by Coleridge · Cluster: Essay · Critique of Progress · Common Man
Abstract
A dramatic blank-verse fragment denouncing the cruelty of imprisonment and invoking healing Nature instead of punishment; themes of social injustice, reform and nature’s redemptive power.
Connections
Motifs: Nature Themes & Concepts: Social Injustice, Reform, Grace and Redemption Forms & Genres: Verse Drama, Blank Verse
Testo integrale / Full text
[From Osorio, Act V; and Remorse, Act V, Scene i. The title and text are here printed from Lyrical Ballads, 1798.] And this place our forefathers made for man! This is the process of our love and wisdom, To each poor brother who offends against us — Most innocent, perhaps — and what if guilty? Is this the only cure? Merciful God! 5 Each pore and natural outlet shrivell’d up By Ignorance and parching Poverty, His energies roll back upon his heart, And stagnate and corrupt; till chang’d to poison, They break out on him, like a loathsome plague-spot; 10 Then we call in our pamper’d mountebanks — And this is their best cure! uncomforted And friendless solitude, groaning and tears, And savage faces, at the clanking hour, Seen through the steams and vapour of his dungeon, 15 By the lamp’s dismal twilight! So he lies Circled with evil, till his very soul Unmoulds its essence, hopelessly deform’d By sights of ever more deformity! With other ministrations thou, O Nature! 20 Healest thy wandering and distemper’d child: Thou pourest on him thy soft influences, Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets, Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters, Till he relent, and can no more endure 25 To be a jarring and a dissonant thing, Amid this general dance and minstrelsy; But, bursting into tears, wins back his way, His angry spirit heal’d and harmoniz’d By the benignant touch of Love and Beauty. 30 1797.