Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Frost at Midnight" expresses his hope that his son Hartley will have a happier childhood experience nature's divinity. The poem uses symbolic language and figures of speech to connect the speaker's loneliness and state of mind to the frost outside and sounds of church bells. Coleridge hopes Hartley will grow up to truly experience nature as a "child of nature", unlike the speaker whose childhood was cut short.