Samuel Coleridge’s Poems The Eolian Harp and Frost at Midnight

In Samuel Coleridge’s conversation poems “The Eolian Harp” and “Frost at Midnight,” he reveals and communicates his situation in terms of religious feelings, where both his poems can speak to the audience in a quiet and personal voice revealing truth in terms of everyday experiences. Both poems use certain devices such as internal conflict, external conflict, symbolism, structure, and the theme of the association between God and nature to communicate the situation of the poet in terms of religious feelings. Both poems emphasize the importance of the natural world by presenting imagery and descriptions of the natural setting, and stating that nature itself is very closely tied with God and religion. Although Samuel Coleridge uses different plots, devices, and methods in both “The Eolian Harp” and “Frost at Midnight,” he manages to represent his religious views, the importance of nature, and the spiritual, religious, and mystical themes in both poems.

In “The Eolian Harp”, Coleridge begins with a vivid description of a quiet scene in nature, and turns inwards into the workings of his own mind. The first stanza in “The Eolian Harp” is filled with natural imagery where both Sara, his wife, and the poet sit affectionately outside their cottage looking up at the evening stars, smelling pleasant scents, and listening to the distant murmur of the sea. The poet then cogitates on a both intellectual and emotional problem that he has been thinking of lately, which is the conflict between his own speculative philosophy that he produces about God and nature, and the opposing institution of the religious dogma; therefore, creating an internal conflict between the poet’s own mystical thoughts, and the rationalist Christian thoughts supported...

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...and emphasizes the connection and association of all things, both inner and outer. Similarly, in “Frost at Midnight,” Coleridge uses the same circular structure to reflect the structure of existence itself, depicting the situation of the poet in a religious manner. Lastly, in “Frost at Midnight” Coleridge depicts the theme of the association between nature and religion expressing that God is found in every aspect of the natural world, to further represent and communicate to the audience the situation of the poet in terms of religious feelings. By using different and various methods in both “The Eolian Harp” and “Frost at Midnight,” Samuel Coleridge is able to present and communicate the situation of the poet in terms of religious feelings where he includes himself in natural settings to describe his relationship with the other human beings that make up the world.