This Lime Tree Bower: Romanticism and Transportation

I was very happy to explore this poem concurrently with the landscapes at AMAM this week because I felt that not only was it a beautiful comment on the power of nature, but also on the power of art. Despite the fact that Coleridge is physically separated from his friends, he is able to be somewhat transported to where they are because of his love of nature ("As I myself were there!"(45). The poem itself echoes this same effect as the reader is not physically with Coleridge sitting beneath a lime tree bower in 18th century England, but because of poetry, we are able to be transported to this world. This can also be said of the paintings we looked at this week. My group studied Cole's Lake with Dead Trees. One of Cole's objectives in painting it was to instill a sense of national pride in American viewers. This was at a time of rapid industrialization. Cole's idyllic preservation of America's wilderness could, like Coleridge's poetry and the the nature depicted in Lime-Tree, transport Americans back to the wilderness and away from urban city life. The ability to transport a reader/viewer is an incredible facet explored in Romantic art and writing, as well as a core component in Romanticists obsession with nature.