Shelley Compared to Keats:

Summary: John Keats', "To Autumn", and Percy Shelley's, "Ode to the West Wind", are both
poems that use the Romantic element of nature to describe human feelings. They use the seasons
to portray their views of life. Though both use seasons as their metaphor, both apply it with
different terms.

John Keats', "To Autumn", and Percy Shelley's, "Ode to the West Wind", are both poems that use
the Romantic element of nature to describe human feelings. They use the seasons to portray their
views of life. Though both use seasons as their metaphor, both apply it with different terms.
Keats poem uses autumn to portray the mind and life of man. Life is viewed as the process of
aging, decay, and death. The first stanza there is a sense of ripeness as fall is beginning to
approach, and Summer is ending. Under the "maturing sun" indicates nature at its full bloom.
Keats sees summer as his climactic time of life. By the second stanza, Keats has reached his "last
oozings," or his last moments of summer, which he views as the climactic time of his life.
Autumn is beginning to arrive and winter, or death, is approaching soon after. The last stanza
asks, "Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they"" Or, where are Keats' carefree
younger days? He says, "barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day," he is resisting the death he
sees approaching. The poem is relates nature to the closure of the season, while it is the closure
of the author's life.

Shelley uses the wind in his poem as a spirit, and concentrates on the aspect that the wind causes
death or darkness. In the first two stanzas of the poem, there are comparisons of "dead leaves" to
"ghosts" and "winged seeds" to dead bodies that "lie cold and low... within its grave." The author
comes to associate the season of autumn with these dismal, violent thoughts. He sees the Autumn
season of a time of aging, and of a "dying year." As the poem progresses, Shelley starts
describing images of peace and serenity. He talks about the "blue Mediterranean" and "summer
dreams." By the final stanzas of the poem, Shelley, wants to use the winds evil power to create a
new beginning. "Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a
new rebirth!" He feels that good can come through evil, therefore, respects the wind changing
him.

As mentioned above, both Romantic poets used the season of Autumn to portray the seasons of
life. Though as seen through the works, they interpreted the outcome differently. Keats' poem
spoke of aging and death, whereas Shelley's spoke of rebirth and rejuvenation.
Imagination:

Imagination is one of the striking characteristics of Romantic Poets. P. B. Shelley's poem "To a
Skylark" and John Keats's poem "Ode to a Nightingale" are both centered on nature in the form
of birds. Both poems are classified as Romantic and have certain poetic elements in common, but
in addition both poems have differences in style and in theme that differentiate them clearly.
Both poets are spurred to react and to write because of their encounter with a bird. Shelley is
addressing the bird that excites his interest more directly, while Keats turns to reverie because of
the song of the nightingale more than the nightingale itself. In the latter case, the song of the poet
has a different tone from the song of the bird--the joy of the bird becomes a contemplative song
for the poet. Each poet begins with the reality of the bird or its song and then uses that as a
beginning point for aesthetic and philosophic speculation.
P. B. Shelley:
If the West Wind was Shelley's first convincing attempt to articulate an aesthetic philosophy
through metaphors of nature, the skylark is his greatest natural metaphor for pure poetic
expression, the "harmonious madness" of pure inspiration. The skylark's song issues from a state
of purified existence, a Wordsworthian notion of complete unity with Heaven through nature; its
song is motivated by the joy of that uncomplicated purity of being, and is unmixed with any hint
of melancholy or of the bittersweet, as human joy so often is. The skylark's unimpeded song
rains down upon the world, surpassing every other beauty, inspiring metaphor and making the
speaker believe that the bird is not a mortal bird at all, but a "Spirit," a "sprite," a "poet hidden /
In the light of thought."

In that sense, the skylark is almost an exact twin of the bird in Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale";
both represent pure expression through their songs, and like the skylark, the nightingale "wast
not born for death." But while the nightingale is a bird of darkness, invisible in the shadowy
forest glades, the skylark is a bird of daylight, invisible in the deep bright blue of the sky. The
nightingale inspires Keats to feel "a drowsy numbness" of happiness that is also like pain, and
that makes him think of death; the skylark inspires Shelley to feel a frantic, rapturous joy that has
no part of pain. To Keats, human joy and sadness are inextricably linked, as he explains at length
in the final stanza of the "Ode on Melancholy." But the skylark sings free of all human error and
complexity, and while listening to his song, the poet feels free of those things, too.

