Introduction to Romanticism

The chief characteristics of the Romantic Age are

usually defined by contrast with those of the

eighteenth century – the Age of Swift, Pope, and

Johnson. Eighteenth century writers stressed

reason and judgment; Romantic writers

emphasized imagination and emotion. Eighteenth-

century writers were characteristically concerned

with the general or universal in experience; Romantic writers were concerned with the

particular. Eighteenth-century writers asserted the values of society as a whole; Romantic

writers championed the value of the individual human being. Eighteenth-century writers

sought to follow and to substantiate authority and the rules derived from authority; Romantic

writers strove for freedom. Eighteenth-century writers took their primary inspiration from

classical Greek and Roman authors. Romantic writers took a revitalized interest as we have

already seen in medieval subjects and settings. These contrasts provide a useful way of

approaching the Romantic Age, in part because most Romantic writers saw themselves as

reacting against the thought and literary practice of the preceding century.

Romanticism, it is often said, was inspired by the political revolution of France in 1789 and

the Industrial revolution. Intellectuals throughout Europe were thrilled and inspired by the

notion of revolutionaries rising up and demanding their rights. In general, the romantics

believed in worth, potential, freedom of the individual, and exalted this freedom over the

then- traditional acceptance of social hierarchy and political repression. The democratic

idealism and insistence on the rights and dignity of the individual, which characterized the

early stages of the French Revolution, have their parallel in the Romantic writers’ interest in
the language and experience of the common people, and in the belief that writers or artists

must be free to explore their own imaginative worlds.

England at this time was transforming from a primarily agricultural nation to one focused on

manufacture, trade, and industry. The Industrial revolution was a period of social and

economic change that began in the mid-1700s and lasted until the late 1800s. This change

was instigated by the invention of various

mechanical means of producing goods more quickly

and cheaply than by hands. England at this time was

often described in terms of “Two Nations”: (1) the

rich and privileged who owned the nation’s

burgeoning means of industrial production, and (2)

the poor and powerless who were more and more forced from agricultural roots to life in

industrial cities. Of course, it is this latter group upon which the Industrial Revolution

depended, though it is the former group who benefitted.

The increasing size of the population expanded the labour force, as well as the demand for

goods and services. The factories hired women and children as well as men, and were often

unsafe. Housing for the workers was substandard and unsanitary. Romantic writers were

aware of these changes, which presented such a contrast between the hellish life of the city

labourer and the purity and peace of nature. The industrial changes convinced many

romantics that the natural world was purer than the industrial one, and that nature was a place

of spiritual truth, release, and renewal.

The main consequences of the Industrial Revolution – the urbanization of English life and

landscape, and the exploitation of the working class - underlie the Romantic Industrial
writers’ love of the unspoiled natural world or remote settings devoid of urban complexity,

and their passionate concern for the downtrodden and the oppressed.

In keeping with the view that poetry expresses the poet’s feelings, the lyric poem written in

the first person, which for much of literary history was regarded as a minor kind, became a

major Romantic form and was often described as the most essentially poetic of all the genres.

And in most Romantic lyrics the “I” is no longer a conventionally typical lyrical speaker.

Romanticism has very little to do with things popularly thought of as "romantic," although

love may occasionally be the subject of Romantic art. Rather, it is an international artistic and

philosophical movement that redefined the fundamental ways in which people in Western

cultures thought about themselves and about their world.

Historical Considerations

It is one of the curiosities of literary history that the strongholds of the Romantic Movement

were England and Germany, not the countries of the romance languages themselves. Thus it

is from the historians of English and German literature that we inherit the convenient set of

terminal dates for the Romantic period, beginning in 1798, the year of the first edition of

Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge and of the composition of Hymns to the Night

by Novalis, and ending in 1832, the year which marked the deaths of both Sir Walter Scott

and Goethe. However, as an international movement affecting all the arts, Romanticism

begins at least in the 1770's and continues into the second half of the nineteenth century, later

for American literature than for European, and later in some of the arts, like music and

painting, than in literature. This extended chronological spectrum (1770-1870) also permits

recognition as Romantic the poetry of Robert Burns and William Blake in England, the early

writings of Goethe and Schiller in Germany, and the great period of influence for Rousseau's
writings throughout Europe. The early Romantic period thus coincides with what is often

called the "age of revolutions"--including, of course, the American (1776) and the French

(1789) revolutions--an age of upheavals in political, economic, and social traditions, the age

which witnessed the initial transformations of the Industrial Revolution. A revolutionary

energy was also at the core of Romanticism, which quite consciously set out to transform not

only the theory and practice of poetry (and all art), but the very way we perceive the world.

Some of its major precepts have survived into the twentieth century and still affect our

contemporary period.

10 Key Characteristics of Romanticism in Literature

Glorification of Nature. ...

Awareness and Acceptance of Emotions. ...

Celebration of Artistic Creativity and Imagination. ...

Emphasis on Aesthetic Beauty. ...

Themes of Solitude. ...

Focus on Exoticism and History. ...

Spiritual and Supernatural Elements. ...

Vivid Sensory Descriptions.

What are the major themes of romanticism? The four major themes of Romanticism are

emotion and imagination, nature, and social class. Romantic writers were influenced greatly

by the evolving and changing world around them.

What are five elements of romanticism?

Belief in the individual and common man.

Love of (reverence for) nature.

Interest in the bizarre, supernatural and gothic.

Interest in the past.

Looks at the world with more than reasonable optimism (rose-colored glasses).

Faith in inner experience and the power of the imagination.

Imagination

The imagination was elevated to a position as the supreme faculty of the mind. This

contrasted distinctly with the traditional arguments for the supremacy of reason. The

Romantics tended to define and to present the imagination as our ultimate "shaping" or

creative power, the approximate human equivalent of the creative powers of nature or even

deity. It is dynamic, an active, rather than passive power, with many functions. Imagination is

the primary faculty for creating all art. On a broader scale, it is also the faculty that helps

humans to constitute reality, for (as Wordsworth suggested), we not only perceive the world

around us, but also in part create it. Uniting both reason and feeling (Coleridge described it

with the paradoxical phrase, "intellectual intuition"), imagination is extolled as the ultimate

synthesizing faculty, enabling humans to reconcile differences and opposites in the world of

appearance. The reconciliation of opposites is a central ideal for the Romantics. Finally,

imagination is inextricably bound up with the other two major concepts, for it is presumed to

be the faculty which enables us to "read" nature as a system of symbols.

Nature:

"Nature" meant many things to the Romantics. As suggested above, it was often presented as

itself a work of art, constructed by a divine imagination, in emblematic language. For

example, throughout "Song of Myself," Whitman makes a practice of presenting

commonplace items in nature--"ants," "heap'd stones," and "poke-weed"--as containing

divine elements, and he refers to the "grass" as a natural "hieroglyphic," "the handkerchief of
the Lord." While particular perspectives with regard to nature varied considerably--nature as

a healing power, nature as a source of subject and image, nature as a refuge from the artificial

constructs of civilization, including artificial language—the prevailing views accorded nature

the status of an organically unified whole. It was viewed as "organic," rather than, as in the

scientific or rationalist view, as a system of "mechanical" laws, for Romanticism displaced

the rationalist view of the universe as a machine (e.g., the deistic image of a clock) with the

analogue of an "organic" image, a living tree or mankind itself. At the same time, Romantics

gave greater attention both to describing natural phenomena accurately and to capturing

"sensuous nuance"--and this is as true of Romantic landscape painting as of Romantic nature

poetry. Accuracy of observation, however, was not sought for its own sake. Romantic nature

poetry is essentially a poetry of meditation.

