Coleridge is deeply religious, but—thanks to his opium addiction and his other difficulties (like his unhappy marriage)—he thinks he hasn't fully lived up to his spiritual ideals. (Opium addiction will do that, you know.) He's hoping that his son will live up to his own lost promise and have the kind of spiritually-fulfilling life that he hasn't really been able to appreciate. God is, in Coleridge's eyes, wholly loving and benevolent. He wants human beings to enter into a relationship with him. In "Frost at Midnight," Coleridge is hoping that Nature provides the key to developing that relationship.
Questions About Spirituality
- What is Coleridge's attitude towards God? Is it a familiar religious attitude, do you think, or is it different?
- What does God teach human beings through Nature (according to Coleridge)? How are they supposed to respond to this lesson?
- What might are some different things in Nature that, in Coleridge's view, can tell us about God—like the frost, for example, or the changing of the seasons? What might these things say?
Chew on This
This poem is actually evidence that Coleridge is having a spiritual crisis of faith.
This poem shows us that all love of Nature is really a spiritual love for a higher power (deep, eh?).