Coleridge's Swinging Moods and the Revision of “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”

Like most of Coleridge's major poem, “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” was constituted by a substantial number of drafts and revisions. These revision, moreover, seem to have been motivated by multiple factors. Certain revisions of this poem in particular are conditioned on the one hand by Coleridge's quarrel and reconciliation with Southey over the issue of the pantisocratic endeavor, and, on the other, by the documented shift in his philosophical allegiances from an affiliation with Hartley to a more Kantian orientation. “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” seeks to vindicate the Kantian model of an active mind by using it to explain both the rapprochement with Southey and the resulting revisions of the poem itself. This proving the efficacy of the Kantian mind, the poem can complete the reconciliation with Southey by proposing that this mind has established the previously aborted pantisocracy in a lime-tree bower. What the poem does not do, however, is share this active mind with its audience. As long-lost friend, but more particularly as the editor of the anthology in which the poem was first published, Southey is permitted no reciprocity, since the poem has already rationalized the loss and regaining of the friendship and has editorially revised itself. Southey is thus preempted, as are those recent editorial commentators on the text's genesis.