Literary Trees – Coleridge’s Lime Tree

In 1797, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was looking forward to what he liked best – the company of literary friends and long walks through the English countryside. His friends arrived – William and Dorothy Wordsworth, orator and poet John Thelwall, Charles Lamb and essayist and neighbour Thomas Poole. Coleridge planned to set out with them all from his home in Nether Stowey in Somerset for long walks in the Quantock Hills. But his wife, Sarah, in their cramped home, accidentally spilled a skillet of boiling milk on his foot, and so Coleridge was too lame to set off walking.

Instead, he rested his injured foot in the property next door that belonged to Thomas Poole, where a large lime tree provided shade. It formed what he called ‘an Arbour’ or ‘Bower’ and usually he loved to sit there and compose poetry. But this time, he felt upset that he could not join his friends on their excursion and so the lime tree bower became something of a prison. Sitting in the bower, he wrote one of his most famous poems, This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison. It was first published in 1800. It is a meditation on immobility, the importance of paying close attention to nature, and on friendship.

The original lime tree has not survived, but in 2011, after major renovations at Coleridge’s Cottage, a National Trust property, a lime tree was planted in the garden to serve as a living representation of the poem’s setting. There’s a seat there that has been handmade from wood gathered in the Quantock Hills, thus bringing the landscape that Coleridge felt he was missing out on into view. Sit there and push a button to listen to a reading of the poem – a lovely literary experience. However, you can listen to Sir Ralph Richardson read you this wonderful poem, and imagine yourself sitting in Coleridge’s lime-tree bower as you listen.