Other Concepts: Emotion, Lyric Poetry, and the Self

Other aspects of Romanticism were intertwined with the above three concepts. Emphasis on

the activity of the imagination was accompanied by greater emphasis on the importance of

intuition, instincts, and feelings, and Romantics generally called for greater attention to the

emotions as a necessary supplement to purely logical reason. When this emphasis was

applied to the creation of poetry, a very important shift of focus occurred. Wordsworth's

definition of all good poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" marks a

turning point in literary history. By locating the ultimate source of poetry in the individual

artist, the tradition, stretching back to the ancients, of valuing art primarily for its ability to

imitate human life (that is, for its mimetic qualities) was reversed. In Romantic theory, art

was valuable not so much as a mirror of the external world, but as a source of illumination of

the world within. Among other things, this led to a prominence for first-person lyric poetry

never accorded it in any previous period. The "poetic speaker" became less a persona and
more the direct person of the poet. Wordsworth's Prelude and Whitman's "Song of Myself"

are both paradigms of successful experiments to take the growth of the poet's mind (the

development of self) as subject for an "epic" enterprise made up of lyric components.

Confessional prose narratives such as Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) and

Chateaubriand's Rene (1801), as well as disguised autobiographical verse narratives such as

Byron's Childe Harold (1818), are related phenomena. The interior journey and the

development of the self-recurred everywhere as subject material for the Romantic artist. The

artist-as-hero is a specifically Romantic type.

Contrasts with Neoclassicism

Consequently, the Romantics sought to define their goals through systematic contrast with

the norms of "Versailles neoclassicism." In their critical manifestoes--the 1800 "Preface" to

Lyrical Ballads, the critical studies of the Schlegel brothers in Germany, the later statements

of Victor Hugo in France, and of Hawthorne, Poe, and Whitman in the United States--they

self-consciously asserted their differences from the previous age (the literary "ancient

regime"), and declared their freedom from the mechanical "rules."

Certain special features of Romanticism may still be highlighted by this contrast. We have

already noted two major differences: the replacement of reason by the imagination for

primary place among the human faculties and the shift from a mimetic to an expressive

orientation for poetry, and indeed all literature. In addition, neoclassicism had prescribed for

art the idea that the general or universal characteristics of human behavior were more suitable

subject matter than the peculiarly individual manifestations of human activity. From at least

the opening statement

of Rousseau's Confessions, first published in 1781--"I am not made like anyone I have seen; I

dare believe that I am not made like anyone in existence. If I am not superior, at least I am

different." -- this view was challenged.

The Romantic Artist in Society

In another way too, the Romantics were ambivalent toward the "real" social world around

them. They were often politically and socially involved, but at the same time they began to

distance themselves from the public. As noted earlier, high Romantic artists interpreted things

through their own emotions, and these emotions included social and political consciousness--

as one would expect in a period of revolution, one that reacted so strongly to oppression and

injustice in the world. So artists sometimes took public stands, or wrote works with socially

or politically oriented subject matter. Yet at the same time, another trend began to emerge, as

they withdrew more and more from what they saw as the confining boundaries of bourgeois

life. In their private lives, they often asserted their individuality and differences in ways that

were to the middle class a subject of intense interest, but also sometimes of horror. ("Nothing

succeeds like excess," wrote Oscar Wilde, who, as a partial inheritor of Romantic tendencies,

seemed to enjoy shocking the bourgeois, both in his literary and life styles.) Thus, the gulf

between "odd" artists and their sometimes shocked, often uncomprehending audience began

to widen. Some artists may have experienced ambivalence about this situation--it was earlier

pointed out how Emily Dickinson seemed to regret that her "letters" to the world would go

unanswered. Yet a significant Romantic theme became the contrast between artist and

middle-class "Philistine." Unfortunately, in many ways, this distance between artist and

public remains with us today.

Spread of the Romantic Spirit

Finally, it should be noted that the revolutionary energy underlying the Romantic Movement

affected not just literature, but all of the arts--from music (consider the rise of Romantic

opera) to painting, from sculpture to architecture. Its reach was also geographically

significant, spreading as it did eastward to Russia, and westward to America. For example, in

America, the great landscape painters, particularly those of the "Hudson River School," and

the Utopian social colonies that thrived in the 19th century, are manifestations of the

Romantic spirit on this side of the Atlantic.

Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray, (born Dec. 26, 1716, London—died July 30, 1771,

Cambridge, Cambridge Shire, Eng.), English poet whose “An

Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard” is one of the best

known of English lyric poems. Although his literary output was

slight, he was the dominant poetic figure in the mid-18th century

and a precursor of the Romantic Movement.

Born into a prosperous but unhappy home, Gray was the sole survivor of 12 children of a

harsh and violent father and a long-suffering mother, who operated a millinery business to

educate him. A delicate and studious boy, he was sent to Eton in 1725 at the age of eight.

There he formed a “Quadruple Alliance” with three other boys who liked poetry and classics

and disliked rowdy sports and the Hogarthian manners of the period. They were Horace

Walpole, the son of the prime minister; the precocious poet Richard West, who was closest to

Gray; and Thomas Ashton. The style of life Gray developed at Eton, devoted to quiet study,

the pleasures of the imagination, and a few understanding friends, was to persist for the rest

of his years.

In 1734 he entered Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he began to write Latin verse of

considerable merit. He left in 1738 without a degree and set out in 1739 with Walpole on a

grand tour of France, Switzerland, and Italy at Sir Robert Walpole’s expense. At first all went

well, but in 1741 they quarreled—possibly over Gray’s preferences for museums and scenery

to Walpole’s interest in lighter social pursuits—and Gray returned to England. They were

reconciled in 1745 on Walpole’s initiative and remained somewhat cooler friends for the rest

of their lives.
In 1742 Gray settled at Cambridge. That same year West died, an event that affected him

profoundly. Gray had begun to write English poems, among which some of the best were

“Ode on the Spring,” “Sonnet on the Death of Mr. Richard West,” “Hymn to Adversity,” and

“Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.” They revealed his maturity, ease and felicity of

expression, wistful melancholy, and the ability to phrase truisms in striking, quotable lines,

such as “where ignorance is bliss, ’Tis folly to be wise.” The Eton ode was published in 1747

and again in 1748 along with “Ode on the Spring.” They attracted no attention.

It was not until “An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard,” a poem long in the making,

was published in 1751 that Gray was recognized. Its success was instantaneous and

overwhelming. A dignified elegy in eloquent classical diction celebrating the graves of

humble and unknown villagers was, in itself, a novelty. Its theme that the lives of the rich and

poor alike “lead but to the grave” was already familiar, but Gray’s treatment—which had the

effect of suggesting that it was not only the “rude forefathers of the village” he was mourning

but the death of all men and of the poet himself—gave the poem its universal appeal. Gray’s

newfound celebrity did not make the slightest difference in his habits. He remained at

Peterhouse until 1756, when, outraged by a prank played on him by students, he moved to

Pembroke College. He wrote two Pindaric odes, “The Progress of Poesy” and “The Bard,”

published in 1757 by Walpole’s private Strawberry Hill Press. They were criticized, not

without reason, for obscurity, and in disappointment, Gray virtually ceased to write. He was

offered the laureateship in 1757 but declined it. He buried himself in his studies of Celtic and

Scandinavian antiquities and became increasingly retiring and hypochondriacal. In his last

years his peace was disrupted by his friendship with a young Swiss nobleman, Charles Victor

de Bonstetten, for whom he conceived a romantic devotion, the most profound emotional

experience of his life.

