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The Serpentine Theory of Organic Form
by
Michael Dellert
In Book XIV of his Biographia Literaria, Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes of poetry that "The reader should be carried forward... by the pleasureable activity of mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself," and goes on to say that a poem should be "Like the motion of a serpent... or like the path of sound through the air... and from the retrogressive movement collects the force which again carries him onward." What Coleridge is getting at here is that poetry should carry the reader through itself by operating rather like a wave, with peaks of powerful imagery and emotion, and valleys of subtlety, propelling the reader forward by creating still moments within the poem which allow the reader to gather energy for the next powerful moment. This is best accomplished by the use of opposition and irony, creating tension between discordant impulses and holding them in suspension until the resolution, when an equilibrium or reconciliation between those divergent impulses is attained. In Coleridge's Frost at Midnight, the perfection of his conversational group of poems, he does precisely that, drawing tension from the opposed forces of his imagery and language, drawing the reader forward in an almost serpentine manner to the final benedictory stanza in which those forces harmonize.
The opening stanza of Frost at Midnight immediately sets two diverse elements at odds within the first three lines. "The Frost performs its secret ministry," creates a sense of stealth and silence through the assonance of the "s" sound and the mystery of the frost's "secret ministry." This stealth is "Unhelped by any wind", creating an additional sense of stillness, because not even the wind moves. But then "The owlet's cry/ Came loud-- and hark, again! loud as before." Coleridge blasts his initial image of stillness and silence with the harsh c's, k's, and g's of lines 2-3, and with the exclamation "and hark, again!". Thus we begin to see the serpentine path of Coleridge's poem. The relative softness of the first line and a half, contrasted suddenly with the harsh, unexpected cry of the owlet. Coleridge then immediately returns to the first state of the poem in lines 4-7, placing the narrator in a still and silent setting. "The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,/ Have left me to that solitude, which suits/ Abstruser musings." Again we hear the assonance of "s" sounds, and the energy level of the poem drops back into a potential, rather than kinetic, state. His description of his infant son nearby continues this state through the end of line 7, then suddenly disrupts it with an outburst in line 8, "'Tis calm indeed!" The energy within the poem for a brief moment becomes kinetic, creating suspense and propelling the reader forward into another image of stillness, but this time a somewhat sinister image: "so calm that it disturbs/ And vexes meditation with its strange/ and extreme silentness." Here, Coleridge is describing a silence so loud it's maddening, but it is yet an image of stillness, as we can sense from the "s" assonance.
In lines 10-13, the poem's energy again becomes active as Coleridge imagines the normal bustlings of the "populous village", the "numberless goings-on of life". The twice repeated image of "Sea, hill, and wood," creates a dynamic energy, a rhythm, which carries the lines forward, but that energy suddenly falls back again into a resting state in line 13 when he admits that the village's noise is "inaudible as dreams". Lines 13-16 combine the states of stillness and motion in the image of the "thin blue flame" which "quivers not" and "that film, which fluttered on the grate... the sole unquiet thing". Here, the energy alternates rapidly but not greatly between the potential and kinetic states. These are small, tight curves of the snake.
In the conclusion of stanza one (lines 17-23), these discordant states of stillness and motion are reconciled in the person of the poet. The soot upon the grate's "motion in this hush of nature/ Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,/ Making it a companionable form." The "idling Spirit" of line 20 is Coleridge's spirit, interpreting the "puny flaps and freaks" of the soot according to his mood, which is to "make a toy of Thought" and indulge in some gentle introspection. Thus, the poet becomes the point of equilibrium between the divergent impulses of stillness and motion, completing stanza one.
But the poem isn't finished yet. Stillness and motion have been balanced, but in line 23, as it moves from stanza one to stanza two, a new opposition is created, that between the present and the past. As Coleridge meanders into introspection, he remembers a previous time when he sat watching the soot upon the grate, and line 23 changes three-fifths through from present tense to past tense. "And makes a toy of Thought. But O! how oft," (italics mine). This signals a shift in the poem, a change of concern, but Coleridge deliberately maintains his serpentine progression-retrogression pattern. And with this change of concern from motion and stillness to past and present comes another pair of polar influences: Coleridge's past (his years at Christ's Hospital in London) and his past-perfect (before the death of his father, when he lived in the country). By dropping into the past and the past-perfect tenses, Coleridge, by definition, falls into a retrogressive stance, but one which is extremely active. His daydream of his (past-perfect) childhood in the country (lines 27-33) has a great deal of energy and enthusiasm, while his (past) reality is nearly stagnant (lines 36-38), barely warranting the two lines he gives to it. And in stanza two, the discordance remains unresolved, for essentially, what Coleridge is looking for is a fusion of his happy past-perfect with his intellectually stimulating but otherwise dull past in the person of a visit from a long-absent friend, which never occurs. The dissatisfaction of London life remains because no opportunity to renew his attachments with country life ever came.
But in stanza three, in the person of his infant son, Coleridge sees the possibility of finally resolving his dissatisfaction by giving his son what he, himself, wanted, a life in the country. The dynamic now is between Coleridge's life and the life he envisions for his child. In lines 50-51, we see "thou shalt learn far other lore,/ and in far other scenes!", and in line 52, Coleridge describes his life in London as "pent 'mid cloisters dim". Yet his vision of his son's future is quite different. "But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze/ By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags/ Of ancient mountain". Again, Coleridge's serpentine progression is presented in terms of tension between divergent elements, first one, then the other, each drawing the reader's eye like the curves of a snake or the sine wave of sound, until the equilibrium, of Coleridge's disappointment with his own childhood and his vicarious vision of how his son's childhood will be, suspends the tension in lines 58-64.
To conclude the poem, Coleridge must bring us down from the climactic point of suspension in the last lines of stanza three, and he accomplishes this through the benediction, which comprises stanza four. It is a well-wishing for his son, bringing together all of the dualing elements within the poem. "All seasons shall be sweet to thee," he promises, and gradually introduces more of the opening "s" assonance to bring us down very gently to the point where we began.