1
The Frost performs its secret ministry,
2 Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
3 Came loud--and hark, again! loud as before.
4 The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
5 Have left me to that solitude, which suits
6 Abstruser musings: save that at my side
7 My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
8 'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
9 And vexes meditation with its strange
10 And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
11 This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
12 With all the numberless goings-on of life,
13 Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
14 Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
15 Only
that film, which fluttered on the grate,
16 Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
17 Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
18 Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
19 Making it a companionable form,
20 Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
21 By its own moods interprets, every where
22 Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
23 And makes a toy of Thought.
24
But O! how oft,
25 How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
26 Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
27 To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft
28 With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
29 Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
30 Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
31 From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
32 So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
33 With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
34 Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
35 So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
36 Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
37 And so I brooded all the following morn,
38 Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
39 Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
40 Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
41 A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
42 For
still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
43 Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
44 My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!
45 Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
46 Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
47 Fill up the interspers{'e}d vacancies
48 And momentary pauses of the thought!
49 My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
50 With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
51 And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
52 And in far other scenes! For I was reared
53 In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
54 And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
55 But thou , my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
56 By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
57 Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
58 Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
59 And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
60 The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
61 Of that eternal language, which thy God
62 Utters, who from eternity doth teach
63 Himself in all, and all things in himself.
64 Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
65 Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.
66 Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
67 Whether the summer clothe the general earth
68 With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
69 Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
70 Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
71 Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
72 Heard
only in the trances of the blast,
73 Or if the secret ministry of frost
74 Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
75 Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
Together with the editors, the Department of English (University of Toronto), and the University of Toronto Press, the following individuals share copyright for the work that went into this edition:
Screen Design (Electronic Edition):
Sian Meikle (University of Toronto Library)
Scanning:
Sharine Leung (Centre for Computing in the Humanities)
Form:
unrhymed
Composition Date:
February 1798 (dated so by Coleridge).
1.
Published in a quarto pamphlet with "Fears in Solitude" and "France: An Ode."
15.
only that film. Coleridge notes: "In all parts of the kingdom these films are called strangers and supposed to portend the arrival of some absent friend."
42.
my sister: Ann, his only sister, who had died at the age of twenty-four in 1791.
72.
The first (1798) more extended conclusion to the poem read as follows:
Or whether the secret ministery of cold
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet moon,
Like those, my babe! which ere tomorrow's warmth
Have capp'd their sharp keen points with pendulous drops,
Will catch thine eye, and with their novelty
Suspend thy little soul; then make thee shout,
And stretch and flutter from thy mother's arms
As though wouldst fly for very eagerness.
In the fourth book of Cowper's Task is a passage describing a "brown study" (apparent thought but real vacuity). Coleridge's poem seems to owe something to Cowper though it differs significantly in finding meaning in the "indolent vacuity of thought."