Daniel Kontorovich

Lime Tree Bower and Frost at Midnight Task

Explain what exactly is ‘Romantic in the form and context of these 2 poems:

Coleridge’s This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison (1797) and Frost at Midnight (1798) focus on the

concepts of nature and the upsetting of social hierarchies, both of which were quintessential

to the Romantic literary style. The exploration of nature and its sublimity reflects the

Romantic belief in its ability to liberate humanity and all natural aspects in both poems are

elevated to a divinely status. Both poems also portray the political agenda of the Romantics

in the form of challenging predetermined hierarchies, with Coleridge elevating the lowly

form of the lyric as well as focusing on personal, authentic experiences to produce a deep

exploration into lofty generalities of the world. Coleridge applies these concepts in both the

form and content of the poems, enabling readers to gain a greater understanding of the

‘Romantic’ ideals that underpin his works.

In his conversation poem addressed to his dear friend Charles Lamb, Coleridge uses the

beauty of nature in attempt to console him by highlighting the provisionally of evil.

Throughout, Coleridge uses chains of linked images to develop his ideas and mimic the

process of discovery of meaning that occurs within our minds. For example, the ash tree is

portrayed as “slim” and “branchless” with “poor yellow leaves”, suggesting a sense of

sickliness and decay as it is trapped in the symbolic prison of the dell. However, this image is

immediately contrasted with the active verb, “Flings arching”, describing the energy, vitality

and movement of this tree that is seemingly entrapped. There is a sense of a paradox in the

dell as the leaves, “tremble still” and the weeds “still nod” even at the bottom of this dark

prison. In this place of suffering, reflecting Charles’ own, the nature still provides an

affirmation of vivacity and liberty as Coleridge is trying to emphasise the impermanence of

darkness and pain. In the second paragraph, Coleridge directly describes Charles, “In the

great City pent” again emphasising this image of imprisonment, linking the city to

entrapment and nature to freedom. The paragraph crescendos with the use of active verbs

like “burn”, “Live” and “kindle” as Coleridge describes the radiant sunlight igniting the

landscape with energy and vitality. He describes the landscape created by the “Almighty

spirit”, emphasising the divinity of the spectacle of nature that frees us from evil and unifies

us, namely Charles and Coleridge, in its radiance. The poem concludes with the capitalised

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word, “Life” as Coleridge celebrates the joy of living, which to the Romantics is synonymous

with a celebration of human freedom within celestial nature.

In Frost at Midnight, Coleridge declares that his new-born son shall be raised in the freedom

of nature that will teach him joy, love and piety, crucial characteristics for a worthy,

developed individual. Unlike Coleridge himself, who was, “In the great city, pent”, again

symbolising the city as a prison like in This Lime Tree Bower My Prison, his son, “shalt

wander like a breeze”, using this simile to portray the liberty of walking with no set

destination. This reflects the pastime of ‘rambling’ that became popular in the 18th century,

as people began walking and hiking for pleasure and to achieve a sense of freedom.

Coleridge continues with a flowing list of natural imagery, using polysyndeton in describing

the lakes and mountains to emphasise the sublimity and grandness of the natural world. He

describes nature as the “eternal language, which thy God utters” using divine imagery to

highlight its ability to liberate man and essentially connect us with God, a Romantic ideal

described by modernist T.E Hulme as “spilt religion”. Coleridge ends the paragraph with the

statement, “Himself in all, and all things in himself” using chiasmus trope to emphasise the

harmonious way in which nature brings together man and the divine as this permanent

language teaches us liberty.

The focus on immediate personal experience in This Lime Tree Bower My Prison reflects

Coleridge’s challenge of the social hierarchy that existed in England during the 18th century

which was based on the idea of the ‘Great Chain of Being’. Very much proselytised by the

Anglican Church, it was believed that everything and everyone was created by God to exist

in its proper place and this idea supported the top-down system of feudalism that enabled

the King to hold the power while the poor suffered. By concentrating on local, authentic

experiences, Coleridge is able to tackle the lofty and profound questions of life, challenging

his society’s focus on collective theorisation to answer these questions. Coleridge’s

opposition to social hierarchies is reflected in the form of the poem as it is lyric, traditionally

seen as a common form that lay low in the hierarchy of genres in literature. Romantic poets

elevated and extended the lyric form to challenge the predetermined order of literature and

Coleridge uses blank verse, non-rhyming paragraphs with iambic pentameter, alluding to

Milton and Shakespeare to further elevate the status of this lyric. The introductory tone of

the poem is strikingly informal, with Coleridge simply sitting in a bower and complaining

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about his injury that has prevented him from walking with his friends, emphasising the focus

on authenticity that the Romantics aimed for. It is through the physical experience of the,

“glorious sun!” that Coleridge is able to comprehend nature as a divine and liberating force

at the climax which uncharacteristically comes in the middle of the poem as he further

challenges the traditional forms of writings such as the prestigious epic poem. In his

connection of nature with the “Almighty spirit”, Coleridge presents the Romantics’ priority

of nature over the bible and the church as they believed that the appreciation of “The

Sublime” would bring one closer to God than any religious institution was capable of.

Throughout this poem, Coleridge begins with a specific, present experience in order to reach

a deeper understanding and appreciation of life, a process described by the Romantic poet

William Blake as, “seeing the universe in a grain of sand”.

Coleridge’s Frost at Midnight bares many similarities to This Lime Tree Bower My Prison as it

to challenges traditional social hierarchies through both its form and its content. It is a

conversational lyric in blank verse, unrhymed paragraphs and iambic pentameter and it has

a temperate structure, beginning in the authentic present, then shifting to the past and

concluding with a hopeful aspiration for the future. This vacillating perspective challenges

traditional linear writings and supports Coleridge’s emphasis on human feeling throughout

the poem. It begins with Coleridge’s mundane experience of sitting in the silence of the

night, watching over his baby child. The poem centres on the emotion of paternal

protection, emphasising the importance of personal and authentic connection, known to us

as love, the driving force behind reason according to 18th century philosopher Edmund

Burke, who greatly influenced Coleridge. This emphasis on feeling challenged the empiricism

created by the age of enlightenment as the rise of science attempted to apply its rigid

mechanics to society. The Romantics privileged the organic over the mechanic and therefore

wrote of the beauty of liberated life in a reaction to the objectivity of the Newtonian model

that dominated Europe since the 17th century. Like in Lime Tree Bower My Prison, Coleridge

challenges the predominant Anglican tradition of the church and the bible by again linking

the “eternal language” of nature that of the divine, uttered by God himself. The Romantics

believed that nature could bring man closer to God and therefore rebelled against the

supreme Church, using the authentic experience of the natural instead to wrestle with the

profound questions of life.

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The Romantic concepts of nature and the upsetting of social hierarchies are clearly seen in

both the form and context of This Lime Tree Bower My Prison and Frost at Midnight as

Coleridge portrays the divinity of the liberating natural world and focuses on authentic,

personal emotion in reaction to the conservatism of 18th century England. His elevation of

the lyric and allusion to both Shakespeare’s and Milton’s literary styles assists in his

challenge of the rigid hierarchy that existed in the society around him and legitimises his

ideas on the importance of nature as a pathway to the divine. Both these poems are

intrinsically ‘Romantic’ in both their form and main concepts as they represent Coleridge’s

reaction to the restrictive and mechanical society in which he lived, dominated by the

sovereign king and the all-pervading Church.