Samuel Tyalor Coleridge

Coleridge’s poem “Frost at Midnight” shows the reflection of the speaker (who I assume to be Coleridge himself), it depicts his memories of childhood and how he wishes to raise his own young child. Coleridge had a childhood unlike some of the other Romantic writers and that can be shown in this poem. Unlike William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge was raised in the city of London and this caused him to grow up feeling isolated and contained. In a big city it is easy to get lost in the chaos and to be caught up in the business of life. It also contained his imagination and retrained him from letting himself run free. Whereas the Wordsworth’s were raised feeling connected to nature and learning to use it as metaphors of life which I think you can blatantly gather from reading any one of Dorothy Wordsworth’s poems. She uses imagery of nature to help relate her emotions and I think Coleridge could not learn this skill until he was adulthood.

As a child, Coleridge attended a boarding school in the city for distressed families, and you can gather from this poem just how drab a lifestyle he led there. Coleridge was bored with city life and felt that perhaps it was holding back his creativity and that he was confined to the conformity of the school. Coleridge was at school dreaming of being somewhere far away.

“how oft at school, whit most believing mind
presageful, have I gazed up the bars
to watch that fluttering stranger! And as oft
with unclosed lids, already had I dreamt.” (344)

He discusses how he pretended to pay attention in his classes “fixed with mock study” (344) but how all the while he was in class his mind was wishing to experience a more spiritual and natural atmosphere. Coleridge continues his poem showing his love for his son and a desire to have him be raised in a more liberating environment. This hope for change is something that was very fit for the times.
It is only natural for a parent to wish to provide thier child with all the luxuries or aspects of life that they regreted not having. Coleridge is no different he wants to give his child the sort of ideal rural upbringing that he feels he missed out on.

"with tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
and think that thou shalt learn far other lore
and in far other scenes! for i was reared
in the great city, pent 'mid cloister dim,
and saw naught lovely but the sky and stars" (345)

He is wanting to raise his son in a more condusive setting for a creative mind and peaceful lifestyle. This is something i admire in coleridge. It shows how compassionate and caring he was towards his family. This idea that you could change from the way you were raised, and that you could provide your children with a different, and better, lifestly then what you received is something which is truly true to the era and depicts that changes in Europe that were occurring during his lifetime.