The Foster-Mother's Tale - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
/The Foster-Mother's Tale - Samuel Taylor Coleridge/
A Brief Narrative Unfolding Mystery and Maternal Devotion
Original Poem (English), line by line:
(Note: “The Foster-Mother’s Tale” first appeared in Coleridge’s play Osorio (1797), later revised as Remorse (1813). The text below reflects a commonly anthologized version, presented as a short dramatic monologue.)
Foster-Mother (speaking):
I never saw the man whom you describe.
A young man—surely twenty summers old?
He had a fever when he was a child,
Which only these two eyes have seen him have,
And as he grew up from boy to man,
His fever took a strange and wayward shape,
In dreams and in the powers of a dream,
Which he would strive to treat as fancy still;
But when he was eighteen, the dreams grew throngs,
And this young man would wander forth at eve,
And gaze upon the stars, and talk to them;
For though you think that he was crazed in this,
He had high thoughts, and the sort of mind
Which, step by step, goes back to earliest times,
Still searching for the onward course of truth.
A strange lad was he! and though that you may start,
He would have visions with his waking eyes,
And ardent meditations where he sat,
And harmonies of speech that sometimes rose
So high, they ravished all who heard them speak.
Now, whether this is madness, or the gift
Of deeper insight into what we are,
None told him—who was there to speak the truth?
He had no friend, save him who fostered him,
And me, poor mother, with a mother’s love.
Then how he left us, in his prime of youth!
And whither gone, or why, or by what means,
I know not—truly, I may never know.
But thus I speak, remembering all his words,
And how they cling about my heart, like vines
That wind and climb, and will not be uprooted.
And I believe that somewhere he is searching
For knowledge still, or vision, or a sign.
He was as one who felt the world’s vast soul,
Yet strove in darkness to unbind its cords.
May God yet bless him, wheresoe’er he roams,
My foster-child, my boy!—and so ends the tale.
In “The Foster-Mother’s Tale,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge offers a brief but evocative monologue that appears within his play, originally titled Osorio (later Remorse). The poem—often anthologized on its own—presents a foster-mother recounting the curious mental and spiritual development of the child she raised. She describes how his boyhood fever gave way to increasingly vivid dreams and visionary moments, leading him to hold grand yet unshared insights about the cosmos.
Throughout her speech, the foster-mother wrestles with whether these unearthly visions signaled madness or profound wisdom. Coleridge hints at the Romantic notion that extraordinary sensitivity or imagination can be misread as insanity when it deviates from societal norms. By ending on a note of uncertainty about the young man’s fate, the passage underscores a key Romantic tension: the quest for deeper truth can set someone apart from the comfort of familial or communal life.
While the poem is slight in length, it vibrates with themes central to Coleridge’s work—mystery, self-exploration, and the boundary between the mundane and the transcendent. The foster-mother’s longing and love also reflect one of Coleridge’s consistent preoccupations: how parental (or familial) devotion coexists with the sometimes unfathomable interior worlds of children. Situated between dramatic speech and lyrical poem, “The Foster-Mother’s Tale” highlights Coleridge’s gift for weaving supernatural and introspective elements into an intimate setting. (Approx. 220 words)
Key points
1. The speech suggests that extraordinary imagination can be both a blessing and an isolating force.
2. Coleridge explores how familial love endures even when a child’s inner life remains mysterious.
3. The poem raises the Romantic theme of whether visionary perceptions signify madness or deeper insight.
4. By leaving the foster-child’s ultimate fate unknown, Coleridge emphasizes the open-ended nature of seeking higher truth.
5. Although part of a play, “The Foster-Mother’s Tale” is frequently read as a standalone piece of lyrical-dramatic reflection.
