6/30/18, 8)30 AM "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" as an Ambient Poem; a Study of a Dialectical Image; with Some Remarks on Coleridge and Wordsworth Page 1 of 32 http://www.rc.umd.edu/print/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html Published on Romantic Circles (http://www.rc.umd.edu ) Home > Morton, "'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' as an Ambient Poem" "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" as an Ambient Poem; a Study of a Dialectical Image; with Some Remarks on Coleridge and Wordsworth November 2001 Romanticism and Ecology Romanticism & Ecology "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" as an Ambient Poem; a Study of a Dialectical Image; with Some Remarks on Coleridge and Wordsworth Timothy Morton, University of Colorado at Boulder The spacious ambience of nature when treated with respect, allows physical and emotional freedom; it is an outdoor room essential to thought and untraumatic (that is, relatively unforced) development. —Geoffrey Hartman, The Fateful Question of Culture, p. 158 "The Star" Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are! Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky. When the blazing sun is gone, When he nothing shines upon, Then you show your little light, Twinkle, twinkle, all the night. Then the traveller in the dark, Thanks you for your tiny spark: