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Frost At Midnight Critical Analysis

Decent Essays

Coleridge frequently explores the relationship and interactions between humanity and nature in his poetry. His poems, particularly his conversation poem “Frost at Midnight”, allows the reader into his internal thoughts between the two groups. Coleridge shows how the thinking of the mind is mirrored in nature and how patterns repeat to reveal universal aspects in poetry, thoughts, and nature. Coleridge uses nature to capture the mind’s movement. Frost is the means that begins the poem and is how the structure of the poem is assembled. The poem contains organic, repeating fractal patterns with small variations within them similar to how frost is propagated. These patterns exist throughout nature in honeycombs, mountains, clouds, and leaves. Repetition is also seen between the speaker of the poem, Coleridge, and his infant son, Hartley. Repetition exists here as Harley is, in some way, a replica of Coleridge as children can be seen as versions of their parents. But Coleridge also points out how he and his son are different as well. Coleridge wants his son to be intimately familiar with nature by saying “With tender gladness, thus to look at thee, / And think that thou shalt learn far other lore / And in far other scenes!” (lines 49-51). Coleridge is going to make sure that his son will enjoy nature and not have the experience he had in the city. The alliteration of the “Th” sound in “thus to look at thee, / And think that thou” (lines 49-50) also draws the reader to these

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