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 intersperséd 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 shalt 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.
Some Critical
Comments
Harold
Bloom
"Frost at
Midnight" is the masterpiece of the 'conversational poems'ˇinaugurating the
major Wordsworthian myth of the memory as salvation.
...The poem comes
full circle, back to its opening. The secret ministry of frost is analogous to
the secret ministry of memory, for both bind together apparently disparate
phenomena in an imaginative unity. The frost
creates a surface both to receive and reflect the shining of the winter moon.
Memory, moving by its overtly arbitrary but deeply designed associations,
creates an identity between the mature poet and the child who is his ancestor,
as well as with his own child. In this identity the poem comes into full being,
with its own receiving and reflecting surfaces that mold the poet’s and (he
hopes) his son’s spirits, and, by giving, make them ask who is the author of the
gift.
Mary
Jacobus
The major
achievement of the Conversation Poem is its fusion of subjective experience and
philosophic statement. Feeling and meaning interpenetrate, and the
discursiveness of The Task gives way
to a kind of poetry that is both more economical and more profound. In ‘Frost at
Midnight’, the random reflections of Cowper’s fire-gazing become the basis for a
poem about the power of the imagination to bring mind and nature into creative
relationship.
Jonathan
Bate
The secret ministry of the frost (weather) is the
exterior analogue for the equally secret interior ministry of the memory
(time).As the frost writes upon the
window-pane, so memory writes the poet’s identity. By the end of the
night both the environment of the cottage and the ecology of the poet’s mind
will have subtly evolved. The poet has learnt to dwell more securely with
himself, his home and his environment.
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 intersperséd 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 shalt 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.
Some Critical
Comments
Harold
Bloom
"Frost at
Midnight" is the masterpiece of the 'conversational poems'ˇinaugurating the
major Wordsworthian myth of the memory as salvation.
...The poem comes
full circle, back to its opening. The secret ministry of frost is analogous to
the secret ministry of memory, for both bind together apparently disparate
phenomena in an imaginative unity. The frost
creates a surface both to receive and reflect the shining of the winter moon.
Memory, moving by its overtly arbitrary but deeply designed associations,
creates an identity between the mature poet and the child who is his ancestor,
as well as with his own child. In this identity the poem comes into full being,
with its own receiving and reflecting surfaces that mold the poet’s and (he
hopes) his son’s spirits, and, by giving, make them ask who is the author of the
gift.
Mary
Jacobus
The major
achievement of the Conversation Poem is its fusion of subjective experience and
philosophic statement. Feeling and meaning interpenetrate, and the
discursiveness of The Task gives way
to a kind of poetry that is both more economical and more profound. In ‘Frost at
Midnight’, the random reflections of Cowper’s fire-gazing become the basis for a
poem about the power of the imagination to bring mind and nature into creative
relationship.
Jonathan
Bate
The secret ministry of the frost (weather) is the
exterior analogue for the equally secret interior ministry of the memory
(time).As the frost writes upon the
window-pane, so memory writes the poet’s identity. By the end of the
night both the environment of the cottage and the ecology of the poet’s mind
will have subtly evolved. The poet has learnt to dwell more securely with
himself, his home and his environment.
