In “Frost at Midnight” Coleridge again links the natural to the supernatural, and this time the emphasis is on a kind of psychic ability. Line 15 refers to the fluttering film on the fireplace grate, which is found in common folklore that such a film predicts unexpected visitors are coming. This symbolism leads Coleridge to remember his anticipation of something to come when he was a boy. In line 30, Coleridge says that as a child he was presageful, which means “able to tell the future”. He foresees that something good is coming, and seems to find meaning and hope of this promise in his nature-barren surroundings. For example, the bells make sounds articulating “of things to come!” (Line 38). He looks through bars and a half opened door, which both symbolize his feeling of imprisonment by the city, to try to see this “stranger”. Since he is looking outside and he later in the poem interrupts these reveries to tell his son how wonderful it will be for him to be raised close to nature, “stranger” could be seen as a personification of nature. While his foreseeing ability tells him a “strange visitor” is coming, he cannot meet and commune with nature until he leaves the city.
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