Byron, Shelley, and Keats Second Generation Romantics

George Gordon, Lord Byron

 Became Baron Byron at 10 yrs old  Became famous with 2 cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage  Obsessive determination to prove himself  Club foot, obese, binge diets  Satire targeted Romantic icons: Wordsworth and Coleridge

George Gordon, Lord Byron  Met Percy Shelly and wife Mary  Writing not “Romantic” in style; rather, neoclassical  HE was the incarnation of Romantic in his lifestyle  Supported Greek nationalists in struggle for independence from Turkey  Died of fevers just months after his 36 th birthday

She Walks in Beauty She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. Implication?

One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o’er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express How pure, how dear their dwelling place. Relation between inner self and appearance?

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

 Pamphlet on atheism got him expelled from Oxford  Optimistic: believed human thought and expression could change life for the better  At 19, eloped with 16-yr-old Harriet Westbrook, a friend of his sister’s  At 22, ran away with Mary Godwin, daughter of two most important radicals of 1790s: Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin

Percy Bysshe Shelley  Took Mary and sister Claire to Switzerland  Met Byron through Claire  Harriet drowned herself, so Shelley married Mary  Fled debts in England  Though warned not to sail, he drowned in a storm at 29-yrs-old  2 weeks later, body washed ashore and friends burned in funeral pyre on beach

Ozymandias I met a traveler 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. What remains of the king’s great works? How many narrators do you hear? What is the irony?

John Keats

 Barely over 5 feet tall  Orphaned at 14  In medical school at 15  At 21, competed medical studies; before being licensed as a surgeon, decided to be a poet instead  Much time spent nursing brother dying of tuberculosis  Died at age 26 of tuberculosis

Ode on a Grecian Urn  Ode: uses heightened, impassioned language and addresses an object  Page 885, 890