It is a common hope in the lives of parents that their children will go on and live more successful lives. That their child will learn the lessons their parents taught them and the path their parents laid out for them to lead them to a more promising future. In Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "The Frost at Midnight," we see the hopeful theme of parents in Coleridge's use of opposites, context, and word choice. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Even in the title, we immediately see literary archetypes at work. Freezing is a natural phenomenon that acts rather slowly, tends to kill living things, and usually only works at night or, better yet, at the end of the day. Frost's definition in this sense can almost exactly be interchanged with death if we want to formally personify it as Death. Death is a natural thing, death tends to end life, and death usually takes time and comes for them at the end of their life. Thus, the very first word of the poem's title suggests death. The second part of the title names a very unique time of day. In all the minutes and hours of the day, Coleridge chooses the exact minute of the day at which one day dies and a brand new day begins. The title therefore alludes to approaching death and the end of a day or someone's day. We don't know exactly who from the title alone, but the context tells us more about the day that's over. In the fourth line of Coleridge's poem, the speaker points out to the reader that the "residents" of his cottage are all at rest, except for the speaker who addresses himself in the fifth line. The only other member of the household that the speaker addresses in the poem is their baby. So, through the context, it is obvious who the two important characters in this poem are. This is important because it is clear that the infant is specifically the one speaking, meaning this is a next generation. The infant is only mentioned once more in detail until line forty-four. In line forty-four, the poem becomes a letter filled with optimism. The language used to describe the sleeping infant becomes words of gentleness and fragility, as opposed to the images at the beginning of the poem and the preceding stanza. At the beginning of the poem, the author speaks of extreme silence but notes that the dying fire is a companion and that he understands and sympathizes with it. The speaker speaks in the next stanza about being stuck behind bars, and objects from his childhood that "haunted him" (line 31), and "so I ruminated all the next morning" (line 36 ), and lines thirty-nine Line forty-three suggests that the speaker was looking forward to someone who never came. The entire focus of this stanza and the specific choice of words allows Coleridge to give the reader a certain level of anxiety. Starting in line forty-five, we see words like “gentle” and “deep calm,” and immediately the reader is brought back to that level of tranquility. We see for the first time that this is a message of hope to the speaker's baby. with line forty-eight where the speaker says, “My baby is so beautiful!” it makes my heart quiver/ with tender joy to look at you like this,/ And to think that you will learn many other knowledge/ And in many other spaces! For I was brought up/in the great city, shut up amidst the dark cloisters…” At this point, it makes sense to the reader that everything leading up to this stanza was.