This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison Spirituality

The word "Heaven" does not have a specifically religious meaning here – it just means "sky." But the phrase "many-steepled track magnificent" compares the hills that poke out of the landscape to the steeples of country churches that are visible when you approach a village. Rather than being confined to one church, as most villages were, the landscape has many of these metaphorical places of worship. In other words, nature beats man.

These lines are the most difficult in the poem. The speaker says that the landscape is not just blind matter, not "gross" like a lifeless rock or stump. Instead, nature is like a body that houses that "soul" of the Almighty Spirit of God. A philosopher might find this imagery to be evidence of "Transcendentalism" or "Idealism." The basic idea is that the "real world" – the true nature of things – lies "behind" or "inside" the visible world.

Try taking out the word "nature" in these lines and replacing it with the word "God." Do you see a substantial difference?

The bird is a traditional symbol for the spiritual soul that flies "above" the material world. But this bird makes an awkward "creaking" sound that can only be understood in the context of nature as a whole.