Coleridge's Frost at Midnight

Frost at Over Kellet
Today was the first morning that we awoke to frost and a dazzling view of the Lakeland hills and Morecambe Bay. As we (that's the royal we!) de-iced the car, I was thinking of Coleridge's poem and how appropriate it is for our new home - a populous village with sea, hill and wood.

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings...'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.