I found this passage in an anthology of Iris Origo’s creation, The Vagabond Path (pg 39). It is attributed to Samuel Taylor Coleridge but without specific reference and google returns no results. I imagine it comes from his notebooks – only because the full edition begun in the 50s isn’t in public domain so likely wouldn’t be indexed anywhere online.
A little boy, lying in bed one night in the year 1802, was feeling unhappy. He called for a candle – the seems, he said, were troubling him. “What do you mean, my love?” “The Seems, the seems. What seems to be and is not, men and faces and I do not know what – ugly and sometimes pretty and those turn ugly, and they seem when my eyes are open, and worse when they are shut – and the candle cures the seems.”
Extracts 