Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Echos of Eolian Harp in Frost at Midnight's 1st Stanza
When reading Frost at Midnight, I was struck by the line, “’Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs / And vexes meditation with its strange / And extreme silentness” (8-10). This seemed like the perfect inverse to The Eolion Harp’s “The stilly murmur of the distant sea / Tells us of silence” (11-12). It seems to me that in Frost at Midnight, the silence not only creates the setting, but also works as an important device in the poem. The silence is a canvas that reveals every minutia and brings them into the foreground of the speaker’s mind. Once again in the same vein as The Eolian Harp, Coleridge’s thoughts move without direction or purpose, this time as random as a flickering flame. The 23rd line, “And makes a toy of Thought,” encapsulates the whole idea of the first stanza: the mind’s imagination seems random especially in the amplification of this night’s silence.
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I agree with Luke on this. The use of "silence" as an important symbol in these poems is unquestionable. Though, the two do seem to contrast one another in its use. As stated above, Coleridge says that the silence "vexes" and "disturbs" in Frost at Midnight, while in The Eolian Harp, silence allows the narrator to here the calmness and whispering "murmur" of the sea, exemplifying nature's beauty. Regardless of the contrast, both takes on the idea of silence work effectively in their separate poems.
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