 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (FIRST FIVE STANZAS ONLY)
BY THOMAS GRAY

*knell: the sound of a bell rung

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, slowly to announce a death
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me. plod: walk heavily and firmly

Now fades the glimm'ring landscape on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r

The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, *molder: decay or break down
Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn, *clarion: loud and clear

The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

Commentary

Gray weaves together two forms of writing in this poem. One is a type that had been familiar

to contemporary readers for the last century: Neoclassical or Augustan poetry. This genre was

a form of writing in which poets talked about morality, society, and how people should live

their lives. Rather than describing actual events, Augustan poets used imaginative, revealing

images of personified abstractions (like "Knowledge") engaged in allegorical scenes. Poets

using this form, from John Dryden to Alexander Pope, were even-tempered, witty, and
sharply intelligent. The other type is new a kind of writing that some poets began to develop

in the 1700s, and to which Gray's poem is a contribution. This is poetry as nature writing.

Poets described real sights in the English countryside. They evoked the beauty of the natural

world through realistic descriptions. Their poems were earnest, rural, and lush, rather than

satirical and suave. Some critics consider such works to be a kind of precursor to 19th-

century Romanticism. Since an “elegy” is a poem written to lament someone’s death, the

poem's title signals its themes right away. This elegy, it becomes clear soon enough, is for

everyone who is buried in the “Country Churchyard,” the graveyard attached to a rural

church. It’s also for everyone who will be buried there—which includes the speaker himself!

In fact, the poem might as well be for all mortals, for whom the poem reminds readers death

is inevitable. As the speaker contemplates death, he focuses on all the common people who

have died without fame, power, or wealth. In particular, he realizes that many people could

have been great and famous if only they had grown up under the right circumstances. Rather

than lamenting this fact, however, the speaker suggests that these people led less troubled

lives than those in elite society. The speaker rejects wealth, fame, and power, and instead

celebrates regular people living ordinary lives. Anonymity, the poem suggests, is better for

the soul.

The speaker is hanging out in a churchyard just after the sun goes down. It's dark and a bit

spooky. He looks at the dimly lit gravestones, but none of the grave markers are all that

impressive—most of the people buried here are poor folks from the village, so their

tombstones are just simple, roughly carved stones.

The speaker starts to imagine the kinds of lives these dead guys probably led. Then he shakes

his finger at the reader, and tells us not to get all snobby about the rough monuments these
dead guys have on their tombs, since, really, it doesn't matter what kind of a tomb you have

when you're dead, anyway. And guys, the speaker reminds us, we're all going to die someday.

But that gets the speaker thinking about his own inevitable death, and he gets a little freaked

out. He imagines that someday in the future, some random guy (a "kindred spirit") might pass

through this same graveyard, just as he was doing today. And that guy might see the speaker's

tombstone, and ask a local villager about it. And then he imagines what the villager might say

about him.

At the end, he imagines that the villager points out the epitaph engraved on the tombstone,

and invites the passerby to read it for himself. So basically, Thomas Gray writes his own

epitaph at the end of this poem.

BY STANZAS

First

that rings at the end of the day, but a "knell" is a bell that rings when someone dies. So it's

like the "parting day" is actually dying. Sounds like a metaphor!

world to himself (he has to share it with the growing darkness, but that's not so bad).

the parting farmer and cows leave "the world *…+ to me."
with an apostrophe, like "o'er" instead of "over" in the second line.

-looking word with an apostrophe in it, try replacing the

apostrophe with a letter to make a familiar word. Gray makes these contractions to make the

number of syllables fit the iambic pentameter. While we're talking about form, we'll also

point out the rhyme scheme here—it's ABAB.

Second

So what's happening, exactly?

"glimm'ring landscape" is fading from the poet's sight. Must be sunset, but we knew

that from the first stanza.

hanging around the necks of livestock in their "folds" (a.k.a. barns).

example of alliteration, and the speaker personifies the "tinkling" of the bells when he says

that they're "drowsy." Go to the "Symbols" section

Third

Here are some more exceptions to the overall peace and quiet: the bent-out-of-shape owl is

hooting.

where the

owl lives as "ivy-mantled." (A "mantle" is a kind of cloak or coat, so the speaker is saying

that the tower is dressed up in ivy. Cool!)

guess that the "tower" mentioned here is probably the church tower.

—he uses some more figurative

language. He personifies the owl when he says that it's "moping" and "complaining," since

those are things a person would do, not an owl.

an outsider nearby—someone who is wandering near her private digs (a "bower" is a lady's

private room) and bothering her solitude.

outsider? Sounds like the owl is probably complaining about the presence of

the speaker himself! (And we're just assuming the speaker is a "he.")

Four

This stanza is all one long sentence, and the sentence structure is a bit wacky, so let's try to

sort it out.

"The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep."

—the speaker isn't saying that the ancestors of the town (a "hamlet" is a tiny town,

not an omelet with ham in it!) are impolite. "Rude" is used to describe someone who was

from the country. Someone who wasn't sophisticated, and who was maybe a bit of a

bumpkin. So the forefathers being described here are probably just simple country folks, not

discourteous, impolite jerks.

So what are these country forefathers of the hamlet doing? They're sleeping. Sounds peaceful,

right?
 —they're not sleeping at home in their beds.

They're sleeping in narrow cells, and they're laid in there forever.

their graves in the churchyard!

and there are piles of turf on each one.

hanging out in the graveyard!

Five

he explains it:

up (at least, in the days before alarm clocks and cell phones).

you burn to make a room smell good).

-a-doodle-doo ("clarion" = "alarm"), or the echoes of a horn blown by a

hunter or a shepherd.

things are going to wake up the dead guys anymore. Okay, speaker!
*Setting:

A Countryside, end of a day, at the graveyard.

*Poetic Form:

-The poem is an Elegy ,but has the structure Ode.

-This elegy is Lyric rather than Narrative. –

It has a pastoral form when he mentions "shepherds, farmers".

-The poem is 32 stanza every stanza has 4 lines(quatrain) it is often referred as

a heroic quatrain.

-The rhyme scheme is regular {abab – cdcd – efef -...etc.} Iambic pentameter.

-The Elegy in English is Lyrical lamentation of the death of a close friend or

relative.

-Elegy is known in Greek and Latin poetry, it treats with variety of topics.

*The Occasion:

The poem is written in the death of Richard West Gray's best friend he laments

his death as he has been killed.

The poem is translated into Latin and Greek, it is one of the most popular and

most frequently quoted poems in the English language.

*The Structure:

First the poem is divided into two parts: the first part is representing by the poet

himself, about death. The second part is the search of yourself. The structure is

linked between Neo-classical and Pre-Romantic age.

*Tone: •

It is Personal as the poet refers to himself by using me.

*The Language:

• It is Simple, everyday language. The words come with the occasion of death

and mourning. *Title:

• Mortality of man versus immortality of Nature.

*Theme:

• 1- Death, Mortality and Melancholy.

• 2- The search of yourself.

• 3- The conflict of Social classes.

