How we cite our quotes: (Line)
Quote #1
But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! (24-27)
Staring at the film of soot on the fireplace (the "stranger"), Coleridge is hoping for something to pull him out of the boring, mundane world. He's waiting for some interruption that will inject joy back into his life. If he were able to live in tune with Nature and feel like God was communicating with him—as he hopes his son will—this apparently wouldn't have been a problem.
Quote #2
[…] and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come! (27-34)
Even though Coleridge casts himself as a city dweller (since he went to school in London and Cambridge), he remembers his birthplace—which was actually in a small, country town of Ottery St. Mary. The church bells make him think about some unknown good thing that will eventually come—like a future existence in heaven, or, on an earthly level, a meeting with a great and close friend. He feels a kind of religious ecstasy listening to the church bells. They foretell a coming good, just like the "stranger," the film of soot in the fireplace.
Quote #3
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams! (35-36)
Coleridge was known for being a lazy genius and a dreamer. He might not have deserved this reputation, but it basically comes from accusations he made against himself. This line might help buffer up that opinion, though. Divorced from Nature, stuck in the city, he tries to dream and sleep his life away. But this isn't real happiness—it's more of a longing for happiness, or an imagined dream-version of happiness.