A Comparison of Two Versions of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison

Poets, like screenplay writers and college entrance application essay writers, are often moved to rewrite their words substantially. The first draft of even the most famous poem by the guy who seems to create masterful verse on demand rarely is identical to what makes it such a famous poem. On some occasions, there exist two or more complete versions of the same poem that diverge from each other; the second version may well be an extension of the first published draft, or it may well be a truncated edition. In the final, completed version of This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, legendary Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was intensely stimulated to articulate a more profound admiration of nature and its beauty than he cared to convey in the original version.

The second version of This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison more astutely raises the passionate proposal that Coleridge is a prisoner held forcibly at bay from the magnificence of the earth to which his friends are allowed to enjoy, especially his close friend and fellow man of letters, Charles Lamb. Charles Lamb was also a poet and he had successfully made it through the torture of suffering through a case of temporary insanity earlier in his life. As if that weren't bad enough, Lamb was also charged with taking care of his sister following her own release from an asylum in which she'd been incarcerated after their parents had been murdered.