Frost at Midnight

The Frost performs its secret ministry,     Unhelped 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 its 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 fluttered on the grate,     Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.     Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature     Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,     Making it a companionable form,     Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit     By its own moods interprets, every where     Echo or mirror seeking of itself,     And makes a toy of Thought.                             But O! how oft,     How oft, at school, with most believing mind,     Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,     To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft     With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt     Of my sweet birth-place, 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 stirred and haunted me     With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear     Most like articulate sounds of things to come!     So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,     Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!     And so I brooded all the following morn,     Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye     Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:     Save if the door half opened, and I snatched     A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,     For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,     Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,     My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!             Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,     Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,     Fill up the interspersd vacancies     And momentary pauses of the thought!     My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart     With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,     And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,     And in far other scenes! For I was reared     In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,     And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.     But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze     By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags     Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,     Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores     And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear     The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible     Of that eternal language, which thy God     Utters, who from eternity doth teach     Himself in all, and all things in himself.     Great universal Teacher! he shall mould     Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.             Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,     Whether the summer clothe the general earth     With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing     Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch     Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch     Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall     Heard only in the trances of the blast,     Or if the secret ministry of frost     Shall hang them up in silent icicles,             Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.