Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison".

Notes

(from Norton Anthology) 

- the poem was composed in a garden bower consisting of linden trees, where he was left for few hours by his visiting friends William and Dorothy Wordsworth and Charles Lamb, unable to walk after his wife accidentally spilt some boiling milk on his foot

- the solitary speaker compares the bower where he was left to a prison, moans the beauties of the landscape he is deprived of because of his disabled condition, and imagines his friends wandering through the delightful nature

- specifically addresses Lamb whom he claims to be especially craving to satisfy his need for nature after the time spent in London (in fact Lamb preferred the city over the "dead nature"), develops an elaborate description of the ocean landscape, and suddenly finds himself sharing the joy he attributes to his friend now more directly exposed to the magnificent nature

- conclusion: abandons his melancholic thoughts to realise there is actually abundance of beauty to admire in the now twilight garden in his immediate surroundings