Prose Notes on "Frost at Midnight" By S.T. Coleridge

Summary: The quiet of night sets the scene for poet to muse and unleash his creative spirit. All is conducive, ready, but he finds the silence disturbing, and cannot activate his 'idling spirit'. He focuses on the tiny fluttering of the film (the only movement in the room), and then his memory and imagination takes him back in time. He moves through the memories of his school days, when boredom set him on daydreams of …

…and between heaven and earth (both a part of Nature). This correlation puts into perspective the all-encompassing workings of nature, which, although monumental, is performed in secrecy and silence (mirroring the silent way in which the world works upon the mind?). The repetition of "quiet" reinforces the feeling of stillness, drawing a link between the poem's beginning and its end, conveying a milieu of cyclic continuation, evoking the idea of Nature's regenerative cycles and stability.