Structurally and linguistically, this poem is almost unique among Shelley's works; its strange
form of stanza, with four compact lines and one very long line, and its lilting, songlike diction
("profuse strains of unpremeditated art") work to create the effect of spontaneous poetic
expression flowing musically and naturally from the poet's mind. Structurally, each stanza tends
to make a single, quick point about the skylark, or to look at it in a sudden, brief new light; still,
the poem does flow, and gradually advances the mini-narrative of the speaker watching the
skylark flying higher and higher into the sky, and envying its untrammeled inspiration--which, if
he were to capture it in words, would cause the world to listen.

John Keats:

With "Ode to a Nightingale," Keats's speaker begins his fullest and deepest exploration of the
themes of creative expression and the mortality of human life. In this ode, the transience of life
and the tragedy of old age ("where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, / Where youth grows
pale, and spectre-thin, and dies") is set against the eternal renewal of the nightingale's fluid music
("Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!"). The speaker reprises the "drowsy numbness"
he experienced in "Ode on Indolence," but where in "Indolence" that numbness was a sign of
disconnection from experience, in "Nightingale" it is a sign of too full a connection: "being too
happy in thine happiness," as the speaker tells the nightingale. Hearing the song of the
nightingale, the speaker longs to flee the human world and join the bird. His first thought is to
reach the bird's state through alcohol--in the second stanza, he longs for a "draught of vintage" to
transport him out of himself. But after his meditation in the third stanza on the transience of life,
he rejects the idea of being "charioted by Bacchus and his pards" (Bacchus was the Roman god
of wine and was supposed to have been carried by a chariot pulled by leopards) and chooses
instead to embrace, for the first time since he refused to follow the figures in "Indolence," "the
viewless wings of Poesy."

The rapture of poetic inspiration matches the endless creative rapture of the nightingale's music
and lets the speaker, in stanzas five through seven, imagine himself with the bird in the darkened
forest. The ecstatic music even encourages the speaker to embrace the idea of dying, of
painlessly succumbing to death while enraptured by the nightingale's music and never
experiencing any further pain or disappointment. But when his meditation causes him to utter the
word "forlorn," he comes back to himself, recognizing his fancy for what it is--an imagined
escape from the inescapable ("Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well / As she is fam'd to do,
deceiving elf"). As the nightingale flies away, the intensity of the speaker's experience has left
him shaken, unable to remember whether he is awake or asleep. In "Indolence," the speaker
rejected all artistic effort. In "Psyche," he was willing to embrace the creative imagination, but
only for its own internal pleasures. But in the nightingale's song, he finds a form of outward
expression that translates the work of the imagination into the outside world, and this is the
discovery that compels him to embrace Poesy's "viewless wings" at last. The "art" of the
nightingale is endlessly changeable and renewable; it is music without record, existing only in a
perpetual present. As befits his celebration of music, the speaker's language, sensually rich
though it is, serves to suppress the sense of sight in favor of the other senses. He can imagine the
light of the moon, "But here there is no light"; he knows he is surrounded by flowers, but he
"cannot see what flowers" are at his feet. This suppression will find its match in "Ode on a
Grecian Urn," which is in many ways a companion poem to "Ode to a Nightingale." In the later
poem, the speaker will finally confront a created art-object not subject to any of the limitations of
time; in "Nightingale," he has achieved creative expression and has placed his faith in it, but that
expression--the nightingale's song--is spontaneous and without physical manifestation.03)
Idealism

Idealism is the very much common characteristics especially in second generation Romantic
Poets. Romantic idealism favored this hermeneutic and phenomenological outlook on life. At this
juncture, we want here to address and emphasize the question of the poem’s inspiration by the
natural phenomenon, the luminous star.
P. B. Shelley:
Among the great Romantics whose poetry, in the early nineteenth century, forms one of the most
glorious chapters in the whole of English Literature, no one perhaps was inspired by a purer and
loftier idealism than P. B. Shelley. Shelley’s is divided by three sub categories:
· Revolutionary Idealism
· Religious Idealism
· Erotic Idealism

