by Coleridge · Cluster: Maturation and Growth · Childhood · Innocence and Experience
Abstract
A farewell sonnet to the cloisters of Christ’s Hospital, mingling hope for future joy with nostalgic grief recalling an earlier childhood parting and the poet’s widowed mother.
Connections
Themes & Concepts: Nostalgia, Maturation and Growth, Innocence and Experience, Grief and Loss, Education Forms & Genres: Sonnet
Testo integrale / Full text
Farewell parental scenes! a sad farewell!
To you my grateful heart still fondly clings,
Tho’ fluttering round on Fancy’s burnish’d wings
Her tales of future Joy Hope loves to tell.
Adieu, adieu! ye much-lov’d cloisters pale! 5
Ah! would those happy days return again,
When ‘neath your arches, free from every stain,
I heard of guilt and wonder’d at the tale!
Dear haunts! where oft my simple lays I sang,
Listening meanwhile the echoings of my feet, 10
Lingering I quit you, with as great a pang,
As when erewhile, my weeping childhood, torn
By early sorrow from my native seat,
Mingled its tears with hers — my widow’d Parent lorn.
1791.