Who with his saving mercies healed me,
A sinful and most miserable man,
Wildered and dark, and gave me to possess
Peace, and this cot, and thee, heart-honored Maid!
1795 1796
This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison
In the June of 1797, some long-expected Friends paid a visit to the author's cottage; and on the morning of their arrival, he met with an accident, which disabled him from walking during the whole time of their stay. One evening, when they had left him for a few hours, he composed the following lines in the garden-bower.1
Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,
This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost
Beauties and feelings, such as would have been
Most sweet to my remembrance even when age
5 Had dimmed mine eyes to blindness! They, meanwhile,
Friends, whom I never more may meet again,
On springy2 heath, along the hill-top edge,
Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance,
To that still roaring dell, of which I told;
10 The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep,
And only speckled by the mid-day sun;
Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock
Flings arching like a bridge;?that branchless ash,
Unsunned and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves
15 Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,
Fanned by the water-fall! and there my friends
Behold the dark green file of long lank weeds,
That all at once (a most fantastic sight!)
Still nod and drip beneath the dripping edge
Of the blue clay-stone.3
20
Now, my friends emerge
Beneath the wide wide Heaven?and view again
The many-steepled tract magnificent
Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea, With some fair bark,? perhaps, whose sails light up boat
25 The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two Isles
Of purple shadow! Yes! they wander on
1. The time was in fact July 1797; the visiting Southey, July 17, 1797, in which he transcribed friends were William and Dorothy Wordsworth the first version of this poem. In the earliest printed
and Charles Lamb; the accident was the fault of text, the title is followed by 'Addressed to Charles
Mrs. Coleridge?'dear Sara,' Coleridge wrote, Lamb, of the India-House, London.'
'accidentally emptied a skillet of boiling milk on 2. Elastic, I mean [Coleridge's note].
my foot'; and the bower consisted of lime (i.e., lin-3. Cf. Dorothy Wordsworth's description of the
den) trees in the garden of Thomas Poole, next 'low damp dell' in her Alfoxden Journal, February
door to Coleridge's cottage at Nether Stowey. 10, 1798 (p. 391).
Coleridge related these facts in a letter to Robert
.
THIS LIME-TREE BOWER MY PRISON / 429
In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad,
My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined
And hungered after Nature, many a year,
30 In the great City pent,4 winning thy way