“Penetrates and clasps and fills the world” ---Epipsychidion

“That Beauty in which all things work and move” ---Adonais

John Keats:
“The hush of natural objects opens quite
To the core: and every secret essence there
Reveals the elements of good and fair
Making him see, where Learning hath no light.”
With regard to Romantic idealism, there are undoubtedly elements here that show Keats’s
enthusiasm for nature. Even if Keats’s conception of nature has affinities with spirituality as
discerned in the works of Romantics like William Wordsworth (1770–1850), Samuel Taylor
Coleridge (1772–1834) and Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), the intention of this write-up is
not primarily the fullness of spiritual experience in nature. Nature plays a vital role in the
understanding of his aesthetic ambitions and achievements. Though there are a number of
characteristic features in Keats’s poetry which affiliate with Coleridge and Wordsworth, his
nature-consciousness will be seen to take a slightly different turn. Keats’s poetry and prose show
proof of certain monistic traits common in the two elder poets, justifying the assertion that he can
be discussed within the mainstream of Romantic idealism with regard to nature, even if he does
not handle the matter in a like manner.

It can be argued equally that his poetry lends credence to apprehend nature from an organics
viewpoint. Yet, his eco-poetics, as we intend to analyze, does not place priority on the visionary
and transcendental and, therefore, the dominant spiritual dimension of nature is not like that of
his elder colleagues, for it tends to reduce nature primarily within the confines of his aesthetic
quest rather than brood over it fundamentally as a universal force or the basis of his spiritual
longings.

Revolution
M.H. Abrams wrote, "The Romantic period was eminently an age obsessed with fact of violent
change". Especially the second generations Romantic Poets are the pioneer to revolt against
society, religion and state.
P. B. Shelley:
Shelley resembles Byron in his thorough-going revolt against society, but he is totally unlike
Byron in several important respects. His first impulse was an unselfish love for his fellow-men,
with an aggressive eagerness for martyrdom in their behalf; his nature was unusually, even
abnormally, fine and sensitive; and his poetic quality was a delicate and ethereal lyricism
unsurpassed in the literature of the world. In both his life and his poetry his visionary reforming
zeal and his superb lyric instinct are inextricably intertwined. Shelley was the most politically
active of the Romantic poets. While attempting to instigate reform in Ireland in 1812-13, he
wrote to William Godwin, author of Political Justice. (Note also Godwin's connections with
Wordsworth and Coleridge.) Shelley's pure idealism led him to take extreme positions, which
hurt the feasibility of his attempts at reform.

By 1816 he had mostly given up these politics in favor of the study and writing of poetry; his
Queen Mab later became popular among the Chartists. The longest-lasting effects of his extreme
views were the fact that he met and eloped with William Godwin's brilliant daughter Mary,
abandoned his wife, and was eventually forced to leave England. Even far away in Italy,
however, he was incensed by the Peterloo massacre and wrote The Mask of Anarchy in response
to it. He also turned into an attack on George IV his translation of Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus;
or Swellfoot the Tyrant.

John Keats:
Keats was neither rebel nor Utopian dreamer. As the modern seemed to him to be hard, cold, and
prosaic, he habitually sought an imaginative escape from it. Not like Shelley into the future land
of promise, but into the past of Greek mythology, as in Endymion, Lamia, and the fragmentary
Hyperion.

Comparison between wordsworth and colridge

Comparing Wordsworth and Coleridge is a huge task, and I suggest you start a Discussion Group
question with this to get as much information and as many ideas as possible.

That said, I'll give you some basics. 

Wordsworth is famous for changing the diction thought acceptable in poetry, or at least
strengthening the movement toward a "common" or simplified poetic diction.  He took some of
the formal language out of poetry and replaced it with simple, concrete words.  "Common" may
be too strong of a word when you compare Wordsworth with, say, contemporary poetry.