*The Main Idea:

• The end of life and searching about oneself (F). • To immortalize his sincerity

to his friend Richard West ( T)..

Literary devices are tools used by writers and poets to convey their emotions,

feelings, and ideas to the readers. Thomas Gray has also used many literary

devices to make the poem appealing. Here is the analysis of some literary

devices used in this poem.

1. Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the same line

such as the sound of /o/ in “There at the foot of yonder nodding beech”

and the sound of /i/ in “Hands, that the rod of empire might have

sway’d”.

2. Consonance: Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the

same line such as the sound of /r/ in “Approach and read (for thou canst

read) the lay” and the sound of /l/ in “And all the air a solemn stillness

holds”.

3. Alliteration: Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds in the

same line in quick succession such as the sound of /h/ in “Haply some

hoary-headed swain may say” and the sound of /w/ in “The plowman

homeward plods his weary way”, and the sound of /l/ in “Or wak’d to

ecstasy the living lyre”.

4. Imagery: Imagery is used to make readers perceive things involving their

five senses. For example, “There at the foot of yonder nodding beech”,

“The next with dirges due in sad array” and “Each in his narrow cell

forever laid.”
 5. Personification: Personification is to give human qualities to

inanimate objects. For example, “Let not Ambition mock their useful

toil”, “Or Flatt’ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death” and “But Knowledge

to their eyes her ample page.”

Poetic and literary devices are the same, but a few are used only in poetry. Here

is the analysis of some of the poetic devices used in this rhyme.

1. Stanza: A stanza is a poetic form of verses and lines. There are thirty-two

stanzas in this poem, each comprises of four lines.

2. Quatrain: A quatrain is a four lined stanza. Here, each stanza is quatrain.

3. Rhyme Scheme: The poem follows the ABAB rhyme scheme and this

pattern continuous till the end.

4. End Rhyme: End rhyme is used to make the stanza melodious. For

example, “array/lay”, “dawn/lawn” and “hide/pride.”

William Blake
William Blake (1757- 1827) William Blake was born in London on

November 28, 1757, to James, a hosier, and Catherine Blake. He learned

to read and write at home. At age ten, Blake expressed a wish to become

a painter, so his parents sent him to drawing school. Two years later,

Blake began writing poetry. When he turned fourteen, he apprenticed

with an engraver because art school proved too costly. One of Blake’s

assignments as apprentice was to sketch the tombs at Westminster

Abbey, exposing him to a variety of Gothic styles from which he would draw inspiration

throughout his career. After his seven-year term ended, he studied briefly at the Royal

Academy. He published his most popular collection, Songs of Innocence, in 1789 and

followed it, in 1794, with Songs of Experience. Some readers interpret Songs of Innocence in

a straightforward fashion, considering it primarily a children’s book, but others have found

hints at parody or critique in its seemingly naive and simple lyrics. Both books of Songs were

printed in an illustrated format reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts.

The text and illustrations were printed from copper plates, and each picture was finished by

hand in watercolours.
The Lamb

Little Lamb who made thee

Dost thou know who made thee

Gave thee life & bid thee feed.

By the stream & o'er the mead; *mead: a field covered in grass

Gave thee clothing of delight, *delight: great pleasure

Softest clothing wooly bright;

Gave thee such a tender voice, *tender: gentle

Making all the vales rejoice!

Little Lamb who made thee

Dost thou know who made thee

Little Lamb I'll tell thee,

Little Lamb I'll tell thee!

He is called by thy name,

For he calls himself a Lamb:

He is meek & he is mild, *meek and mild: gentle and kind

He became a little child:

I a child & thou a lamb,

We are called by his name.

Little Lamb God bless thee.

Little Lamb God bless thee.

Commentary

The poet addresses the lamb itself. The Lamb is pure, innocent and it is associated with

Christ. Being a visionary Blake invites the reader to world free form reasoning. He describes

the lamb as he sees it. The lamb has been blessed with life and with capacity to drink from

the stream and feed from the meadow. It has been allotted with bright, soft and warm wool

which serves as its clothing. It has a tender voice which fills the valley with joy. The child,

too, is an innocent child. Christ was also a child when he first appeared on this earth as the

son of God. The child enjoys the company of the lamb who is analogous to the child. The

poem displays the innocence the joy and affection. The lyric is counterparts to the tiger. “The

Lamb” and “The Tyger” represent the two contrary states of the human soul. The lamb

represents innocence and humanity whereas the tiger represents a fierce force within man.

The child asks who made the little lamb in a typical child’s tone, rhythm and diction. The

lamb, he says, has been given the “clothing of delight”, soft and ‘wooly’ clothing, and such a

tender voice that makes all the values rejoice. Besides, God has given the lamb the feet and

told it to go and feed itself by the stream and over the meadow. But in the next stanza, the

speaker himself tells the little lamb that his maker is known by the very name of the lamb. He

is also gentle and mild. “I a child and thou a lamb, we are called by His (Christ’s) name”. We

have here a realistic and sympathetic portrait of a lamb. But, the symbolic meaning goes

much deeper. The poem seems that it is based on the biblical hope that "meek shall inherit the

world”.
In the second stanza there’s an identification of the lamb, Christ, and the child. Christ has

another name, that is, lamb, because Christ is meek and mild like lamb. Christ was also a

child when he first appeared on this earth as the son of God. The child shows his deep joy in

the company of the lamb who is just like him, meek and mild. Even on its surface level the

poem conveys the very spirit of childhood the purity, the innocence, the tenderness, as well as

the affection that a child feels for little creatures like the lamb. There are also overtones of

Christian symbolism suggested by Christ as a child. The pastoral setting is also another

symbol of innocence and joy.

The Lamb is the most representative poem of the poems of ‘innocence’. It tells almost

everything it needs to for making us understand its symbolic theme. The child is a symbol of

innocence, the state of the soul which has not yet been corrupted by the world of

conventionalized pretensions called religion, culture, society and state and other codified

systems. This overtly simple poem also subtly approaches the subject of creativity and the

creator. While the speaker is speaking about a real physical lamb on the surface of it, the

subtext of the poem derives from both Christian and classical mythology. The child is the

symbol of Christ, the physical incarnation of the deity. The fact that it has been sent to feed

among the meadow and along the stream indicates that it is to live by natural, instinctual

means, or the Divine law of the nature. The wooly softness and the brightness that comes

from within also support the divine nature of the lamb symbol. The voice of the lamb is also

equally significant. The child, the lamb and the Christ are all close to the creative being;

creativity is a child-like occupation, since it also involves the natural spirit, sense of wonder

and undefiled imagination.

Analysis of Literary Devices in “The Lamb”

Literary devices are tools that enable the writers to present their ideas, emotions,
and feelings with the use of these devices. Blake has also used some literary
devices in this poem. The analysis of some of the literary devices used in this poem
has been stated below.

1. Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the same line

such as the sound of /e/ in “By the stream & o’er the mead”.
2. Enjambment: It is defined as a thought or clause that does not come to an
end at a line break and moves over the next line. For example,

“Dost thou know who made thee

Gave thee life & bid thee feed.”

