of such concept can...