Frost at Midnight by Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Richard Burton

The Frost performs it's secret ministry

Unhelped by any wind

The owlet's cry

Came loud and hark again loud as before

The inmates of my cottage all at rest

Have left me to that solitude which suits

Abstruser musings save that at my side

My cradled infant slumbers peacefully

'Tis calm indeed so calm that it disturbs

And vexes meditation with its strange

And extreme silentness

Sea hill and wood

This populous village

Sea and hill and wood

With all the numberless goings on of life

Inaudible as dreams the thin blue flame

Lies on my low burnt fire and quivers not

Only that film which fluttered on the grate

Still flutters there the sole unquiet thing

Methinks its motion in this hush of nature

Gives it dim sympathies with me who live

Making it a companionable form

Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit

By its own moods interprets every where

Echo or mirror seeking of itself

And makes a toy of Thought

But O how oft

How oft at school with most believing mind

Presageful have I gazed upon the bars

To watch that fluttering stranger and as oft

With unclosed lids already had I dreamt

Of my sweet birth place and the old church tower

Whose bells the poor man's only music rang

From morn to evening all the hot Fair day

So sweetly that they stirred and haunted me

With a wild pleasure falling on mine ear

Most like articulate sounds of things to come

So gazed I till the soothing things

I dreamt

Lulled me to sleep and sleep prolonged my dreams

And so I brooded all the following morn

Awed by the stern preceptor's face mine eye

Fixed with mock study on my swimming book

Save if the door half opened and

I snatched

A hasty glance and still my heart leaped up

For still I hoped to see the stranger's face

Townsman or aunt or sister more beloved

My play mate when we both were clothed alike

Dear Babe that sleepest cradled by my side

Whose gentle breathings heard in this deep calm

Fill up the interspersed vacancies

And momentary pauses of the thought

My babe so beautiful it thrills my heart

With tender gladness thus to look at thee

And think that thou shall learn far other lore

And in far other scenes

For I was reared

In the great city pent 'mid cloisters dim

And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars

But thou my babe shalt wander like a breeze

By lakes and sandy shores beneath the crags

Of ancient mountain and beneath the clouds

Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores

And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear

The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible

Of that eternal language which thy God

Utters who from eternity doth teach

Himself in all and all things in himself

Great universal Teacher he shall mould

Thy spirit and by giving make it ask

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee

Whether the summer clothe the general earth

With greenness or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple tree while the nigh thatch

Smokes in the sun thaw

Whether the eave drops fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon