Quote:

"Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom."

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 Coleridge is referring to the way that people view society. We are not driven to exceed. Instead, we are processed to become average. Instead of opportunity, we see competition. From the beginning, we are influenced to reject the literal concept of education. We use our intelligence against each other to create a feeling of dominance and superiority. Common sense is viewed as wisdom, because common sense is the desire to become educated.

Frost at Midnight

This poem was incessantly descriptive of the nature around the narrator. The text lead you through the feeling of the scene. It even went as far as to give a sound to silence. The man in the cottage is taken through a range of emotions. First, before drifting off to sleep, the man observes his environment. He describes it in great detail, and begins to describe his child-hood. He refers to the old church tower bells as "the poor man's only music". I feel as if the man is describing the peaceful scene of his birth-place to compare with his current state. He is at peace with his surroundings and with his family, who he refers to as "inmates" of the cottage.

"Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm..."

The narrator mentions he was raised in the city. He begins to predict how his baby's child-hood will be growing up in a place with, "lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds". The seasons are described at the end of the poem:

"Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

Whether the summer clothe the general earth

With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch

Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon."

 The description in the poem allows you to recall moments in your life, in which you have felt what is being described, and apply it to the story. It allows for a great range of possible meanings to the story. "Fill up the intersperséd vacancies and momentary pauses of the thought!" This is exactly what you must do in order to gain anything from this poem. You must use what you know to fill in the blanks. All of this is due to description.