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 c onstituted by a substantial number of drafts and revisions. These revisions , moreover, seem to have been motivated by multiple factors. Certain revisi ons of this poem in particular are conditioned on the one hand by Coleridge 's quarrel and reconciliation with Southey over the issue of pantisocratic endeavor, and, on the other, by the documented shift in his philosophical a llegiances 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 t he Kantian mind, the poem can complete the reconciliation with Southey by p roposing that this mind has established the previously aborted pantisocracy in a lime-tree bower. What the poem does not do, however, is share this ac tive 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 lo ss and regaining of the friendship and has editorially revised itself. Sout hey is thus preempted, as are those recent editorial commentators on the te xt's genesis.