"Frost At Midnight", by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

'Frost at Midnight' is another of Coleridge's most famous Conversation poems. In it, through musing on some childhood memories set off by the quiet within his cottage, Coleridge partly muses on those psychological states that produce poetry. Hence, it is another perfect exemplar of an imaginative journey - and, again, it is one which eventually broadens his own understanding of the world. The following analysis takes you carefully through the poem. As you read it, …

…or, rather, present-in-future) of the beginning: Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to the quiet Moon. (ll.72-74) Note that the return to the hush of the beginning fuses all time in the moment of the poem itself - and also, as we can see through the sound structure of the last two lines, in the "I", in the figure of the solitary poet himself.