Wordsworth's poetry also emphasizes nature in a personal, lyrical way.  Personal reactions to
nature and insights gained from nature are paramount. 
Coleridge, in contrast, emphasized the imagination.  His poetry dwells in the land of fantasy. 
Whereas nature may receive the most emphasis in Wordsworth's poetry, the imagination is
central to Coleridge's.  His speech, in contrast to Wordswoth's, is exotic and imaginative.  His
language is the language of fantasy.

Those are some basics to get you started, but there is much, much more to this comparison.

Wordsworth and Coleridge were also part of a larger group called the Lake Poets. Nature and
redefinitions of nature are at the heart of the Romantic revival, and nature itself is, perhaps,
nowhere more beautiful than in the region of England known as the lake country. According to
his autobiographical poem The Prelude, William was allowed to run wild in nature, which
became for him a kind of mother. Throughout his poetry, we see a pantheistic refrain: God
inheres in the natural world around us. God is in nature. He tells us in The Prelude that there was
much loneliness in his childhood. Wordsworth’s early circumstances rendered him
extraordinarily introverted, and solitude was a vital element in his psychological makeup.
Another of his most famous poems, “Daffodils,” opens with the line “I wandered lonely as a
Cloud.” Loneliness and creativity are at the heart of Wordsworth’s poetry, and loneliness, for
him, is a creative state. 

In 1795, he had met Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose muse was both more philosophical and
wilder than Wordsworth’s: opium and Immanuel Kant, the great German philosopher fed that
imagination. First published in 1798. Lyrical Ballads may be the most influential book of poetry
in English literature. 

Coleridge was also living in the Lake District at this time, close by Wordsworth. Wordsworth’s
famous one-line definition of poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from
emotions recollected in tranquility.” Coleridge supplied the “spontaneous” power, while
Wordsworth offered the “tranquility,” the reflection. A perfect example of Coleridge’s
spontaneity is found in “Kubla Khan,” the short poem he began (but never finished) under the
influence of a narcotic dream. Among Coleridge’s utopian projects was his failed “pantisocratic”
community, based on free love and philosophical ideas. Coleridge, in contrast, left in his chaotic
wake a collection of fragments, short works, and prolegomena. Like Wordsworth, he compiled
an autobiography—prose, in his case—Biographia Literaria, the biography of a literary
sensibility. The work fuses Coleridge’s towering intellect, extraordinary powers of criticism, and
feeling for poetry. His greatest complete poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, was composed
during his collaborative years with Wordsworth.

At its best, Wordsworth’s poetry is of stunning purity and power. One example comes from the
“Lucy” poems, included in later reprints of Lyrical Ballads. Breathtakingly simple and with only
eight lines, the poem nonetheless conveys compelling emotion. Coleridge’s agenda was different.
In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the first work in Lyrical Ballads, he compacts into short-
lined, four-line stanzas an amazingly pregnant and mystical narrative of the condition of man in
an incomprehensible natural universe. A religious order exists in this universe, but it is an order
that is enigmatic, although, mysteriously, meanings may be sensed. In writing this poem,
Coleridge drew on gothic fiction and an extraordinary range of reading in theology, philosophy,
and travel. His descriptions of the arctic regions are almost photographic.. The narrative of The
Rime is simple. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner indicates the new directions that poetry would
take over the next two centuries. A revolution had taken place and, arguably, is still taking place
in English literature as a result of Lyrical Ballads.
I think that the basic premise of work from both Wordsworth and Coleridge has to start out on
their beliefs of Romanticism.  They both felt that the artist had to carve out a new identity
through their work.  This is part of the reason why their work is so distinctive, not seeking to
follow any sort of established and accepted conventions, but rather seeking to create something
new and different.  Their style of writing seeks to forge links with the audience, bringing them
into a story telling reference point about experiences and one's own subjectivity.  For example,
Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" is meant to create intrigue and sense of wonderment within the reader. 
Wordsworth's poems accomplish much the same as they highlight a reverence for internal
subjectivity emotions, and natural beauty.  In both writers, the belief of Romanticism's
fundamental primacy on individual experience is of vital important to their work and how it is
created.

