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Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Dungeon,” from Lyrical Ballads and Other Poems (1798)
Note on the text: Coleridge’s lyric is adapted from his drama Osorio, later revised as Remorse. While the dramatic context referred specifically to the Spanish Inquisition, the lyric as published in 1798 loses this restricted reference. Instead, the poem connects to the harsh and dehumanizing prison conditions that were criticized by reformers such as John Howard, Samuel Romilly, and Jeremy Bentham.
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 shrivelled up
By Ignorance and parching Poverty,
His energies roll back upon his heart,
And stagnate and corrupt; till changed to poison,
They break out on him, like a loathsome plague-spot; 10
Then we call in our pampered mountebanks –[1]
And this is their best cure! uncomforted
And friendless solitude, groaning and tears,
And savage faces, at the clanking hour,
Seen through the steam and vapours of his dungeon, 15
By the lamp’s dismal twilgiht! So he lies
Circled with evil, till his very soul
Unmoulds its essence, hopelessly deformed
By sights of ever more deformity![2]
With other ministrations thou, O Nature![3] 20
Healest thy wandering and distempered 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 healed and harmonized
By the benignant touch of Love and Beauty. 30
[1] A person who deceives others, often with fake medicinal remedies
[2] These lines draw upon “necessitarian” thinking popularized by David Hartley’s Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations (1749)
[3] The reference to Nature as a religious presence is a common theme in Coleridge’s poetry, as in “Frost at Midnight” with its “secret ministry of frost”
