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Frost at Midnight
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Frost at Midnight

poem by Coleridge
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History

Frost at Midnight, poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published in Lyrical Ballads (1798), in which Coleridge pioneered a new, informal mode of poetry unified by conversational tone and rhythm.

In the winter of 1798 Coleridge composed the four-stanza poem in the presence of his sleeping infant son, Hartley. The soliloquy begins with the description of a silent frosty night and proceeds through a meditation on the relationship between the quiet work of frost and the quiet breathing of the sleeping baby at the poet’s side, to conclude in a resolve that his child shall be brought up as a “child of nature,” so that the sympathies the poet has come to detect may be reinforced throughout the child’s education.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.