Coleridge writes frequently
about children, but, unlike other Romantic poets, he writes about
his own children more often than he writes about himself as a child.
With particular reference to “Frost at Midnight” and “The Nightingale,”
how can Coleridge’s attitude toward children best be characterized?
How does this attitude relate to his larger ideas of nature and
the imagination?
Like Wordsworth, Coleridge is wholly convinced
of the beauty and desirability of the individual’s connection with
nature. Unlike Wordsworth, however, Coleridge does not seem to believe
that the child automatically enjoys this privileged connection.
The child’s unity with the natural world is not innate; it is fragile
and can be stunted or destroyed; for example, if a child grows up
in the city, as Coleridge did, his idea of natural loveliness will
be quite limited (in Coleridge’s case, it is limited to the night
sky, as he describes in “Frost at Midnight”). Coleridge fervently
hopes that his children will enjoy a childhood among the beauties
of nature, which will nurture their imaginations (by giving to their
spirits, it will make their spirits ask for more) and shape their
souls.
Many of Coleridge’s poems—including
“Frost at Midnight,” “The Nightingale,” and “Dejection: An Ode”—achieve
their effect through the evocation of a dramatic scene in which
the speaker himself is situated. How does Coleridge describe a scene
simply by tracing his speaker’s thoughts? How does he imbue the
scene with a sense of immediacy?
Coleridge utilizes simple and efficient methods
to sketch his scenes—in “Frost at Midnight,” for instance, he opens
his poem with his speaker explicitly contemplating the scenery outside;
he uses a similar technique in “The Nightingale.” In both poems,
the natural objects that the speaker describes prompt his thoughts
in other directions. Coleridge maintains his scenes’ sense of immediacy
by having his speakers be interrupted or startled by something happening
around them; this technique serves to wrench the reader back from
the speaker’s abstract thoughts to the living, physical world of
the poem. The startling or disruptive elements often take the form
of sounds, such as the owl’s hooting in “Frost” and the nightingale’s
singing in “Nightingale.”