In "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison" by Samuel Coleridge, the speaker sees the bower of lime trees under which he sits as a prison, despite its beautiful description. He wishes to go out with his friends and see the beautiful nature that they will see, and because of his desperate desire to be somewhere else, he misses the beauty right in front of him and interprets the linden tree as a prison. The speaker's imagination transforms something beautiful, the linden arbor, into something dark and stifling. His mind transforms the nature around him and his negative thoughts lock him in a prison he creates for himself. In Wordsworth's poem, "Nuns care not for the narrow room of their convent", the speaker also explores the symbolism of a prison in relation to the daily responsibilities of its role, and the structure that these routines imprint on life. The speaker of this poem warns against giving the mind too much freedom and encourages finding comfort in structure. Examining the speaker of “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” with the wisdom of the speaker of “Nuns Fret Not” reveals where the former goes wrong in his reading of the lime bower. This essay will argue that the symbolism of the linden arbor and the prison in both works reveals the capacity of the imagination to transform the environment for better or worse. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get an Original EssayIn “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison,” the speaker allows the setting of a beautiful linden tree to be distorted by its negative thoughts. He laments that "he has to stay here" while his friends go on a walk that he cannot join because he is hurt, and he laments that he has "lost/beauties and feelings that would have been/theirs." sweeter to my very memory. when age/had made my eyes blind to blindness” (Coleridge 2-5). This setting of linden trees generally seems very beautiful to him, but the sadness he feels at not being able to go there with his friends outweighs reality, and the speaker's mind transforms the setting into a prison. The speaker of “Nuns Fret Not” warns against letting imagination take over because of its ability to shape everyone's subjective reality into a dark place. He sympathizes with those “who have felt the weight of too great a liberty” because they are afflicted by too free a spirit (Wordsworth 13). The speaker of “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” experiences this state of distress and lets his imagination run wild and takes over, transforming his lime arbor into a prison. Both speakers conclude that the prisons they describe in their poems are not prisons at all, revealing the power of the mind to create a dark environment or to see things positively based on one's own perspective . As the speaker of "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison" recounts all the things he will miss during his friends' walk, he thinks, "very happy,/[of his] sweet Charles!" for [Charles] longed/And hungered for nature for many years/In the great shut-in city” (Coleridge 27-30). In the next stanza: “A delight/ Comes suddenly to [his] heart, and [he is] happy/ As [he] [himself] was there!” (44-46). Realizing that his friend Charles rarely has the opportunity to experience nature due to his position in the city and probably always wants to, the speaker opens his eyes to reality and sees the beauty of the linden tree and the nature in which it currently finds itself. . The cradle of lime trees is not a prison at all, and its reading.