3. Allusion: Allusion is a belief and an indirect reference to a person, place,

thing or idea of a historical, cultural, political or literary significance. “The
lamb” in the second stanza directly alludes to Jesus.
4. Symbolism: Symbolism means the use of symbols to signify ideas and
qualities by giving them symbolic meanings different from their literal
meanings. “Lamb” and “child” both are the symbols of chastity, innocence,
and
5. Imagery: Imagery is used to make the readers perceive things with their
five senses. The poet has used images such as, “Softest clothing wooly
bright”, “He became a little child:” and “By the stream & o’er the mead.”
6. Alliteration: Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same
line such as the sound of /l/ in “Little Lamb I’ll tell thee”; /h/ and /m/ sounds
in “He is meek & he is mild”.

Analysis of Poetic Devices in “The Lamb”

Poetic and literary devices are the same, but a few are used only in poetry. Here is
the analysis of some of the poetic devices used in this poem.

1. Stanza: A stanza is a poetic form of some lines. There are two stanzas in
this poem, each having five rhyming couplets in it.
2. Rhyming Couplet: There are two constructive lines in a couplet usually in
the same meter and joined by rhyme such as;

“Little Lamb God bless thee.

Little Lamb God bless thee.”

3. Rhyme Scheme: The rhyme scheme followed by the entire poem is

AABBCCDD.
4. End Rhyme: End Rhyme is used to make the stanza melodious, For
example, “feed/mead”, “delight/ bright” and “voice/ rejoice”.
5. Repetition: The poetic, as well as the rhetorical device of repetition,
emphasizes a point through repetition such as, “Little Lamb I’ll tell thee”,
“Little Lamb God bless thee” and “Little Lamb who made thee” which have
been repeated in both stanzas.
6. Refrain: The words that are repeated at some distance in the poem are
called refrain. The phrases “Little Lamb I’ll tell thee”, “Little Lamb God
bless thee” and “Little Lamb who made thee” are repeated with the same
words, these have become refrain as these phrases have been repeated in all
stanzas of the poem.
The Solitary Reaper
William Wordsworth

M R : K A R R A R H AY D A R
 Biography

 William Wordsworth is one of the most important English poets and a

founder of the Romantic Movement of English literature, a style of

writing that focuses on emotion and imagination. Wordsworth became
known as a Lakeland Poet because of the area where he lived, which is
renowned for its beautiful, wild landscapes, charming pastures, and
countless lakes. He was often called a nature poet because of his
emphasis on the connection between humans and the natural world. He
became widely successful and was named Poet Laureate of England in
1843.
 The poem

➢ Behold her, single in the field, ➢ No Nightingale did ever chaunt

Yon solitary Highland Lass! More welcome notes to weary bands

Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so shrilling ne’er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebride
 The poem
➢ Will no one tell me what she
sings?—
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
➢ Whate’er the theme, the Maiden
sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o’er the sickle bending;—
I listen’d, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more
 Summary of ‘The Solitary Reaper’

 “The Solitary Reaper” by William Wordsworth is written as a recollection of an overwhelming

emotional experience. It is about the song sung by a Solitary Reaper. ‘The Solitary Reaper’ was

singing and doing her work without minding about anyone. But the poet was observing her,

mesmerized by the song. He compares her song to that of Nightingale and the Cuckoo-bird, yet

he states that her song is the best. Despite the poet’s inability to decipher the song’s meaning, he

understands that it is a song of melancholy. The poet listened motionlessly until he left the place,

but the song never left him. Even after a long time, he has come away from that place, he says, he

could still listen. The song continued to echo in his heart long after it is heard no more. The

beautiful experience left a deep impact and gave him a long-lasting pleasure.
 The Setting of ‘The Solitary Reaper’
 The setting of "The Solitary Reaper" takes place in a field where a rural girl stands alone in a field, cutting
grain, and singing a song. The opening of the poem asks the reader watch her as no one else is present and
listen to the song that the speaker compares to that of a nightingale. Her task is to "cut and bind the grain,"
which we can also presume is quite a strenuous task as the speaker indicates to us that her song is sung with
a "melancholy strain." We really do not know what song is sung, other than it is something that sparks the
imagination of the speaker. The girl, alone in the natural setting, singing her song makes her a moment
where speaker, in true Wordsworthian fashion, experiences "a spontaneous overflow of emotions." He
compares the girl's song to natural elements (the nightingale or the cuckoo bird) and also to a song sung to
"Arabian travellers." The speaker asks if he will ever know the literal meaning of the song (second to last
stanza), but also understands that he might never know the exact meaning, but that the melody lingers in his
heart "Long after it was heard no more." This implies tht the meaning of the song is not its literal meaning,
but rather what it inspired in the speaker. In the final analysis, the poem ends up becoming about the
speaker's ability to be inspired by the girl's song, as opposed to the girl herself
 The Vocabulary of ‘The Solitary Reaper’
 Highlands:

 The Highlands are a mountainous region in the northwest of Scotland. Because of its many mountain ranges,

the area is scarcely populated—and is known instead for its natural beauty. It includes the Hebrides, a chain

of Islands off the northern coast of Ireland. It was traditionally a Gaelic speaking region of Scotland, though

by Wordsworth's time the predominant language in the region was Scots—albeit a form of the language
strongly influenced by Gaelic. Despite its geographic isolation, the region was bound culturally and
economically to the rest of the British Isles, trading in black cattle and whiskey, and exporting its distinctive
tartan-pattern kilts, which became a fashion craze in the 1820s across Europe.

 Lass:

 A girl, usually young or unmarried. The word was widely used in regional English dialects, particularly the

dialects of the North and Midlands of England. In the dialect spoken around London—the dialect that
eventually became dominant—the word was not used. As a result, even in Wordsworth's time, it likely

sounded archaic and regional, a mark of backwardness. In Scottish dialects, the word had a more specific

application: it often meant a serving-girl.

 The Vocabulary of ‘The Solitary Reaper’
 Reaping:

 The act of cutting wheat, barley, or another grain. For much of human history, the activity was done by hand,

using a sharp tool like a sickle or a scythe. It usually occurs in the autumn, when the grain has fully matured.

It marks a major occurrence on the calendar of agricultural communities and the end of reaping was often

the occasion for major festivals and celebrations. The word often took on a metaphorical significance as
well, with the reaping of grain serving as a symbol for the reaping of souls, of human lives. Hence, for

instance, Death is often represented as a reaper. Wordsworth seems uninterested in this metaphorical sense:
he focuses instead on the physical act of reaping—and the singing that accompanies it.

 Strain:

 A melody or tune. It generally refers to a recognizable passage in a well-known piece of music: some
famous melody that most people know. However, it can also refer to a passage of poetry. Though the musical

sense is clearly the primary one in this passage, the word's capacity to refer to poetry may strengthen the
reader's sense that this poem, through its meditation on the reaper's song, is also reflecting on poetry itself
 The Vocabulary of ‘The Solitary Reaper’
 Vale:

 A valley. The word is typically reserved for wide valleys: that is, valleys that are particularly suitable for agriculture

because they contain a lot of flat land. The word is also used to refer to the world, the scene of life itself. In this

usage, the world is often described as a place of suffering and sorrow: it is called "the vale of tears." For instance, the

poet Percy Shelley, a younger contemporary of Wordsworth's writes in one poem, "Why dost thou pass away and

leave our state, / This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?" In describing the reaper's home as a vale,

Wordsworth may be drawing on both senses at once: locating her in a specific geographical place and, at the same

time, placing her in the general context of human suffering and struggle.