Difference between classists and romanticists:

Classicists and Romanticists differed in their views of nature. Classicism was based on the idea
that nature and human nature could be understood by reason and thought. Classicist believed that
“nature was, a self-contained machine, like a watch, whose laws of operation could be rationally
understood.”(text,199)  On the other hand, Romanticists viewed nature as mysterious and ever
changing. As William Cullen Bryant states that nature “;speaks a various language.” (text, 123) 
Romantic writes believed that nature is an ever changing living organism, whose laws we will
never fully understand.

Classicist and Romanticists also differed on their approches towards reason and imagination.
Classicism attached much more importance to reason than imagination because imagination
could not be explained by their laws. To them, “;the imagination, though essential to literature,
had to be restrained by reason and common sense.”; (text, 119) The Romanticists, however,
emphasized that reason was not the only path to truth. “;Instead, Romantic writers emphasized
intuition, that inner perception of truth which is independent of reason.”; (text, 122) To the
Romantic writers, imagination was ultimately superior to reason.

SUPERNATURAL ELEMENTS IN COLERIDGE POETRY

The term supernatural is used for events and beings which are above to the order of

nature and which are out or beyond the ordinary laws of cause and effect in the
human world. The primitive and the medieval people were the strong believers of

the supernatural. They looked at the phenomena of nature with awe and wonder.

The catholic legends and the mystic experiences of Christian saints sought to present

the supernatural as a holy truth. The literature of the middle ages. The romances and

the ballads freely exploited the supernatural or the marvelous.

Ghosts, witches, demons, ogres appear quite frequently in the medieval literature.

Nevertheless the supernatural in the medieval is crude hair rising, sensational and

palpable. With the renaissance the supernatural is presented I all allegorical and

symbolic cover. The efforts are made to make it more natural and convincing. Yet

much is merely sensational as may be seen in the plays of Shakespeare.

The supernatural in Coleridge is refined and subjective. It does not have the objective

palpability and crudeness of the marvelous in almost all pre-Coleridgean ghost

literature. In making the supernatural a psychic phenomenon, Coleridge was a

pioneer. His supernatural is as “the spot on the brain that will show itself out”. Its

pleasure is not be seen by the eyes, it is felt by the mind through the agitation and

terror it excites in the mind. In the Ancient Mariner, the horror of the Mariner’s face

is conveyed by the terror, it excites in the minds of the beholder:

I moved my lips, the pilot shrieked

And fell down in a fit.”

Coleridge’s supernaturalism is highly suggestive subtle intuitive and subjective. It the

reader who has to infer himself what he understands by a supernatural agency or

elements. It is not sudden but slowly distilled in the air. The supernatural in Coleridge

does not have any definite or fixed character. It difficult to say how much it is real

and how much of it is merely a subjective illusion.

In order to make his supernaturalism realistic and convincing Coleridge

humanizes it. It appears in his works, notin a traditional blood curdling and

hair raising form but assumes

The ordinary human personality of the supernatural incidents and characters

Coleridge made an epoch in the poetry of the supernatural. His imagination seems to

acquire poetic distinction in the regions of the fantastic and supernatural. He does

not invent words but present the supernatural as subtle mental states. He took up

the marvelous not for the sake of thrill or excitement but the sense of mystery that

awakens in the mind. The supernatural in The Rime of Ancient Mariner is an

atmosphere prevailing to the whole poem, there is a delicate creation of deeper

horror. Thus the purely marvelous element which Coleridge allowed in the surface of

the Rime is here a driven behind the scene. He introduced into it a concept which

was unknown in English poetry. In the Rime, this concept is illustrated by the

wedding guest being held by the eye of the Mariner and listening to his tale. Again

and again the wedding guest thinks of the wedding and tries to break the spell but

Mariner eyes keeps him bound. Thus Coleridge exhibits an equal skill in the actual

introduction of the supernatural incidents and characters.

