Frost on My Prison Bars

In Coleridge’s “Frost at Midnight” it is very obvious that he had a different childhood experience than Wordsworth experienced. Wordsworth always wanted to be outside learning as much as he could from nature and expanding his imagination; just letting things come to him. Coleridge paints a picture through his poem that shows us he felt like a prisoner in the city that he grew up in. He thinks about how the world is so silent at night time but yet how his mind is so loud. Although it is quiet in his house because everyone is sleeping, the world does not stop outside. While he lies there awake his mind does not stop either. In part of the poem, after he talks about his own thoughts, he starts talking to his child that is sleeping beside him. He becomes very concerned with his child’s future. He wishes for his child to grow up differently than he did and have a great imagination. He doesn’t want his child to feel like a prisoner in a big city; instead grow up by lakes and sandy shores. This is different from Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” where he relives his childhood experiences and remembers how much he loved being a carefree child.