Soot to soot

Coleridge's Frost at Midnight is a cyclical poem. It begins with the "secret ministry" of the winter frost--a curious phrase--and ends with it, as well. No doubt this is an allusion to the cyclical patterns of nature, such as seasons, measurements of time, the biblical-inspired notion of ashes to ashes (in which the body returns to the earth from which it came and becomes one with God's other creations) or soot to soot in his case, and by that reference the juxtaposition between death or decay and life or rebirth, which is enforced in this poem by the presence of his son. Though, this poem has much more complex properties than just that of a circle. It weaves through the stream of consciousness-like atmosphere of Coleridge's late-night "Abstruser musings," into the ashes of his dying fire, only then to move into the faint memories of his childhood, and finally scale back rapidly to the future of his son's life and God's will upon the universe.
The strangeness of the first setting calls to question the "inaudible" quality of dreams that he speaks of: are dreams inaudible because they remain out touch and we are often unable to grasp them when we wake? The structure of the motif of dreams in the poem is surely consistent with the weaving of its overall structure in that its scale and characteristics morph throughout its verses. His dreams are at once both sleeping and waking with "unclosed eyes," and it is often unclear when he is supposed to be dreaming or whether its a dream within a day-dream. Coleridge seeks to ground us back in his cottage at midnight with the cyclical mention of frost.