In "Frost at Midnight", why are Coleridge's thoughts not just mere musings? As a romantic poet, Coleridge explores man's relationship with nature and the effects of imagination

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In “Frost at Midnight”, why are Coleridge’s thoughts not just mere musings?

As a romantic poet, Coleridge explores man’s relationship with nature and the effects of imagination on the human mind, but some of his ideas are more individual to himself. “Frost at Midnight” relies on a highly personal idiom to express its central themes. It not only states the author’s thoughts, but also his concerns and his hopes towards the world and towards his son.

Coleridge conveys his concerns to the reader from early in the poem. ‘The frost performs its silent ministry.’ The word “performs” subtly implies that the action has to be done, yet done in a solitary and lonely way. Also the word ministry has connotations of religious healing. The whole line is metaphorical to that fact that Coleridge is trying to change this alien world for the better, in a secret way. The diction in the first line carries an elusive resonance and enforces the idea that Coleridge has concerns for the world at that time.

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Coleridge wishes his ‘babe’ to have a different childhood than him. For he was raised up ‘in the great city, pent mid’ cloisters dim.’ He wishes his child to enjoy what he was deprived of when he was a kid. He wants his son to ‘wander like a breeze’. The juxtaposition of the dim city and the light freedom provides a very sharp contrast. The thou in ‘but thou my babe’ is italized further to add to the contrast by Coleridge’s emphasis that his child will be different from him. Coleridge was taught by a ‘stern preceptor’, but he ...

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