Coleridge Selected Poems

Frost at Midnight

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind…

…
…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
And extreme silentness…

…
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.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
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.
[we all seek our likeness, we sympathize with motion]

…
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger!…
[the familiar fluttering film still upon the grate, the bars, the forms]

…
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
…

…
Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interespersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
…
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,
… [childlike wonder unbridled beyond established thought]
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
…
…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.
[through wonderful discovery we find that all is given to us, and we thus our spirits thirst for more]

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
…
…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.
[whether they water drops from the eaves or hangs in silent icicles, we shall be grateful. Death?… the film will always flutter, the child will always awaken, motion will always work her way into the secret ministry of frost?]

An Ode: France, V

The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain,
Slaves by their own compulsion! In mad game
They burst their manacles and wear the name
Of Freedom, graven on a heavier chain!
O Liberty! with profitless endeavour
Have I pursued thee, many a weary hour;
But thou nor swell’st the victor’s strain, nor ever
Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power.
Alike from all, howe’er they praise thee,
(Nor prayer, nor boastful name delays thee)
Alike from Priestcraft’s harpy minions,
And factious Blasphemy’s obscener slaves,
Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions,
The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves!
And there I felt thee!—on that sea-cliff’s verge,
Whose pines, scarce travelled by the breeze above,
Had made one murmur with the distant surge!
Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare,
And shot my being through earth, sea, and air,
Possessing all things with intensest love,
O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there.

• The sensual and the dark: materialists and idealists, bound by their compulsions: the sensualist, the concreteness of his senses; the idealist, the purity of his unreal abstractions
• The blasphemous (materialist) and the priestcraft (idealists) claim to hold Liberty, claim to be most free from delusion, yet Liberty flows past their restricting assumptions and their prideful boasting, and mingles lovingly with Nature