 Strain:

 The Hebrides are a chain of islands off the western coast of Scotland. They are thus geographically close to the

highlands where the reaper lives and works—though, in every other sense, they are highly remote places, far from

the centers of European cultural life. They are a neat opposite to the "Arabian sands" the speaker invokes earlier in

the stanza: frigid, sub-arctic islands as contrasted with blistering equatorial deserts. Between the two the speaker

encompasses much of the earth, in terms of both geography and climate. Moreover, he balances the exoticism of

"Arabian sands" against a region much better known and closer to his primarily English audience.
The Vocabulary of ‘The Solitary Reaper’
 Plaintive:
 The word "plaintive" describes something sorrowful, melancholy, or sad. In this respect, the word is often
used to describe the act of mourning, or grief itself. The speaker suggests throughout the poem that the
reaper's song is mournful and sad. Here he continues to advance that suggestion—and begins to speculate
about what might cause her to sing in such a sorrowful way.

 Lay:

 A song or a short poem (usually written with the intent to be sung). Though the word is now obsolete, it is
especially widely used in poetry (perhaps for its rhyming properties), often in contexts similar to that of "The
Solitary Reaper": to refer, that is, to humble, unpretentious songs, folk songs and country ballads, that the
poet admires from a distance.

 Sickle:

 A sickle is a curved, or hook-shaped, tool, used to cut barley, wheat, and other grains. It is held in one hand;
the reaper uses the other hand to hold the grain steady. It is a traditional agricultural tool, the use of which
dates back many millennia—and it has hardly changed in those years. By putting a sickle in the reaper's
hands, the speaker emphasizes her connection to this longstanding agricultural tradition—and her distance
from the industrial forms of agriculture that were then emerging elsewhere in the British Isles
 In the First stanza of "The Solitary Reaper," Wordsworth
Analysis describes how the Reaper was singing all alone. During one of
Stanza One his journeys in the countryside of Scotland, he saw a Highland
Behold her, single in the girl working in the field all alone. She had no one to help her
field,
out in the field. So, she was singing to herself. She was singing
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by without knowing that someone was listening to her song. The
herself;
poet doesn't want to disturb her solitude so requests the passer
Stop here, or gently pass!
by's go without disturbing her. She was immersed in her work
Alone she cuts and binds
the grain, of cutting and binding while singing a melancholy song. For
And sings a melancholy the poet, he is so struck by the sad beauty of her song that the
strain;
whole valley seems to overflow with its sound.
O listen! for the Vale
profound
Is overflowing with the
sound.
  In the second stanza of "The Solitary Reaper," the poet

compares the young woman's song with 'Nightingale' and

Stanza Two 'Cuckoo' - the most celebrated birds by the writers and poets
No Nightingale did ever
chaunt for the sweetness of voice. But here he complains that neither

More welcome notes to 'Nightingale' nor the 'Cuckoo' sang a song that is as sweet as
weary bands
hers. He says that no nightingale has sung the song so soothing
Of travellers in some shady
haunt,
like that for the weary travelers. For, the song of the girl has
Among Arabian sands:
stopped him from going about his business. He is utterly
A voice so shrilling ne’er
was heard enchanted that he says that her voice is so thrilling and
In spring-time from the
Cuckoo-bird, penetrable like that of the Cuckoo Bird, which sings to break

Breaking the silence of the the silence in the 'Hebrides' Islands. He symbolically puts forth
seas
that her voice is so melodious and more than that of the two
Among the farthest
Hebrides. birds, known for their voice.
  In the third stanza of "The Solitary Reaper," the poet depicts

his plight over not understanding the theme or language of the

Stanza Three poem. The poet couldn't understand the local Scottish dialect in
Will no one tell me what she
sings?— which the reaper was singing. So, he tries to imagine what the

Perhaps the plaintive song might be about. Given that it is a 'plaintive number' and a
numbers flow
'melancholy strain' (as given in line 6) he speculates that her
For old, unhappy, far-off
things,
song might be about some past sorrow, pain or loss 'of old,
And battles long ago:
unhappy things' or battles fought long ago. Or perhaps, he says,
Or is it some more humble
lay, it is a humbler, simpler song about some present sorrow, pain,
Familiar matter of to-day?
or loss, a 'matter of to-day.' He further wonders if that is about
Some natural sorrow, loss,
or pain, something that has happened in the past or something that has
That has been, and may be reoccurred now
again?
  In the fourth stanza, the poet decides not to

probe further into the theme. He comes to the

Stanza four conclusion that whatever may be the theme of

Whate’er the theme, the Maiden her poem, it is not going to end. Not only her
sang
song but also her suffering sounds like a never-
As if her song could have no
ending; ending one. He stays there motionless and
I saw her singing at her work,
listened to her song quite sometimes. Even
And o’er the sickle bending;—
when he left and mounted up the hill, he could
I listen’d, motionless and still;
still hear her voice coming amongst the
And, as I mounted up the hill,
produce, she was cutting and binding. Though
The music in my heart I bore,

Long after it was heard no more

the poet left that place, the song remained in his

heart, long after he heard that song.

  Apostrophe
Figures of  The poem "The Solitary Reaper" begins with an
speech Apostrophe "Behold" where the poet addresses the
‘The Solitary Reaper’ by
unknown passers by. He uses it again in the seventh
William Wordsworth uses a
line "O Listen" telling them how the valley is filled
straightforward language and
with the sound of her.
meter as well as natural
 Symbolism/ Metaphor
theme and imagery. Once
 the poet makes symbolic comparison of the young
again Wordsworth reflected
woman's song with Nightingale and Cuckoo bird for
his belief in the importance
the melodious nature of her song. But it turns out to be
of the natural world. The
hyperbole for he exaggerates that her song is better
poem highlights his dentition
than theirs. The poet very much captivated by her song
of poetry to be ‘a
that the valley is "overflowing with the sound". Again,
spontaneous overflow of
he says that the song looked like a never-ending as her
powerful feelings’ from the
sorrows.
poet and the readers’ part
 Rhetorical questions
 The rhetorical question helps to make the point clear. For example Wordsworth used "Will
no one tell me what she sings?", "That has been, and may be again?" and "Familiar matter of
to-day?" it to express his curiosity over the theme and meaning of the song, the girl sang.

 Imagery
 The imagery used in a literary work enables the readers to perceive things involving their
five senses. For example, “Reaping and singing by herself", "I saw her singing at her work"
and "More welcome notes to weary bands" gives a pictorial description of the young woman
at work. He makes the readers visualize what he has seen and how he felt
 Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the same line such as the sound of /i/ in “Behold her,
single in the field” and the sound of /o/ and /a/ in “Yon solitary Highland Lass!”

 Imagery: Imagery is used to make the readers perceive things involving their five senses. For example, “Reaping
and singing by herself”, “I saw her singing at her work” and “More welcome notes to weary bands.”

 Consonance: Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line such as the sound /r/ in “Some
natural sorrow, loss, or pain” and the sound of /m/ in “Or is it some more humble lay”.

 Enjambment: It is defined as a thought in verse that does not come to an end at a line break; instead, it continues to
the next line. For example,

“Breaking the silence of the seas

Among the farthest Hebrides.”

 Alliteration: Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line in quick succession such as the sound
of /p/ in “Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow” and the sound of /n/ in “No Nightingale did ever chaunt”.

 Hyperbole: Hyperbole is a device used to exaggerate any statement for the sake of emphasis. For example, the below
verses exaggerates the impact of her song,

“O listen! for the Vale profound

Is overflowing with the sound.”

