Erin Berry's Canonball

Erin Berry Dr. Foss /ENGL 335B-01 31 March 2011

Canonball: “Frost at Midnight”

In the study of British Romantic Literature, scholars consider Samuel Taylor Coleridge to be one of “The Big Six” authors that contribute to the discussion and controversy between romantic irony and the romantic imagination. From previous studies of Coleridge, it is known that this author, who often collaborated with another big-name poet, William Wordsworth, made his fame by writing about the supernatural element of romantic literature. Both Coleridge and Wordsworth contributed to “Lyrical Ballads” and displayed their own opinions on the connection of mind and nature. While Wordsworth focuses on the element of romantic imagination, Coleridge writes with a style that would appeal to the common English man. The usage of romantic irony is effective in creating disbelief and brings up questions of the opposites of what is real and what is ordinary in a pessimistic attitude. When looking at some of his poems, such as “The Nightingale” and “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”, the text shows how Coleridge forms links between humanity and nature. Also, in poems like “Dejection: An Ode” and “Work without Hope”, the poet presents an opportunity for readers to question the possibilities of joy and melancholy that can be found in everyday life, especially in nature. While these selections of Coleridge’s work reveal and offer a close analysis and reading of his style, the poem “Frost at Midnight” should be added to the canon of his works. This poem by Coleridge suggests that nature holds a huge power over life and indicates how there can be a communion between human joy and nature. Because of this suggestive theme, it seems that this poem is essential to reinforce the concepts of romantic irony and imagination.

The poem, “Frost at Midnight” begins by painting a picture of the speaker who is inside his cottage, all alone except for the company of his baby, while he comments on what is happening outside on a cold winter night. The speaker, who is in fact Coleridge himself, seems to find comfort in being safe inside from the harshness of the frosty night. He meditates how the silence of the night is overpowering: “Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs / And vexes meditation with it’s strange / And extreme silentness” (8-10). Coleridge is baffled by how nature, which is a living and breathing thing, can be so silent, even with all the bustle of a city. He then makes a comparison to the stillness and silence of nature with dreams; they both are inconceivable and unable to be materialized. This is why Coleridge tries to make some form of a connection to the hearth in lines 15 to 22 where he says, “Only that film, which flutter’d on the grate, / Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing, / Methinks, it’s motion in this hush of nature / Gives it dim sympathies with me, who live, / Making it a companionable form, / With which I can hold commune. Idle thought! / But still the living spirit in our frame, / That loves not to behold a lifeless thing.” Here, Coleridge seems to contradict himself because he says first that he finds some companionship with the film of smoke from the fire, but then says that it’s in a human’s nature to befriend only things that have form and life. He continues on to reflect on his childhood with regret, saying that he used to spend his time searching for his “sweet birthplace” (33) and “I hop’d to see the stranger’s face, / Townsman, or aunt, or sister” (46-47). In this first part of the poem, Coleridge describes the tranquility of solitude and how, in his past, he would seek for friends in the non-existent.

In the second part of the poem, Coleridge seems to be using the poem as a way to instruct his infant. He speaks directly to the sleeping baby next to him, and tells him that he has a great future, if he doesn’t follow the path of his father’s education. He says, “thou shalt learn far other lore, / And in far other scenes! For I was rear’d / 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” (55-61). In this section, Coleridge desires for his son to follow an alternative epistemology, or way of learning. There is a connection to Coleridge’s biography because he was anxious about being a father and handled his anxieties with drug use. He is excited about his son’s destiny and sincerely hopes that he learns much more than he did. Coleridge wants his son to gain knowledge and an education by being surrounded by nature and appreciating the works of God, the “Great universal Teacher” (68). This speech can suggest Coleridge’s belief in the transcendent power of nature, for even as a child he believed that there was more than what he had learned about humanity. This section is very Wordsworthian because Coleridge seems to be sending a gift of wisdom to his child after reflecting on how he lacked nature in his youth; the power of children and the feeling of regret is seen in Wordsworth’s poem “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” and the reflection of youth in “Tintern Abbey”. At the end of the poem, Coleridge focuses back to the scene of the frosty midnight and suggests that the icicles from the frost will “Suspend thy little soul; then make thee shout, / And stretch and flutter from thy mother’s arms / As thou would’st fly for very eagerness” (83-85). In the end, Coleridge hopes that more people will learn from his mistakes, and have a greater appreciation for nature.

This poem would be an asset to the canon of British Romantic Literature because it contributes to the idea of both romantic irony and romantic imagination. By describing the possibility of education and spiritual connection through the power of nature, this poet exemplifies the style of romantic imagination. While the style of Coleridge is quite similar to other romantic poets like Wordsworth, he offers his own interpretation of nature. In “Frost at Midnight”, Coleridge suggests a mysterious and somewhat supernatural quality when he speaks about the “strangers” he would see from the film of a fire and the spookiness of the dark quiet night. He invokes romantic imagination with the prospect of gaining worldly knowledge from the scenery of nature, away from the city and people, throughout his lecture to his baby, who is the symbol of innocence. This poem would go well with the other selections of Coleridge’s poems, because it makes the reader wonder about the power of education, solitude, experience, and nature.

Word Count: 1,134