Like Peter, I found “Frost at Midnight” to be the most interesting of the required readings for Thursday’s class of this week. I particularly enjoyed the first paragraph. The final focus of the paragraph, where Coleridge discusses the piece of soot fluttering on the grate of the fireplace, felt at first a little discordant with the rest. It felt a little too ‘heady’ and philosophical in comparison to the section that introduced it, which felt spiritual in its contemplation. A better way of explaining this, perhaps, is that the first half of the paragraph felt deeply emotional and mysterious, whereas the second felt too intellectual, a meager show of mental gymnastics by comparison. After some thought, though I came to appreciate it more. I drew parallels between Coleridge’s argument in this poem — that the soot’s random movements serve as a mirror to the soul, or to intellect — and his arguments in “The Eolian Harp,” that the mind is drawn to action by a breeze of intellect. In both is a sense of movement in nature producing movement within. When I thought about the section through this lens, I began to notice what was different about it. I think it has a rather sad tone, overall: the soot provides only “dim sympathies,” and acts only through “puny flaps and freaks,” and the Spirit is defined as lonely, “every where / Echo or mirror seeking of itself,” with no promise that it will ever find true communion. Although I did find the larger theme of this contemplation to be a little redundant/tired having read “The Eolian Harp,” the emotion present in it I think allows it to flow with the remainder of the poem better, and allows this poem to differentiate itself from Coleridge’s others.
Another unique use of the tonally divided first paragraph is to set up the second paragraph, which explores the superstition of the fluttering soot in the context of childhood and Coleridge’s own experiences away from home. Here, childish thoughts merge with genuine loneliness and hope, as deeply felt as in any human, producing an interesting sense of unity. My impression of reading the first couple paragraphs, then, was of division, created by a shift in tone, and then unity, created by Coleridge’s effective combination of childish and worldly sentiments.
