Explication of Frost at Midnight

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Romantic poem “Frost at Midnight” opens on a peculiar placid night inside a sleepy cottage. All occupants of the town seem to be in a deep slumber except a Father perplexed by the stillness of the night. Enveloped by the overwhelming silence, the Father recalls his unhappy childhood in industrious London and recently finds his niche in the heart of the country. “Frost at Midnight” is about a Father’s journey to live a natural life in order to give his son a beauteous childhood.
The poem begins in present time on a silent night which is elaborately illustrated through natural imagery, “The Frost performs its secret ministry, / Unhelped by any wind. The owlett’s cry/ Came loud- and hark, again! Loud as before” (Coleridge lines 1-3). The absence of the wind, the secretive etching of the frost, and the alarming screech of an owl complete the mood of an almost eerie night. The Father’s submersion with nature in this poem is a very common theme in romantic poetry, but in this case the silence is almost overwhelming.
The poem has a very appropriate mood to match the calm sleepy night Coleridge depicts. The dream-like tone is seen throughout the poem’s entirety during the current night, in the father’s past, and the future for his son. The dreamy tone is highly effective because the duration of the poem is about recalling his past and planning his child’s future, which all is created and recreated in the mind through images or dreams. As the poem continues the Father watches over his sleeping infant and notices movement in the house besides his own, “Only that film, which fluttered on the grate, / Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing” (15-16). He calls the fluttering pieces of ash strangers because they are wandering far away from the stove from which they came. He personifies the piece of ash as a type of companion since it is the only moving object in the quiet of the night. “By its own moods interprets, everywhere, / Echo or mirror seeking of itself, / And makes a toy of thought” (21-23).The film or ash fluttering from the dying fire is the vehicle which trigger’s his thoughts and memories and brings him to the past of his childhood.
The new setting takes place in an urban schoolhouse in London where the Father, now a young, boy is a pupil. He has been taken away from his family in the countryside for schooling in the crowded city. He feels imprisoned in school and by his “stern preceptor.” The young boy uses daydreaming as a way to escape his confinement and relive his freedom, “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” (27-29). The absence of his natural lifestyle and freedom as a child helps shape his lifestyle choices for his son. He becomes so desperate for his freedom that he relives his memories of his birth-place. Daydreaming keeps his thoughts strong that someone is his family will come to his rescue and bring him back to the country. “For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face, / Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved, / My playmate when we both were clothed alike! (41-43).The stranger in this context refers to someone who would bring him away from school. The word “still” communicates that to this day he wishes he could be back with his family in the country. However, he realizes this is not possible and returns to the present again.
The Father directs his attention to the sleeping infant and tenderly speaks about how lovely of a life his child will live so different from the life he had, “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,” (50-52). The Father realizes the importance of a happy child hood and he makes sure that his child will live a happier life than he did. He hopes to raise his child away from the constraints of the city and in the open countryside. He states that his child will not learn the same knowledge found in textbooks because nature will be the teacher of his child. He wants his son to grow from the land itself and be free from the inhibitions of man and city. The Father predicts that living through nature is a more wholesome type of life that yields many benefits like a happiness and fulfillment. Coleridge glorifies the concept of country living which is a very common theme in romantic poetry. The picturesque imagery Coleridge describes in nature reveals how his son and the natural world will work in tandem:
But thou, my babe! Shalt wonder like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lake and shores (54-57).
Coleridge provides beautiful natural imagery that in fuller context describes the life of the Father’s child and describes how nature and the child will be one. To illustrate unity he uses a simile to describe the child as a breeze which also represents freedom. The comparison of the child and the wind signifies that his child has no limitations and can freely explore all the untold beauties of the world. During the process where the Father will give his son a natural life and freedom, he will also attain this happiness and freedom. The Father is reliving the missing parts of his childhood he once day dreamed in school, but now his country dream is a reality. Later, the poem continues with the Father stating that the education his child derives from nature will allow him to understand and appreciate the seasons, “Therefore, all seasons will be sweet to thee, / Whether the summer clothe the general earth/ With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing” (65-67). All seasons have an importance and a purpose, a natural lesson that the young child will learn from his learning sessions from Mother Nature.
Coleridge’s “Frost at Midnight” illustrates the Romantic Movement accurately because it places a high emphasis on the importance of childhood and the proper raising of children. The opposite childhoods of the father and the child reveal the poem’s central idea that a childhood immersed in nature is the idealistic and happy lifestyle. Coleridge glorifies country living through the abundant use of sublime natural imagery and the unison between man and nature. Happiness to the Romantic is a life isolated from industry and enlightenment, in a land still untouched by the destructive hand of man.














Work Cited
Coleridge, Samuel. “Frost at Midnight.” The Norton Anthology of Poetry. By Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy. 5th ed. New York: W.W Norton, 2004. 325. Print.