In this poem, Coleridge is left behind due to a foot injury from going on a hike with his friends in the countryside. He is unhappy to be left sitting in a bower of lime trees near his house, feeling imprisoned. He had especially wanted to spend time with his good childhood friend Charles Lamb. Unlike Coleridge, who had wealthy benefactors providing him with an income, or Wordsworth, who had a small inheritance to live on, Lamb had to work for a living. As Lamb explains in his essay called "The Superannuated Man" (written after he retired), he worked fifty-one weeks a year, six days a week, for the East India Company and received only one week of vacation annually. Clearly, he is spending this precious time in the country, and Coleridge must be especially frustrated at being apart from him, given how short Lamb's stay is.
Nevertheless, Coleridge discovers he can be happy even without accompanying his friend, because he can be with him in imagination and think with joy about what Lamb must be seeing and doing.
Coleridge thus discovers that sometimes it is better to be disappointed so that we can imagine joys we cannot share: there is joy in that too. He writes,
sometimes'Tis well to be bereft of promis'd good,That we may lift the soul, and contemplateWith lively joy the joys we cannot share.
Along with this, Coleridge moves to realizing—discovering—that it is not so bad to be in a lime bower. As he expresses in the quote below, there are beauties there. The light shines through the transparent foliage, and Coleridge has enjoyed the dancing play of sun and shadow:
A delightComes sudden on my heart, and I am gladAs I myself were there! Nor in this bower,This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark'dMuch that has sooth'd me. Pale beneath the blazeHung the transparent foliage; and I watch'dSome broad and sunny leaf, and lov'd to seeThe shadow of the leaf and stem aboveDappling its sunshine!
In the end, Coleridge discovers he can make peace with a day that has not turned out as he had wished by exercising his imagination and also by being content with the beauties that exist where he is.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison" contains numerous characteristics that illustrate the concept of discovery. The first line, "Well, they are gone, and here I must remain," illustrates the first example of discovery. The speaker begins the poem by openly admitting that he (gender assumed for clarity) has realized that his situation "is what it is." This illustrates discovery because the speaker seems to have just come to this realization. In the next stanza, the poet opens with another adverb ("well" begins the first stanza). The use of these adverbs illustrates information about time, manner, and certainty. The use of the word "now," in this stanza, compounds the idea that the speaker is present in the moment. He is sharing his thoughts with the reader. By doing this, the poet is illustrating the state of discovery the speaker is present in. Another example of discovery happens in the third stanza: "A delight / Comes sudden on my heart." This example shows another moment where the speaker come to discover something more about the situation he is in. Finally, the poet's use of exclamation marks throughout the poem illustrates discovery. The speaker's excitement about all of the new discoveries explodes through his dialogue. He cannot contain himself, and all of the exclamation marks offer the proof that he cannot contain his emotions.
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