Frost at Midnight

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is one of the most prominent names of the early 19th century. A well-regarded philosopher and literary theorist in his own time, Coleridge is best remembered as a poet who spearheaded the English Romantic movement alongside William Wordsworth. Coleridge and Wordsworth’s 1798 collaboration Lyrical Ballads established the tenets of Romantic poetry. Despite Wordsworth’s emphasis on common language and powerful emotion, Coleridge’s poetry tends toward supernatural phenomena and speculation. Coleridge also tends to explore philosophical subjects with a nuance at odds with Wordsworth’s simplicity.

Literary critics categorize “Frost at Midnight” as one of Coleridge’s conversation poems due to its personal, reflective subject matter and lack of traditional poetic form. Written and published in 1798, 17 months after the birth of Coleridge’s son Hartley, the poem explores Coleridge’s musings on the potential of childhood and the benefits of a natural education based on events from his own life, making Coleridge the speaker of the poem. “Frost at Midnight” first appeared in a small work alongside “France: An Ode” and “Fears in Solitude,” written in the same year.

Poet Biography

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Devon, England, on October 21, 1772. His father, John Coleridge, was a respected Protestant vicar and the headmaster of a local grammar school. Coleridge was the 10th and youngest child of John and his second wife, Anne Bowden. Coleridge’s father died in 1781, and Coleridge was sent to a charity school in Greyfriars, London, called Christ's Hospital. Coleridge began to write and study poetry during his time at Christ's Hospital. Though he met Charles Lamb and other like-minded students at the charity school, Coleridge’s childhood in London was lonely.

Coleridge enrolled in the University of Cambridge’s Jesus College in 1791. There, he won Cambridge’s Browne Gold Medal for an ode he wrote against the slave trade. During Coleridge’s time in Jesus College, his fellow students, including poet Robert Southey, introduced him to radical theological and political ideas.

After leaving Jesus College in 1794, Coleridge married Sara Fricker, with whom he would father four children. His first son, Hartley, is likely the model of the “cradled infant” (Line 6) in “Frost at Midnight.” Coleridge published Poems on Various Subjects in 1796, which was a collaboration between Coleridge, Southey, and Lamb. In 1798, Coleridge produced some of his most praised conversation poems, including “Frost at Midnight.” That same year, Coleridge collaborated with William Wordsworth on Lyrical Ballads, which defined the Romantic voice. Though Wordsworth wrote most of Lyrical Ballads, Coleridge’s poetry—in particular, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”—drew the most critical admiration.

Coleridge wrote poetry throughout his life but became less productive with age. By the late 1790s, Coleridge had developed an opium habit to deal with physical and mental health conditions. By 1800, this opium use developed into a dependency. Coleridge traveled to Italy in hopes that the drier climate would improve his health, but opium soon took over his life. By 1814, Coleridge had separated from his wife and placed himself under medical supervision. Coleridge focused his creative energies on criticism during this time. In 1817, Coleridge published his Biographia Literaria, a critical autobiography, to mixed responses.

After living for 18 years under the supervision of Dr. James Gillman, Coleridge died of heart failure in 1834. He was buried at Old Highgate Chapel. In 1961, after international fundraising to move Coleridge’s body to a better-kept location, his remains were moved to St. Michael’s Parish Church in Highgate, London.

Poem Text

The Frost performs its secret ministry,

Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry

Came loud—and hark, again! Loud as before.

The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,

Have left me to that solitude, which suits

Abstruser musings: save that at my side

My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.

‘Tis calm indeed! So calm, that it disturbs

And vexes meditation with its strange

And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,

This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,

With all the numberless goings-on of life,

Inaudible as dreams! The thin blue flame

Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;

Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,

Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.

Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature

Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,

Making it a companionable form,

Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit

By its own moods interprets, every where

Echo or mirror seeking of itself,

And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,

How oft, at school, with most believing mind,

Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,

To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft

With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt

Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,

Whose bells, the poor man’s only music, rang

From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,

So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me

With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear

Most like articulate sounds of things to come!

So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,

Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!

And so I brooded all the following morn,

Awed by the stern preceptor’s face, mine eye

Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:

Save if the door half opened, and I snatched

A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,

For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face,

Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,

My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,

Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,

Fill up the intersperséd vacancies

And momentary pauses of the thought!

