REAL AND IMAGINARY

While researching an ongoing project, I came across a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge that, although simple in nature, holds a very deep reflection about the nature of time and how we interact with it.

Time, Real And Imaginary. An Allegory

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

On the wide level of a mountain's head 
(I knew not where, but 'twas some faery place), 
Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread, 
Two lovely children run an endless race, 
      A sister and a brother!
      This far outstripp'd the other; 
  Yet ever runs she with reverted face, 
  And looks and listens for the boy behind: 
      For he, alas! is blind! 
O'er rough and smooth with even step he pass'd,
And knows not whether he be first or last.

The title and the content might seem unconnected, but let’s look deeper. The two children running the mountaintop are an allegory for our dichotomy with time. One has perfect vision; the other is blind. The sighted child always looks back at the blind child, ensuring they are not left behind—a metaphor for how we look at the past while moving forward into the future. The blind child might represent the uncertainty of the future. Together, they play, like we do internally every day in our lives, learning from the past without knowing what the future holds. Between this relationship between the real past, which we can’t change, and the imagined future, which we can’t know, time exists.