Like "The Eolian Harp," it's a "conversation poem."
Questions:
1-2: What is the "secret ministry" of the frost? Why is it important that the "secret ministry" is "Unhelped by any wind"?
2-3: Apparently Coleridge (the speaker in the poem) has been listening intently to what is happening outside. He has heard the "owlet's cry," and now he hears it again, "loud as before." In Macbeth, which Coleridge knew very well, Lady Macbeth, as she is waiting for her husband to accomplish the murder of King Duncan, says, "Hark! Peace! / It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman, / Which gives the stern'st good-night." Quoting my note on this passage in Macbeth: "(The screech of an owl was thought to foretell a death, and it was customary for a 'bellman'—a town-crier or night watchman—to ring a bell at midnight before the cell of a person scheduled to be executed the next day.) So, Lady Macbeth convinces herself that the cry of the owl signals that "He is about it." -- Does this "owlet's cry" have a similar significance for Coleridge (the speaker)?
8-10: Why should it be that the silence "disturbs / And vexes meditation"? (Why wouldn't a frosty midnight be the perfect moment for meditation?)
What is the connection between the first section and the second one? Why does the second section begin with "But"?
63-64: What does the following mean? "he shall mould / Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask." Does "ask" mean "make a request in prayer"?
The poem begins and ends with a mention of "the secret ministry of frost." What is the significance of that?
General Question: Does nature have the same meaning it has in "The Eolian Harp"?