How frost at midnight by Samuel Coleridge shows the authors critique of enlightenment thought and the impact of industrialism on the individual’s life.

FROST AT MIDNIGHT’S CRITIQUE OF ENLIGHTENMENT THOUGHT
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“Frost at Midnight” is arguably one of the greatest conversational poems written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In early ninetieth and late eighteenth Century, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his friend William Wordsworth spearheaded a philosophical writing movement in England dubbed “Romantic Movement.” Romanticism transformed the way the society thought, and the Romantic Movement was regarded as a drive in the antiquity of ethos, an appealing method and an outlook of mind. Ideally, romanticism delivered the expression of the writer’s ideas and thoughts towards their societies, which were predominantly the United States and Europe. The movement was introduced to protest against Enlightenment that delivered stringent rationalism and ideology. The church played a significant role regarding Enlightenment thus religious conviction, and the significance of God was incorporated in numerous aspects of culture. Therefore, Romanticism was a reaction to the Enlightenment Movement and their pious dogma.
Romantics believe that it is very paramount for one to maintain a connection with his or her emotions. They believed that the advances that Enlightenment made were fashioning an oppressive and conformist society. According to romantics, rationality and science were not sufficient to fully understand human personality and the world. Moreover, the advances in the modern world came at the price of values from the distant past that were slowly getting phased out.

Romanticism was regarded as an assertion of the primacy of feeling and intuitive individualism. Those ideas were expressed through art in a more detailed format. While Enlightenment portrayed the future as progressive, characterized by brotherhood and friendship, Romanticism represented the future as unpleasant, characterized by high technology yet reduced social quality, dehumanization, alienation and full of depression. The only happy souls are the ones that would escape to the countryside. Typically, writers gravitate toward Romanticism while scientists focus on Enlightenment.
Romanticism is based on the argument that reason cannot explain everything. Romantics sought for a more profound, often intuitive appeals. They often viewed things from a different perspective with the Enlightenment thinkers. For instance, while Enlightenment thinkers regarded the Middle Ages as a period of irrationality and ignorance, the Romantics conceptualized the Middle Ages as a time for adventure and spiritual depth. The Romantics rejected the order that characterized the Enlightenment period and rationalism reiterating on the importance of a person conveying his or her authentic feeling.
Romantic poets derived their inspiration from the desire for liberty and condemned the manipulation of the underprivileged. They placed more emphasis on the significance of a person; a belief that people should follow morals than enacted rules and agreements. They had an actual sense of obligation to their fellow men and felt it was their responsibility to employ poetry to inspire and inform others and to transform the society. The first generation romantic poets included Wordsworth and Coleridge who shared a close friendship and went as far as collaborating on the Lyrical Ballads. The Romantics has an instinctive feeling that they were selected to lead others through the turbulent era of transformation.
According to M.H. Abrams, Romantic poetry is differentiated by the conviction that poetry is not an imitation of nature but rather the poet representing his or her inner emotions. Romantic poems are also effortless and not necessarily a grueling exercise. Nature is very prevalent in romantic poems, as well as the exaltation of the recluse and the regular.
“Frost at Midnight” is a poem written devoid of careful observance to recognized poetic agreements. The poem has four stanzas but with different lengths, assumes a conversational tone and it is written in blank verse meaning it does not incorporate rhyme. The flexibility of the rhythm balances the unprompted rash nature of a poem comprising of both blissful visions and personal considerations. The speaker also spans through past, present and future circumstances, which is a typical style used in romantic poems. “Frost at Midnight” employs nature as the impetus to turn inward. The speaker’s perceptions enable him to go a journey through imagination and reminiscence and eventually to a moment of personal discernment. Coleridge highlights the Romantic belief that the poet’s role is not to hold a mirror up to nature but rather use the springs of feelings and memory, which nature arouses to develop something exceptional and valuable.
Romantics also use the exemplification of the natural occurrences. For instance, in the “Frost at Midnight,” Coleridge or the speaker in this regard personifies by instilling it with intent. “The Frost performs its secret ministry.” At a later part of the poem, the speaker typifies a film of soot fretting on the grid of the fire. “Methinks, its motion in the hush of nature gives it dim sympathies with me who lives, making it a companionable form.” These illustrations are efficient in demonstrating the Romantic principle, which has it that even the aspects of nature that seem familiar can surprise the reader. The speaker portrays a common veneration for nature, which is a significant concern of Romanticism. The speaker describes the “far other scenes” where his son will spend his boyhood “By lakes and sandy shore, beneath the crags/ of Ancient Mountain.” The speaker not only describes the topology of nature but also recalls his childhood in the city and further compares the deserted sophistication of the city and the reverential portrayal of nature. “For I was reared in the great city, pint mid cloisters dim, and saw naught lovely but the sky and stars, but thou, my babe! Shalt wander like a breeze. By lakes and sandy shores.” The significance of Coleridge’s choice of words here is palpable. The difference between the two setting, dim cloisters’ of the city and his son “wandering like a breeze,” creates the sense of light and freedom that nature brings to the human experience.
The speaker’s portrayal of his son is significant in romanticism since it highlights the Romantics preference for intellectual stimulation and development through the study of nature than the “conventional education,” which is always advocated for by Enlightenment thinkers. The speaker is proud that his son will learn “far other lore” in these “far other scenes.” He will see and hear “the lovely shapes and sounds intelligible, of that eternal language, which thy God utters, who from all eternity doth teach himself in all, and all things in himself. Great universal Teacher! He shall mold Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.” Coleridge thought that both human beings and nature shared a divine element and that a respectful appreciation of nature would nourish an inquisitive and intelligent mind. The conviction that an open appreciation for the divine in nature is the greatest of educations.
The “Frost at Midnight” explores and exemplifies the literary principles of Romanticism and also the philosophical idea that what we receive from nature is what we confer. Although nature is the teacher, it is paramount to recognize that the conclusion of the poem expresses an educational process where the mind plays a central role. Nature molds the human spirit by giving it the ability to ask questions. “Frost at Midnight” exemplifies a noticeably Romantic Epistemology by celebrating the potential of the human mind. It contradicts with the Enlightenment conviction that dependable knowledge can only be amassed through experience upon the sensory world. As the poem is concluded, the speaker surfaces as a wise and happier man. The speaker has used imagination to transform his world and takes comfort in the idea that he son will be able to teach himself by actively interacting with nature, something he never experienced.
As one can see from reading “Frost at Midnight,” it embodies and explores the primary concerns of Romanticism and critiques the Enlightenment ideologies. Coleridge effortlessly expresses the speaker’s emotions through meditations written in blank verse and with stanzas that are varying in length. The speaker also used personification to represent in ordinary things in an unusual way and juxtaposition to compare his upbringing and his son’s, which the speaker uses to make a connection between the supernatural world and nature. In this poem, more power is given to nature, and it is regarded as the best teacher unlike in Enlightenment, which considers the conventional education as the most ideal. Enlightenment thinkers are quite removed from nature and only looks at it as impartial observers. The poem renounces the whole idea of industrialism and science and acknowledges that emotions and intuitions as the ultimate sources of knowledge. It also recognizes that satisfaction and nature is derived from nature.

Bibliography
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, and Fleur Adcock. Frost at Midnight. ProQuest LLC, 2004.
Wuraola, Dere Fatimah. “The Romantic Philosophy in The Poetry Of William Wordsworth And Samuel Taylor Coleridge.” PhD diss., Department of English Language of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria 58, no. 4 (2011): 1572-1591.