Reeve Parker (1975). "Frost at Midnight": Coleridge's companionable form. In Coleridge's Meditative Art (pp. 121-139). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Among the important poems of Coleridge's Nether Stowey years, "Frost at Midnight" is "the quietest in tone" (126). Its structure is a "return-upon-itself" in which the "return at the end (in the coda) is to the wintry situation of the opening, though now developed so the 'secret ministry of frost' is informed with sacramental meaning" (127). Overall, says Parker,

the significant movement in the poem is from the willful and superstitious solipsism of a depressed sensibility, toying with a companionable form, to the apprehension of a regenerate companionship, based not on superstition but on substantial belief. (127)

Parker notes that the element of superstition is clearer in the first version of the poem (1798 version; click on the Back button to return). Logically, of course, "Coleridge's proper companion in the evening setting is his sleeping infant Hartley, but in his vexed state of mind at the outset he cannot realize that" (128). So the silentness vexes instead of soothing him.

Like the film on the grate, Coleridge's memories of school produce only another mirror or echo of himself, since the companion he envisages is "the sister recalled as a narcissistic twin from the lost paradise when even sexual differentiation was unperceived" (129-130), a type of "blameless but pathetic solipsism" (130). In contrast, in his return to the present Coleridge discovers next to him the companionable form of his sleeping child, and now imagines his visionary progress through scenes of nature:

Noteworthy in this imagined country is that the lakes and sandy shores and mountain crags find their companionable forms in the shapes of the clouds, which in their bulk 'image' the topography of the land beneath. (131)

And this echoing in turn reflects the image of the Divine who teaches himself in the images of nature. This "quest for an adequate symbology in the natural world," says Parker, was the focus of "much of Coleridge's religious and aesthetic philosophy." Here it is "displaced onto the poet's companion," Hartley (132).

In addition to the companionable form, Parker shows that sound and silence also provide an important theme of the poem. Here the verbal art of the poet is counterpoised by the secret or silent language of nature in which frost is "the master agent of silent ministry" (133). That language becomes available finally for Hartley in a vision that Parker suggests is redemptive. The metaphor of God as the child's teacher

points to the redemption, through the effect of the imagined future on the mood of the present, of time past endured in misery under a 'stern preceptor.' Through such metaphors as these the language of the poem is itself articulated into a coherent structure. The shapes and sounds that proved so vexing in the opening lines are now intelligible as God's utterance. (135)

The singing redbreast in the coda of the poem is "a counterpart of the singing poet, each triumphing over the barrenness of his setting." And the thatch that "Smokes in the sun-thaw" seems like incense offered up in gratitude for the sun's warmth. Lastly, the icicles shining to the moon show "the interplay of reflective energies of light between companionable forms, each serving as the mirror which the other seeks" (135).