This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison Literary Elements

A first-person speaker—likely a version of Coleridge himself—narrates the poem. He occasionally uses the second person to address his friend Charles and various elements of the natural world.

The poem is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter and divided into three stanzas of differing length.

The bower in which the speaker sits is, at the poem's beginning, metaphorically compared to a prison.

The speaker metaphorically describes an array of hills as a "many-steepled tract," using synecdoche to compare the hills to churches.

The speaker also uses simile to compare the colors of the sunset to those that "veil the Almighty Spirit."

Collectively, this figurative language links experiences in nature to religious ones, hinting at a divine presence in the natural world.

Coleridge makes heavy use of both assonance and alliteration, and many instances of both can be found throughout the poem.

The phrase "long lank weeds" uses alliterative "L" sounds, and "slip of smooth clear blue" and "smoothly sink" both use alliterative "S" sounds. In both cases, the musical, repetitive effect of alliteration stresses the harmonious beauty of the natural world.

The phrase "dimmed mine eyes to blindness" uses assonant long "I" sounds, creating a dramatic, lengthening effect to convey the speaker's misery. "No waste so vacant" similarly uses assonant long "A" sounds, this time also conveying the speaker's dramatic tone—however, in this instance, the dramatic tone carries a wise revelation rather than a jealous anger.

The poem's title is ironic: the speaker originally compares his bower to a prison, but later finds it beautiful and pleasant. Even more ironically, the bower becomes a site of sudden freedom for the speaker, since it ignites a liberating imaginative journey. The title appears at the poem's beginning, but it also resonates throughout the poem as a whole, representing every section of it. Thus the "prison" metaphor exists simultaneously with the speaker's experience of the bower as a place of freedom, creating an ironic juxtaposition.

The speaker's early assertion that he may never meet his friends again is ironic, not simply because they are close by and will likely return, but because in their absence, he reencounters them in a radical and close new way.

Conversation poetry, pastoral poetry

The poem is set entirely in the lime-tree bower, but the speaker's imaginative journey expands the setting into the surrounding country

The poem's tone shifts from pessimistic towards ecstatic and appreciative, but is dramatic and vivid throughout.

The speaker is the poem's protagonist and, to an extent, its antagonist: the poem's conflict is an entirely internal one.

The poem's conflict is an internal one, between the speaker's bitter, resentful feelings and his loving, empathetic ones. Ultimately, the latter wins out, and the speaker comes to see his apparent misfortune as a source of joy and fulfillment.

The poem's climax comes at the start of the third stanza, when the speaker discovers that he has, by imagining his friends' happiness, actually made himself feel happier.

The speaker's statement "here must I remain" literally foreshadows that he will remain in the bower for the remainder of the poem.

The phrase "Nor in this bower, This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark'd/Much that has sooth'd me" understates the speaker's intense, joyous experience in the bower. Far from being merely "sooth'd," he is ecstatic, and possibly permanently altered.

Though the poem does not have any allusions in the traditional sense, it is autobiographical and makes various allusions to the life of Coleridge and his contemporaries—who today remain well-known enough for these allusions to be identifiable. The Charles mentioned in the poem is inspired by the still-famous writer Charles Lamb, a friend of Coleridge's.

Coleridge describes the hills as a "many-steepled tract," using synecdoche to compare them to churches and hint at a divine presence

Throughout the poem, Coleridge personifies nature with phrases like "roaring dell," and "ancient ivy, which usurps/These fronting elms." Indeed, by addressing the natural world in the second person (for instance, "And kindle, thou blue Ocean!") he personifies nature further. Collectively, this personification results in a description of nature as a lively, ever-changing presence.

The speaker's complaint that he and his friends might "never more meet again" is hyperbolic: the speaker knows that his friends will eventually return, but feels that their absence is interminable.

Onomatopoetic descriptions of a swallow's "twitter" and a rook's "creeking" vividly convey the aural landscape of the natural world.