Frost at Midnight

The difference between life in the city and life in the country has been a theme in Western literature since the development of cosmopolitan cities. Coleridge and other Romantic poets underline this difference through attention to how rural landscapes allow encounters with the natural world. In “Frost at Midnight,” Coleridge plays out this distinction primarily through the juxtaposition of the city’s “old church-tower” (Line 29) of his childhood and the divine nature of his present rural locale.

The poem presents the church bells that impressed upon Coleridge’s childhood as an impoverished version of natural phenomena. Whereas Coleridge is able to hear the “owlet’s cry” (Line 2) in his country cottage, the church bells in the city are the “poor man’s only music” (Line 30). The music of those bells evokes “wild pleasure” (Line 33) in Coleridge. Due to the wildness of his emotions, however, he is unable to experience the fulfillment of this pleasure within the city. Instead, he views the feeling as “articulate sounds of things to come” (Line 34). Coleridge is looking back on this emotion, so his sense of “things to come” (Line 34) likely references actual experiences he has had since childhood.

Despite Coleridge being raised “[i]n the great city, pent ‘mid cloisters dim” (Line 53), he maintains a spiritual connection to nature.