This is very pretty and naïve, but quite childish, and the lines are prefaced by a quotation from Ovid. In June 1797, at Nether Stowey, Coleridge wrote the exquisite poem, "This Lime Tree Bower my Prison." It was addressed to Charles Lamb, and on a copy of this poem, thirty-seven years later, he wrote his last words, "Charles and Mary Lamb, dear to my heart, yea, as it were, my heart." Here for once the spirit of Nature descends for a moment upon him. He sees his surroundings with what Sir Joshua would have called "a dilated eye." There are lines in it with which memory loves to dwell; they bring Coleridge nearer to some of us than many of the poems upon which his reputation stands secure:
"....In this bower,
This little lime tree bower, have I not marked
Much that has soothed me? Pale beneath the blaze
Hung the transparent foliage, and I watched
Some broad and sunny leaf and stem above
Dappling its sunshine! And that walnut tree
Was richly tinged, and a deep radiance lay
Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps
Those fronting elms, and now, with blackest mass