How Is “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” Reflective of...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, â€Å"This Lime-tree bower my prison† is one of the most quoted examples of romanticism. Throughout the three stanzas, many romantic ideologies can be identified including aspects such as the romantic’s view towards nature, the power of the imagination and the emphasis on the individual. Romanticism emerged against a time of increased urbanisation and industrialisation, where people sought instead an immersion in nature instead. Coleridge’s poem exemplifies many of the feelings which the contemporaries of the time had towards nature, including impressions of its richness, its superiority to the city and the power of the divine reflected in nature. The countryside (nature) is portrayed as more valuable than†¦show more content†¦After travelling on his imaginative journey, Coleridge is led to a change of feeling about the bower which ceases to be a prison and instead becomes a thing of comfort. It was his own mental processes which shaped it into a prison and it is through his imagination that he can escape this prison. Thus imagination is also presented as a form of escape the poet seeks, with the ability to transcend physical and psychological barriers, although he retains awareness that this is simply his imagination by words such as â€Å"perchance .† Lastly, Coleridge’s poem is reflective of the focus on the individual in romantic literature, where they are a solitary reflective figure as opposed to works focusing on the individual in society. Coleridge stresses the individual through writing in first person and interjecting many â€Å"I† phrases. The antithesis in the first line between â€Å"they are gone† and â€Å"here must I remain† firmly brings the attention to the individual in the poem, focusing on this solitary figure and his feelings. The conversational style of the poem also helps by reproducing natural speech, giving the feeling of his own train of thought, coming naturally. In fact, the whole poem encapsulates this focus on the individual, with the structure mirroring his meditation, contemplating a problem and finding a solution to it. The form and structure of the poem is shaped around his thoughts and even the