An accident had lamed Coleridge the very morning after Lamb's arrival, so that he was unable to share his friends' walks. He turned his imprisonment to golden account by writing a poem which mirrors for us, as in a still lake, the beauty of the Quantock hills and vales where they were roaming, the scenes amid which these great and happy days of youth and poetry and friendship were passed. It is the very poem in the margin of which, eight and thirty years afterwards, Coleridge on his death-bed wrote down the sum of his love for Charles and Mary Lamb.
Well, they are gone, and here must I remain, This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost Beauties and feelings such as would have been Most sweet to my remembrance even when age Had dimmed mine eyes to blindness! 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; The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep, And only speckled by the mid-day sun; Where its slim trunk the ash, from rock to rock Flings arching like a bridge;--that branchless ash, Unsunned and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still, Fanned by the water-fall! and there my friends Behold the dark green file of long, lank weeds, That all at once (a most fantastic sight!) Still nod and drip beneath the dripping edge Of the blue clay-stone. 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! Yes! they wander on In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad, My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined And hungered 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! Ah! slowly sink Behind the western ridge, thou glorious sun! Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb, Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn ye clouds! Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves! And kindle, thou blue ocean! So my Friend, Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood, Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem Less gross than bodily; and of such hues As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes Spirits perceive His presence....