My babe so beautiful! It thrills my heart

With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,

And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,

And in far other scenes! For I was reared

In the great city, pent ‘mid cloisters dim,

And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.

But thou, my babe! Shalt wander like a breeze

By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags

Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,

Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores

And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear

The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible

Of that eternal language, which thy God

Utters, who from eternity doth teach

Himself in all, and all things in himself.

Great universal Teacher! He shall mould

Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

Whether the summer clothe the general earth

With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch

Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Frost at Midnight.” 1798. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

“Frost at Midnight” is a lyrical poem that progresses through Coleridge’s reflections and associations. The poem begins with his observations of his immediate reality, noting how the “[f]rost performs its secret ministry” (Line 1), a hidden act or function of some sort, while everyone in his cottage is “at rest” (Line 4). A baby owl cries out once, then twice, “loud as before” (Line 3). Coleridge then moves to considering his “solitude, which suits / [a]bstruster musings” (Lines 5-6), or thoughts that are difficult to comprehend, and the “extreme silentness” (Line 10) of his environment. He notes that it’s so unusually silent that the calm environment “vexes meditation” (Line 9), making his contemplation more difficult in the soundlessness, and he mentions that a “cradled infant slumbers peacefully” (Line 7) at his side—his son. Coleridge exclaims that they live in the country, in a “populous village” (Line 11) surrounded by nature—“sea, hill, and wood” (Line 10)—which is currently “inaudible” (Line 13) despite its usual liveliness. At the end of the first stanza, his attention focuses on a “film” (Line 15) of ash that “fluttered on the grate” (Line 15) of the fireplace.

The second stanza follows Coleridge’s meditations on the fluttering ash. He likens its movement to that of a living creature, giving it a “companiable form” (Line 19) similar to his own. The tiny movements it makes seem to “echo” (Line 22) and reflect the musings of his own “idling Spirit” (Line 20), “mak[ing] a toy” (Line 23) of his thoughts.

The third stanza looks out to the larger world as Coleridge reflects on watching a similar “fluttering stranger” (Line 27), referring to the ash, during his time in school. His reflections then turn to his “sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower” (Line 29) near it, which he “dreamt, / [l]ulled [him] to sleep” (Lines 35-36) with its bells that seemed to offer premonitions of “things to come” (Line 34). He returns his attention to school and his “stern preceptor’s face” (Line 38), upset at Coleridge’s brooding and distraction from his studies. If the school door even “half opened” (Line 40), Coleridge would look up quickly, hoping to see “the stranger’s face” (Line 42), or even his “sister more beloved” (Line 43), who used to be his “play-mate” (Line 44) when they were younger and still dressed alike.

Back in the cottage, Coleridge addresses the “[d]ear [b]abe, that sleepest cradled by [his] side” (Line 45). He notices how the child’s breath cuts through the earlier silence and thinks the child “shalt learn far other lore, / [a]nd in far other scenes” (Lines 51-52) than he ever did, as Coleridge was raised in “the great city” (Line 53), pent up and confined between buildings that made it hard to see anything “lovely but the sky and stars” (Line 54). In the second half of the fourth stanza, Coleridge communicates the kind of natural education he wants his child to experience: to “wander like a breeze” (Line 55) among nature and its scenery. In this way, his child will “see and hear” (Line 59) the “eternal language” (Line 61) that God speaks: presenting “[h]imself in all, and all things in himself” (Line 63). This language of God and of nature will teach and “mould” (Line 64) Coleridge’s son, and this teaching of his “spirit” will “make it ask” even more questions (Line 65).

The final stanza states that “all seasons shall be sweet to” (Line 66) the child if he follows Coleridge’s hopes—whether that season is summer, when the earth is covered “with greenness” (Line 68), or winter, when “the redbreast” (Line 68), a robin, sits among the snow-covered trees while the thatches of roofs give off “smoke” (Line 71) as they thaw. Coleridge concludes with winter, stating that his son will find joy in it whether the melting droplets from houses’ eaves are heard in the quiet “trances” between the wind’s “blast[s]” (Line 72) or the “secret ministry of frost” (Line 73) that catalyzed the poem’s reflection freezes the droplets in “silent icicles” (Line 74) that shine with the light of the moon.