Imagery in colridge poetry:

In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the language is
beautiful. He uses incredible imagery, as well as very complex symbolism. Although there are
several examples of the beautiful language used by Coleridge, I will only use a few examples of
the imagery in this poem to get my point across. At the point in the story where the mariner and
his fellow sailors find themselves stranded in the middle of the ocean, Coleridge describes the
situation with vivid imagery. He wrote, “water, water, every where,/and all the boards did
shrink;/water, water, every where,/nor any drop to drink” (Coleridge 1619). As simple as these
words are, it creates a visual picture of how desperate the sailors are. They are surrounded by
water on all sides without any hope of survival, and it has all occurred as a punishment for the
severe sin committed by the mariner. Not only does Coleridge use an image to describe the
desperation of a situation, but he also uses the visual effects of this image to describe the
punishment that the Mariner must endure, so this picture has much more meaning than the words
initially call for. Another time when Coleridge uses imagery is when he describes snakes in the
water by saying, “I watched their rich attire:/blue, glossy green, and velvet black,/they coiled and
swam; and every track/was a flash of golden fire” (Coleridge 1623). Coleridge uses very lengthy
and deep descriptions when describing surroundings he deems important, and this allows him to
control what images stick out in the readers mind. A writer that does this has a lot of power over
the reader and this is the beauty of Coleridge’s writing.

IMAGERY IN SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGES KUBLA KHAN:

Thesis statement In the Samuel Taylor Coleridges Kubla Khan imagery is used as a means of
achieving a dreamy and somewhat surreal quality to the poem other than this, it is also used to
make the poem more vivid because most of what is described in the poem are mythological or
fictional, so imagery makes these immaterial objects more tangible for the reader.

Imagery as a means of achieving tone in Kubla Khan

Definition and function of tone

Textual evidence

Imagery as a means of achieving concreteness in Kubla Khan

Textual evidence

colridge concept of symbolism:

Coleridge's concept of the symbol as a part of that unity which it represents is puzzling and
requires consideration of his metaphysics and aesthetics, for he was primarily concerned with the
relationship of the symbol to "reality." Coleridge thought of the physical universe as analogous
to, but not identical with, the spiritual, but at the same time he believed in the organic unity of all
life. His reconciliation of these opposing beliefs sheds light on his concept of the symbol. He
thought of art as imitation of the creative process; artistic symbols imitate neither objective
nature nor subjective feelings. They are forms created by the human mind in the same way that
the forms of nature are created by the Divine Mind: "Nature is God's Art." Since the primary
materials fused into the symbol by the creative imagination are taken from both objective nature
and the mind which inspires and guides the creation, the symbol is part of what it represents.
Analyses of some of Coleridge's examples of "translucent" symbols, of his idea of beauty, of his
distinction between symbol and allegory, and of one of Virginia Woolf's symbols, further
explicate his concept.

Symbolism in colridge poetry:

Main Ideas of Symbols:

The Sun:
Coleridge believed that symbolic language was the only acceptable way of expressing deep
religious truths and consistently employed the sun as a symbol of God. In “The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner,” Coleridge compares the sun to “God’s own head” (97) and, later, attributes the
first phase of the mariner’s punishment to the sun, as it dehydrates the crew. All told, this poem
contains eleven references to the sun, many of which signify the Christian conception of a
wrathful, vengeful God. Bad, troubling things happen to the crew during the day, while smooth
sailing and calm weather occur at night, by the light of the moon. Frequently, the sun stands in
for God’s influence and power, as well as a symbol of his authority. The setting sun spurs
philosophical musings, as in “The Eolian Harp,” and the dancing rays of sunlight represent a
pinnacle of nature’s beauty, as in “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison.”

The Moon:

Like the sun, the moon often symbolizes God, but the moon has more positive connotations than
the sun. In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the sun and the moon represent two sides of the
Christian God: the sun represents the angry, wrathful God, whereas the moon represents the
benevolent, repentant God. All told, the moon appears fourteen times in “The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner,” and generally favorable things occur during night, in contrast to the horrors
that occur during the day. For example, the mariner’s curse lifts and he returns home by
moonlight. “Dejection: An Ode” (1802) begins with an epitaph about the new moon and goes on
to describe the beauty of a moonlit night, contrasting its beauty with the speaker’s sorrowful
soul. Similarly, “Frost at Midnight” also praises the moon as it illuminates icicles on a winter
evening and spurs the speaker to great thought.