The Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge, Including the Dramas of Wallenstein, Remorse, and Zapolya. Volume I

1829

de Beer Eb 1829 C

London: William Pickering

The children of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) served as inspirations for some of his best-known poetry, including ‘Frost at Midnight’: ‘Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side […] thou, my babe! Shalt wander like a breeze’. Coleridge’s son Hartley alludes to this poem in his ‘Dedicatory Sonnet’ in his own Poems (1833). The two poems shown here, written shortly after Hartley’s birth, present a more sombre view of fatherhood than that suggested in ‘Frost at Midnight’.