“Frost at Midnight” Introduction

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“Frost at Midnight” Summary

“Frost at Midnight” Themes

• 

  The Divinity of Nature

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• 

  Childhood, Nature, and Hope

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• 

  Environment and State of Mind

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Frost at Midnight”

• Lines 1-6

  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:

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 6-11

  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!

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 11-16

  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.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 17-19

  Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
  Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
  Making it a companionable form,

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 20-23

  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.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 24-29

  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,

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 29-34

  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!

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 35-39

  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:

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 40-44

  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!

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 45-48

  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!

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 49-54

  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.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 55-59

  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:

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 59-65

  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.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 66-71

  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 night-thatch
  Smokes in the sun-thaw;

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 71-75

  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.

  

  

  

  

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“Frost at Midnight” Symbols

• 

  Frost

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• 

  Soot

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• 

  Church Bells

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“Frost at Midnight” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Apostrophe

  

  

  

  

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• Alliteration

  

  

  

  

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• Assonance

  

  

  

  

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• Consonance

  

  

  

  

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• Caesura

  

  

  

  

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• Enjambment

  

  

  

  

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• Simile

  

  

  

  

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• Imagery

  

  

  

  

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• Personification

  

  

  

  

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• Repetition

  

  

  

  

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“Frost at Midnight” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Frost
• Ministry
• Owlet
• Inmates
• Cottage
• Abstruser
• Musings
• Vexes
• Meditation
• Wood
• Film
• Grate
• Sympathies
• Freaks
• Idling
• Spirit
• Toy
• Oft
• Presageful
• Grazed
• Stranger
• Unclosed Lids
• Morn
• Fair-day
• Mine
• Articulate Sounds
• Soothing
• Brooded
• Preceptor
• Swimming
• Babe
• Intersperséd
• Vacancies
• Lore
• Pent 'mid cloisters dim
• Nought
• Crags
• Image
• Bulk
• Intelligible
• Mould
• General earth
• Betwixt
• Night-thatch
• Sun-thaw
• Eave-drops
• Trances
• Blast

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Frost at Midnight”

• Form

• Meter

• Rhyme Scheme

“Frost at Midnight” Speaker

“Frost at Midnight” Setting

Literary and Historical Context of “Frost at Midnight”

More “Frost at Midnight” Resources

• External Resources

  • Pantisocracy — An essay on Pantisocracy, the religious-communistic utopia that Coleridge and his friends had hoped to found.

  • A Movie Star Reads the Poem — Hear Richard Burton read "Frost at Midnight."

  • A Biography of Coleridge — A detailed biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge from the Poetry Foundation.

  • Coleridge Cottage — The cottage where Coleridge wrote "Frost at Midnight" is in the southwest of England, where it is preserved by the National Trust. Their website has photos and historical information.

  • More on "Frost at Midnight" — An article of "Frost at Midnight" from the Poetry Foundation.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by Samuel Coleridge

  • Dejection: An Ode

  • Kubla Khan

  • The Eolian Harp

  • The Pains of Sleep

  • This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison