Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Frost at Midnight
This poem was written February 1798 and published in a quarto pamphlet the same year, then included in the<em> Poetical Register</em> (1808-9) and other collections of Coleridge’s writings from 1812 onwards. (Robert Clark
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, | ||
5 | 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 | ||
10 | 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; | ||
15 | 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, | ||
20 | Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit | |
By its own moods interprets, everywhere | ||
Echo or mirror seeking of itself, | ||
And makes a toy of Thought. | ||
But O! how oft, | ||
How oft, at school, with most believing mind, | ||
25 | 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 birthplace, and the old church tower, | ||
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang | ||
30 | 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, | ||
35 | 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 | ||
40 | 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, | ||
45 | Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, | |
Fill up the interspersèd vacancies | ||
And momentary pauses of the thought! | ||
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart | ||
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee, | ||
50 | 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 | ||
55 | 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 | ||
60 | 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. | ||
65 | 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 | ||
70 | 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. |
First published 1798
Robert Clark