Romantic poetry

S. T. Coleridge English lyrical poet, critic, and philosopher, whose Lyrical Ballads,(1798) written with William Wordsworth, started the English Romantic movement. He had a close friendship with William Wordsworth, one of the most fruitful creative relationships in English literature. From it resulted Lyrical Ballads, which opened with Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and ended with Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey". These poems set a new style by using everyday language and fresh ways of looking at nature. His works include "Christabel”, "Kubla Khan" and Biographia Literaria(1817).  Source: The Literature Network.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner An experimental, supernatural poem that was originally published in Lyrical Ballads (1798). The mariner describes his ship becoming trapped in ice at the South Pole. After escaping, the sailors credit their salvation to an albatross; however the mariner shoots the bird with a crossbow, and misfortunes follow. He is blamed by his shipmates, who hang the carcass round his neck. Gradually the penitent mariner becomes more appreciative of the natural world, and this redeems him. Nevertheless, he continues to share his harrowing story.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (III) Her lips were red, her looks were free,  Her locks were yellow as gold:  Her skin was as white as leprosy,  The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,  Who thicks man's blood with cold.  The naked hulk alongside came,  And the twain were casting dice;  'The game is done! I've won! I've won!'  Quoth she, and whistles thrice.  … One after one, by the star-dogged Moon,  Too quick for groan or sigh,  Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,  And cursed me with his eye. 

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (IV) Alone, alone, all, all alone,  Alone on a wide wide sea!  And never a saint took pity on  My soul in agony.  The many men, so beautiful!  And they all dead did lie:  And a thousand thousand slimy things  Lived on; and so did I.  I looked upon the rotting sea,  And drew my eyes away;  I looked upon the rotting deck,  And there the dead men lay.  I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;  But or ever a prayer had gusht,  A wicked whisper came, and made  My heart as dry as dust. 

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (IV) Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,  And yet I could not die.  Beyond the shadow of the ship,  I watched the water-snakes:  They moved in tracks of shining white,  And when they reared, the elfish light  Fell off in hoary flakes.  Within the shadow of the ship  I watched their rich attire:  Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,  They coiled and swam; and every track  Was a flash of golden fire. 

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (IV) O happy living things! no tongue  Their beauty might declare:  A spring of love gushed from my heart,  And I blessed them unaware:  Sure my kind saint took pity on me,  And I blessed them unaware.  The self-same moment I could pray;  And from my neck so free  The Albatross fell off, and sank  Like lead into the sea. 

Themes: How did the poem violate one of the basic tenets of Romanticism? In what way is the poem an example of Romanticism? Sin and Redemption The natural and the supernatural Respecting God’s creations Magic realism: refers to literature in particular that portrays magical or unreal elements as a natural part in an otherwise realistic or mundane environment.

William Blake English engraver, artist, poet, and visionary. Author of exquisite lyrics in Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794). In Songs of Innocence and of Experience, perhaps his most famous collection of poems, he investigates, as he put it in the subtitle, 'the two contrary states of the human soul'.  Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794) juxtapose the innocent, pastoral world of childhood against an adult world of corruption and repression; while such poems as "The Lamb" represent a meek virtue, poems like "The Tyger" exhibit opposing, darker forces. Thus the collection as a whole explores the value and limitations of two different perspectives on the world. Many of the poems fall into pairs, so that the same situation or problem is seen through the lens of innocence first and then experience.

William Blake Though Blake stated that children could understand his work as well as, or better than, adults, this is rather a comment on how children understand things directly and without the clouded perceptions that derive from the compromises required by adult life. The songs are specifically ‘of’ and not ‘for’ innocence and experience.  Despite the simple rhythms and rhyming patterns and the images of children, animals and flowers, the Songs are often troubling, argumentative or satirical, and reflect Blake’s deeply held political beliefs and spiritual experience. Blake’s vision embraces radical subjects such as poverty, child labour and abuse, the repressive nature of state and church, as well as right of children to be treated as individuals with their own desires. Many of the poems in Songs of Experience respond to counterparts in Songs of Innocence. Sources: British Library and The Literature Netweork

The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence) When my mother died I was very young,  And my father sold me while yet my tongue  Could scarcely cry " 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!"  So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.  There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head  That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved, so I said,  "Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare,  You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."  And so he was quiet, & that very night,  As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight!  That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack,  Were all of them locked up in coffins of black; 

The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence) And by came an Angel who had a bright key,  And he opened the coffins & set them all free;  Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run,  And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.  Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,  They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.  And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,  He'd have God for his father & never want joy.  And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark  And got with our bags & our brushes to work.  Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm;  So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm. 

The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Experience) A little black thing among the snow, Crying "'weep! 'weep!" in notes of woe! "Where are thy father and mother? Say!"-- "They are both gone up to the church to pray. Because I was happy upon the heath, And smiled among the winter's snow, They clothed me in the clothes of death, And taught me to sing the notes of woe. And because I am happy and dance and sing, They think they have done me no injury, And are gone to praise God and his priest and king, Who make up a heaven of our misery."

P. B. Shelley’s “Ozymandias” I met a traveller from an antique land,  Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone  Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,  Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,  And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,  The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;  And on the pedestal, these words appear:  My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;  Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay  Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare  The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

John Keats “Ode to Autumn” Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,     Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;  Conspiring with him how to load and bless     With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;  To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,     And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;        To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells     With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,  And still more, later flowers for the bees,  Until they think warm days will never cease,        For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. 

John Keats “Ode to Autumn” Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?     Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find  Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,     Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;  Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,     Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook        Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:  And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep     Steady thy laden head across a brook;     Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,        Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. 

John Keats “Ode to Autumn” Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?     Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—  While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,     And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;  Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn     Among the river sallows, borne aloft        Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;  And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;     Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft     The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;        And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.