 “The Solitary Reaper”: The Theme

 Major Themes in “The Solitary Reaper”: Everlasting beauty and sorrow

are the major themes of this poem. The poem presents two things; the
labor of that girl and her expression of sorrow. She is working and singing
at the same time without being bothered about her surroundings. She does
not notice that the speaker is listening and enjoying her song. She just
continues as if she is outpouring her heart out in the lap of nature. The
speaker, on the other hand, seems enchanted by her song as he claims that
the song’s beauty is matchless. Thus, he stops and enjoys its beauty
knowing it will not last forever.
 Types of Rhyme Scheme
 There are a number of rhyme schemes used in poetry; some of the most popular of which include:

 Alternate rhyme: It is also known as ABAB rhyme scheme, it rhymes as “ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH.”

 Ballade: It contains three stanzas with the rhyme scheme of “ABABBCBC” followed by “BCBC.”

 Monorhyme: It is a poem in which every line uses the same rhyme scheme.

 Couplet: It contains two-line stanzas with the “AA” rhyme scheme, which often appears as “AA BB CC and
DD…”
 Triplet: It often repeats like a couplet, uses rhyme scheme of “AAA.”
 Enclosed rhyme: It uses rhyme scheme of “ABBA”

 Terza rima rhyme scheme: It uses tercets, three lines stanzas. Its interlocking pattern on end words follows: ABA
BCB CDC DED and so on.

 Keats Odes rhyme scheme: In his famous odes, Keats has used a specific rhyme scheme, which is
“ABABCDECDE.”
 Limerick: A poem uses five lines with a rhyme scheme of “AABBA.”
 Villanelle: A nineteen-line poem consisting of five tercets and a final quatrain. It uses a rhyme scheme of “A1bA2,
abA1, abA2, abA1, abA2, abA1A2.”
 Function of Rhyme Scheme

 Rhyme scheme is an integral part of the constitution of a

poem, which includes meter, length of phrase, and rhythm. In

fact, rhyme scheme, like other writing tools, is used to create
balance and relieve tension, manage flow, create rhythm, and
highlight important ideas. Its basic function is to form units of
sound and suggest units of sense. It also communicates the
idea in a more effective way.
 Rhyme Scheme in the poem

 Rhyme Scheme: The poem follows the ABABCCDD rhyme

scheme and this pattern continues till the end.

 End Rhyme: End Rhyme is used to make the stanza

melodious. For example, “profound/sound”, “still/hill”,

“lay/day” and “grain/strain.”
 Iambic Tetrameter: It is a type of meter having four iambs per
line. The poem follows iambic tetrameter such as; “Stop here,
or gently pass!”
 S.T. Coleridge (1772-
1834)
“What if you slept, and what if in your sleep you

dreamed, and what if in your dreams you went to heaven

and there you plucked a strange and beautiful flower,

and what if when you awake you had the flower in your

hand? Ah, what then?”

Biographia Literaria

Samuel Taylor Coleridge had one of the most fertile and versatile minds in English literature.

Only a relatively small part of his poetic output is familiar to readers today; it contains such

masterpieces as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, "Kubla Khan," and "Frost at Midnight."

His work as a literary critic and theorist, however, is massive; and his judgments and ideas

are still enormously influential today. In 1793, Coleridge met and became instant friends with

William Wordsworth. With Wordsworth, he wrote and published Lyrical Ballads. While

Wordsworth contributed a greater number of poems to the work, Coleridge's The Rime of the

Ancient Mariner received the most attention. Throughout their friendship and careers,

Wordsworth would always be the more productive poet, while Coleridge's work would gain

the notice of critics and readers. Coleridge allegedly suffered from a number of physical

ailments, including facial neuralgia, and in 1796, he started using opium as a pain reliever.

He would become addicted to the narcotic, and this would eventually affect his career as a

poet and his friendship with Wordsworth.

 Kubla Khan
BY SA MUE L TAY LOR CO LER IDGE

Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree: *decree: give order
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man *caverns: caves
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, *rills: small streams
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; *incense: substance
which gives a sweet smell
when burned.
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted *chasm: gap
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! *athwart: crosswise
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer *damsel: lady

In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice, *thrice: three times.
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Despite the plentiful criticism it has elicited, most assessments of “Kubla Khan” remain

unable to answer with any degree of certainty the question of the poem's ultimate meaning. In

part due to its status as a verse fragment and the continued controversy surrounding its

origins, “Kubla Khan” has tended to discourage final interpretation. Nevertheless, most

critics acknowledge that the juxtaposed images, motifs, and ideas explored in the poem are

strongly representative of Romantic poetry. As such, critics have found numerous indications

of a thematic reconciliation of opposites in the poem. Similarly, “Kubla Khan” is thought to

be principally concerned with the nature and dialectical process of poetic creation. The work

is dominated by a lyrical representation of landscape—a common feature of Romantic poetry,

in which landscape is typically viewed as the symbolic source and keeper of the poetic

imagination. Guided by Coleridge's Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Poetry Third-year

classes complex rhyming and metrical structure, “Kubla Khan” first describes the ordered

world of Kubla's palace and then—with an abrupt change in meter and rhyme immediately

following—depicts the surrounding natural world that the Khan cannot control, even as it

provides the foundation of his power. This pattern of contrast between worlds continues

throughout the poem, lending it both a purpose and structure that, critics suggest, represents

Coleridge's ideal of a harmonious blend of meaning and form in poetic art. A recurring motif
throughout Coleridge’s poetry is the power of dreams and of the imagination, such as in

“Frost at Midnight,” “Dejection: An Ode,” and “Christabel.” In “Discovery and the Domestic

Affections in Coleridge and Shelley,” Michelle Levy explains that Coleridge’s “fascination

with the unknown reflects a larger cultural obsession of the Romantic period” (694). Perhaps

the most fantastical world created by Coleridge lies in “Kubla Khan.” The legendary story

behind the poem is that Coleridge wrote the poem following an opiuminfluenced dream. The

first three stanzas are products of pure imagination: The pleasuredome of Kubla Khan is not a

useful metaphor for anything in particular (though in the context of the poem's history, it

becomes a metaphor for the unbuilt monument of imagination); however, it is a fantastically

prodigious descriptive act. The poem becomes especially evocative when, after the second

stanza, the meter suddenly tightens; the resulting lines are terse and solid, almost beating out

the sound of the war drums ("The shadow of the dome of pleasure / Floated midway on the

waves..."). In this particular poem, Coleridge seems to explore the depths of dreams and

creates landscapes that could not exist in reality. The “sunny pleasure-dome with caves of

ice” exemplifies the extreme fantasy of the world in which Kubla Khan lives. Similar to

several of Coleridge’s other poems, the speaker’s admiration of the wonders of nature is

present in “Kubla Khan.” Yet what is striking and somewhat different about the portrayal of

nature in this particular poem is the depiction of the dangerous and threatening aspects of

nature. In most of Coleridge’s works, nature represents a nurturing presence. However, in

“Kubla Khan,” nature is characterized by a rough, dangerous terrain that can only be tamed

by a male explorer such as Kubla Khan. The last stanza of the poem was added later, and is

not a direct product of Coleridge's opium-dream. In it the speaker longs to re-create the

pleasured-dome of Kubla Khan "in air," perhaps either in poetry, or in a way surpassing the

miraculous work of Kubla Khan himself. The speaker's identity melds with that of Kubla

Khan, as he envisions himself being spoken of by everyone around, warning one another to
"Beware! Beware!/His flashing eyes, his floating hair!" Kubla Khan/the speaker becomes a

figure of superstition, around whom those who would remain safe should "Weave a circle[...]

thrice" to ward off his power. Coleridge conflates the near-mythic figure of Kubla Khan

manipulating the natural world physically, with the figure of the poet manipulating the world

"in air" through the power of his words. In either case, the creative figure becomes a source

of awe, wonder, and terror combined.

