English Literature / Unit 12 ENL 1135 short lesson, about 20 seconds
"Frost at Midnight" and the Conversation Poem
Captions available
The idea
Coleridge's conversation poems are familiar blank-verse meditations. In "Frost at Midnight," of seventeen ninety-eight, he sits by his sleeping son Hartley, recalls his own city schooling, and hopes the boy will grow up a child of nature, while frost performs "its secret ministry."
In practice
A father, a sleeping son, the frost.
Where people slip
Conversation poems speak to a silent listener.
Your place on the trail
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