Sibylline Leaves (1817) is a collection of poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It includes a revised Rime of the Ancient Mariner with its prose glosses, and his conversation poems, among them Frost at Midnight and This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison.
The collection
Coleridge gathered his scattered poems in 1817, the same year as his Biographia Literaria. The title refers to the leaves on which the Sibyl of Cumae wrote her prophecies, which the wind scattered.
The book includes the first printing of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner with the marginal prose glosses that comment on the story.
The conversation poems
Frost at Midnight, written in February 1798, shows the poet sitting by the fire at night beside his sleeping baby son Hartley, and imagining for him a childhood close to nature.
This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, The Eolian Harp and Dejection: An Ode belong to the same intimate, meditative style, which influenced Wordsworth.
Coleridge in 1817
By then Coleridge was struggling with opium addiction and living at Highgate in the house of the doctor James Gillman, who cared for him until his death.
Kubla Khan, Christabel and The Pains of Sleep had appeared the year before, in a separate slim volume of 1816.
Anecdotes
A burnt foot
This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison was written when Coleridge's wife spilled boiling milk on his foot, so that he could not walk out with his visiting friends, among them Charles Lamb.
Glosses for a ballad
The glosses added to the Ancient Mariner in 1817 imitate the notes of an old scholar, adding a second voice to the poem.
Frequently asked questions
What is Frost at Midnight?
A conversation poem in which Coleridge watches over his sleeping son on a frosty night.
What does the title mean?
It refers to the leaves of the Sibyl, scattered by the wind, like his scattered poems.
Which version of the Ancient Mariner does it contain?
The revised version with the prose glosses in the margin.