Within the poem, Coleridge is able to connect to his friend's experience and enjoy nature through him, making the lime tree only a physical prison, not a mental one.
During summer 1797, Coleridge was surrounded by many friends, including John Thelwall, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, Thomas Poole, and his wife Sara Fricker.
It was within this setting that Coleridge composed a poem while left alone at Poole's property underneath a lime tree while Lamb, the Wordsworths, and his wife went on a journey across the Quantocks.
"[2] The location of Poole's home was Nether Stowey, which contained a garden, an arbour, and a tannery, and a little cottage that Coleridge stayed in while working on poetry.
They, meanwhile, Friends, whom I never more may meet again, On springy heath, along the hill-top edge, Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance, To that still roaring dell, of which I told;[8] The poem then describes the journey in the Quantocks from Lamb's point of view, and then goes on to describe Lamb:[9] Now, my Friends emerge Beneath the wide wide Heaven—and view again The many-steepled tract magnificent Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea, With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two Isles Of purple shadow!
for thou hast pined And hunger'd after Nature, many a year, In the great City pent, winning thy way With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain And strange calamity!
[...][8] Twilight is described as calming and the poem continues with night's fall:[10] And that walnut-tree Was richly ting'd, and a deep radiance lay Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps Those fronting elms, and now, with blackest mass Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue Through the late twilight: and though now the bat Wheels silent by, and not a swallow twitters, Yet still the solitary humble-bee Sings in the bean-flower!
deeming its black wing (Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light) Had cross'd the mighty Orb's dilated glory, While thou stood'st gazing; or, when all was still, Flew creeking o'er thy head, and had a charm For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom No sound is dissonant which tells of Life.
[14] Geoffrey Yarlott points out that the narrator's description of his scenery and condition "presents a clearer picture of what rapport with nature means than do the majority of [Coleridge's] formal Theistic passages.
"[15] Later, Richard Holmes claims that Coleridge's description of his friends journey is contained "in a brilliant series of topographical reflections" and later that a "heightened directness of response appears in the new poem, which draws more powerfully than ever on the Quantocks imagery.
"[17] The song 'Lime Tree Arbour' from The Boatman's Call album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds obliquely refers to this Coleridge poem.