How does Coleridge convey his love of nature in the Rime Of The Ancient Mariner and The Lime-tree Bower My Prison?

GCSE Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics)

Coleridge really loves nature and includes it in a lot of his poems. He was a very religious man as we can see from his religious references in the poems. He was one a group of poets called the romantics. The romantics glorified nature as being god like and saw nature as god.

He shows his love of nature in the religious references like in my lime tree bower he imagines his friends seeing nature “beneath the wide wide heaven”. And in the mariner the albatross is referred as “a Christian soul”. These religious references give the audience a good source of imagery and reflect how he saw God as nature. So you must love nature to love god, as nature is god.

Coleridge also refers to the sun a lot in his poems. In My Lime Tree Bower the sun is said to be a “glorious sun” (this is describes the sun as holy) and he describes a bird flying across the sun as, “[the bird] cross’d the mighty orbs dilated glory” this could be talking about the sun but also the eye of his friend dilating as he looks into the sun. Likewise in the Mariner the sun is personified as a person, “the sun came up/out of the sea came he!”. The personification and religious reference to the sun explain that Calterige loved god and nature as the same thing as god created nature. He may have been trying to say god is the sun as the sun is the giver of life and so is god. we can gather this from the fact he says “glorious sun”, this is similar to bible texts which say “glorious god”

Although these poems have a lot in common they do have alot of differences.

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Although these poems have a lot in common they do have alot of differences.

The structure of and style of the Mariner is long and in seven parts and is a narrative poem with lots of narrative voices. While the Lime Tree is only one person reflecting and imagining his friends having fun. Never the less they still both have similar messages about god and nature. The quote “no plot so narrow, be but nature there” gives us the message that nature is everywhere even in the smallest of places. Another message is given when the author says “tis well to be bereft of promis’d good,/ that we may lift the soul, and contemplate/ with lively joy the joys we cannot share.” This message means that not having things is sometimes good because it makes us glad when we have them, instead of being jealous. In the Mariner the whole poem gives the message that you shouldn’t ever lose God or nature. These messages show how important nature was to Calterige

And how important god was to him.

In the Lime Tree Bower nature is pictured as some sort of healing force and is “less gross than bodily” meaning to perfect to be human. This again means that Coleridge saw nature as a force of God. The author’s friend was from a “great city pent” this shows that Calterige saw the city as a prison with no nature.

When Coleridge talks about nature he uses apostrophes to show joy they are used in phrases like “glorious sun!” and “purple heath-flowers!” these show he really did get joy and pleasure out of nature.

Coleridge’s wonderful use of language really produces amazing imagery. The place where he wanted to go in the lime Tree Bower is described as a “roaring dell, o’erwooded, narrow, deep, /and only speckled by the mid-day sun” and his use of religious language like “behold”, “ye” and “thou” make nature more holy and God like. This again gets across his love of god and nature. Also when Coleridge conveys thee images his sentences are flowing but when he talks about “the city pent” his sentences are more broken up with commas this shows his dislike towards city areas where nature cannot blossom well. Therefore Coleridge must think god cannot blossom well in the city areas.

The two poems have different effects on the audience and different feelings they make us feel. Lime Tree Bower is quiet and focused on the imagination of the “roaring dell”. In this poem Calterige wants us to feel sorry for the man in the bower but he wants us to feel pleased with the man when he realises that nature is all around. While the Mariner is more dramatic with lots of highs points and lows points, times of beauty and times of horror.

It has lots of supernatural things to intrigue the reader, like how the wedding guest “[could not] choose but hear”, and how the mariner “hold him with his glittering eye”. The poem tries to make us shocked, curious and sad (for the men on the ship). We also are intrigued because we relate to the wedding guest and feel al the emotions he does. But both stories want the audience to reflect on the messages. They make us reflect by making us think about the hidden messages.

We can see that Coleridge has a love of nature because of his religious links to god and nature, his religious language, which glorifies nature. His hatred for the city, his use of exclamation marks and the hidden messages, which teach us to love nature no matter where we are, and to never lose god or nature.