Frost at Midnight

The Frost performs it’s secret ministry, Unhelp’d by any wind. The owlet’s cry Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before. The inmates of my cottage, all at rest, Have left me to that solitude, which suits Abstruser musings: save that at my side My cradled infant slumbers peacefully. ’Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs And vexes meditation with it’s strange And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood, This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood, With all the numberless goings on of life, Inaudible as dreams! The thin blue flame Lies on my low burnt fire, and quivers not: Only that film, which flutter’d on the grate, Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing, Methinks, it’s motion in this hush of nature Gives it dim sympathies with me, who live, Making it a companionable form, With which I can hold commune. Idle thought! But still the living spirit in our frame, That loves not to behold a lifeless thing, Transfuses into all it’s own delights It’s own volition, sometimes with deep faith, And sometimes with fantastic playfulness. Ah me! amus’d by no such curious toys Of the self-watching subtilizing mind, How often in my early school-boy days, With most believing superstitious wish Presageful have I gaz’d upon the bars, To watch the stranger there! and oft belike, With unclos’d lids, already had I dreamt Of my sweet birthplace; 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 stirr’d and haunted me With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear Most like articulate sounds of things to come! So gaz’d I, till the soothing things, I dreamt, Lull’d me to sleep, and sleep prolong’d my dreams! And so I brooded all the following morn, Aw’d by the stern preceptor’s face, mine eye Fix’d with mock study on my swimming book: Save if the door half-open’d, and I snatch’d A hasty glance, and still my heart leapt up, For still I hop’d to see the stranger’s face, Townsman, or aunt, or sister more belov’d, My play-mate when we both were cloth’d alike!