15.

Secret Ministries

SPRING THROUGH SUMMER EXCESS MOISTURE IN THE AIR CONDENSES

AS DEW ON COOL SURFACES…FROST DESCENDS ON CLEAR WINDLESS

NIGHTS WHEN TEMPERATURES FALL BELOW 32 DEGREES F. AND EXCESS

MOISTURE IS TRANSPOSED DIRECTLY FROM A GASEOUS TO A

CRYSTALLINE STATE VIA A PROCESS CALLED SUBLIMATION.

February 1798…

Nether Stowey, Somerset, England

Coleridge could talk and he could write and he could sing…

yes, in his poems he would sing, like this: “The frost performs

its secret ministry unhelped by any wind…the inmates of my

cottage, all at rest, have left me to that solitude.”

Unhelped by any wind.

Baby son sleeping by his side he sang on, like this: “Therefore

all seasons shall be sweet to thee…whether the nigh thatch smokes

in sun-thaw” or if “in the trances of the blast…the secret ministry

of frost shall hang…silent icicles, quietly shining.”

The nigh thatch.

1816–1834…

Highgate, London, England

In later years…preferring the ease of talk to the bothers of composition,

tilted back in his cane chair at Dr. James and Ann Gillman’s house, he

would talk…fueled by brandy and laudanum…in that sweet voice

Hazlitt described as arising “like a steam of rich distilled perfumes.”

That sweet voice.

“What of ‘Frost at Midnight’ might I say to you, sir, of use? William liked

it well enough. I don’t prefer to think of that particular poem…one of many.

But it interests you? I recall it was begun upon returning from preaching in

Shrewsbury in ninety-eight…January…Hartley was just 16 months old.”

I don’t prefer.

I spoke from the central pulpit in that dark-paneled chapel, looking out over those

close-packed rows of box-pews filled with grim-mouthed narrow-eyed judgmental

shrews. My text was “And he went up into the mountain to pray, Himself, Alone.”

Not “up in the mountain” but “up into the mountain.”

In that dark-paneled chapel.

“I won the ladies over with my voice and eyes and the gentlemen with organization.

But I didn’t care for them. All I wanted then was to write poems. I walked home…

and it was calm so calm the frost had settled like a comforting down blanket

outside my window over the Quantock foothills.”

All I wanted then.

“I was a-fire…as was William who I still love as he was back then. The words

flowed with us paired within their trances…My favorite lines in ‘Frost’?…

These will do as well as any: ‘Sea, and hill, and wood, / With all of the

numberless goings-on of life, / Inaudible as dreams!’”

The words flowed.

January 1961…

Wilson Library, UNC, Chapel Hill, NC

Sleet pelted high dark windows…table-mounted lamps with green shades and

golden chains cast circles of quiet light at precise intervals throughout the vast

reading room where I sat puzzling over a poem in which the “lovely shapes”

of words formed patterns that still seem strange and beautiful.

High dark windows.