image of a flower being transplanted, and as in Coleridge's epitaph the flower blooms only in infancy; she then develops the implication that it can go on blooming in Heaven. The image clearly springs from otherworldliness, the conviction that what happens in this world is of only minor or temporary importance; or, more strongly still, that life on earth is a corrupting experience, from which we should be glad to be rescued. If our true fulfillment lies in Heaven, then the sooner we get there the better: suicide needs to be forbidden to Christians because a true Christian ought naturally to desire to die as soon as possible. The child, too young to be tempted by suicide, was lucky to be given immediate access to Heaven, without having to sin in order to get there. And if this world is not merely a delay but actually a danger, then to dwell in it might diminish our chances of reaching Heaven at all. Hemans's poem does not quite say that; but it does say that if the child had lived, then its brightness would have been "stained with passion or with grief":
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| | Now not a sullying breath can rise, To dim thy glory in the skies.
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These lines, if scrutinized, seem to say that there are degrees of being saved: that those unfortunate enough to live longer would have their glory "stained"presumably meaning either that they will be less glorious as angels or (more probably) that our memory of them will include the imperfections of being human as well as the fact that they are now in Heaven. The lines do not quite say that their chances of attaining Heaven will be diminished if they live onan opinion we shall encounter later.
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Before we leave Coleridge, we ought to know that he did actually lose an infant son. So as well as exploring the implications of meaning that his epitaphs offer, we can relate them to the poet himself. Coleridge spent the winter of 17981799 in Germany, learning the language and collecting material for one of the many proposed books he never completed, a life of Lessing. He left his wife Sara and their two small sons in Nether Stowey, where their friends the Pooles kept an eye on her. While he was away, his infant son Berkeley was inoculated against smallpox, and the inoculation went wrong; he grew feverish, and the pustules began to appear on the skin by hundreds. Sara was distracted, especially since she herself caught a violent cold ("I was seized with a pain in my eye; it in a few hours became quite closedmy face and neck swollen, my head swimming") 5 , as well as
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