 Stanza I (Lines 1-11)

Lines 1-2

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure dome decree:

 Here's the famous opener.

 This line gets a lot of work done quickly. It introduces us to the title character (Kubla

Khan), and begins to describe the amazing setting of the poem (Xanadu).

 That "stately pleasure dome decree" means that he had a really fancy and beautiful

palace built.

 We want you to know right away that Coleridge is actually talking about a real place

and a real guy.

 Kubla Khan was the grandson of the legendary Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan, and

he built a summer palace (called Xanadu, in English) in Mongolia.

 Marco Polo visited Xanadu, and helped to start the legend of its magnificence.
  We're starting with actual history here, although by Coleridge's time Xanadu is

already a bit of a legend.

 Keep this little historical nugget in mind, as you read. Does this feel like a real place

and a real person? Or does it seem completely imaginary? Maybe a little of both?

Lines 3-5

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

 The speaker begins to describe the geography of Xanadu. He starts by introducing us

to the River Alph.

 There's certainly no river in Mongolia by this name. Some scholars think that this is

an allusion to the river Alpheus, a river in Greece that was made famous in classical

literature.

 The name "Alph" might also make us think of the Greek letter "Alpha" which is the

first letter of the Greek alphabet, and a symbol of beginnings.

 These associations, and the fact that the river has a name at all, really make the Alph

stand out in the beginning of this poem.

 Notice how Coleridge is already stepping away from history: he is transforming this

place, this person, and this story into his own creation.

 "Kubla Khan" is definitely a poem as much about the journeys of the mind and the

imagination as it is about the real world.

  If this is partly an imaginary landscape, how does the poem's speaker make it look

and feel? When he talks about "caverns measureless to man" we get a sense that this

landscape is both huge and unknowable.

 That slightly spooky feeling continues when we get to the "sunless sea." That's a

pretty gloomy image to start out with, and it casts a shadow over these first few lines.

It also gives us a sense of being in an imaginary landscape, because where else could

a sea always be "sunless" and never bright or cheerful, or any of the other things a sea

can be?

 Also, check out how much shorter line 5 is than all the others. In a poem where all the

lines have a carefully planned length, short lines stand out and make us take notice. It

makes this image just a little lonelier. It also makes this line into more of a dead end, a

stopping place, just like the sea is for the River Alph.

Lines 6-11

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

 Now things become a little more cheerful.

 The speaker takes us away from those gloomy, endless caverns, and tells us a little bit

about the gardens around the palace.

  You might have noticed that the language gets fancy here. A "sinuous rill" (line 3) is

really just a twisty stream.

 Coleridge often uses beautiful language to illustrate simple underlying concepts.

 Here, the speaker is setting up a contrast between the scary, strange caverns and the

pleasant, familiar space around the palace. He describes how the palace is "girdled"

(that just means surrounded) by walls and towers. While the caverns were

"measureless" (line 4) this space can be measured very precisely at "twice five miles."

 Everything about this place feels safe and happy. It's protected by the walls, it's

"fertile," the gardens are "bright," even the trees smell good ("incense-bearing").

 Even though the forests are "ancient" the speaker manages to make them seem

comforting too, since he tells us they are "enfolding sunny spots of greenery" (line

11).

 Notice how the idea of "enfolding" echoes the sense of "girdled." The forest wraps

around those little sunny spots and keeps them safe, just like the walls wrap around

the palace and keep it safe.

 The natural world outside is wild and strange, but within the palace walls things are

peaceful and protected.

 Stanza II (Lines 12-30)



Lines 12-16

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon lover!

 Then, just like that, we get pulled back into the wild, slightly scary natural world. The

speaker takes us back to the river Alph, which is beginning to seem almost like a

character in this poem.

 Xanadu is located in a valley surrounded by hills. The river cascades down the side of

one of these hills, cutting a "deep chasm," or canyon, through it.

 The chasm cuts a path "athwart a cedarn cover" which means that the entire hillside is

covered in cedar trees. This river is violent and uncontrollable, completely unlike

those poky little rills we heard about it line eight.

 The speaker seems to be pulled toward this river like a magnet. He could have

imagined himself sitting in those gardens, having someone feed him grapes.

 But it's the "romantic" chasm that appeals to him, and gives the poem its life.

 Can you feel how excited the speaker is when he talks about the river?

 One way Coleridge tips us off to his excitement is with all of those exclamation

points. They are all over the place in the first few lines of this section.

 Look at just two examples: "a cedarn cover!"(line 13), "a savage place!"(line 14). The

exclamation points really make those images pop out at you, don't they?

 And how about that woman, the demon lover, and that waning moon?

 The speaker is using them to let us know just how romantic and spooky the chasm

really is.
  Our speaker wants us to imagine a woman, maybe even the ghost of a woman, since

she haunts this place.

 Maybe she has been cursed, or has had a spell cast on her, and she has fallen in love

with an evil spirit.

 If this woman wanted to scream about her terrible fate, to let out all her sadness and

her anger and her longing, where would she go? She'd go to a place just like this: a

lonely, wild canyon, where no one could hear her but the "waning moon" (that just

means the moon is getting smaller).

 These images are really intense, and it gives us a little glimpse of a whole new story.

 The speaker isn't saying that any of these things are there in the poem; he's saying that

this is the kind of place where they would be at home.

 He's coloring the mood of the landscape, not introducing new characters, so don't let

the details throw you off too much.

 Remember that we're hearing a description of a dream or a vision.

 Have you ever been at that moment where you're about to fall asleep and something

flashes across your mind? One minute it's there, and its really intense, maybe as

intense as this woman and her demon. Then the next minute it's gone, just like the

woman in this poem.

Lines 17-24

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced:

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:

And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

 More about this river. Seriously, he really likes it. Apparently it comes rushing down

the hillside at every moment ("momently") like a "fountain."

 Of course, rivers don't usually stop moving, so Coleridge doesn't need to tell us that it

flows at every moment. However, he wants us to think of the river not as something

continuous, but as something that is created each moment.

 The speaker wants us to focus on the wild, rushing, violent excitement of the water.

 Coleridge and his poet-friends, the Romantics, loved scenes like this, where the

tremendous power of nature is unleashed and we get to watch.

 Coleridge gets so carried away by this scene that he turns the earth into a kind of

"seething," "breathing" animal.

 The rushing water becomes the sound of its "fast thick pants," as if the earth were

really tired from doing a lot of exercise. He really wants you to hear and almost feel

the rushing force of that river.

 You can't just dip into an image like this. It's like trying to get a drink from a fire

hose.

 Coleridge keeps this intensity up line after line, plunging us into the river again and

again.
  After a while, this turns into a snowstorm of images and analogies.

 Apparently the river is bouncing off the rocks, which reminds the speaker of the

clatter of hail, or grain raining down out of the air as it is being separated from the

chaff.

 We could dig into each one of these images, and we definitely wouldn't want to stop

you from looking as closely as possible at every one of these lines. But we think what

the speaker is really after here is a feeling.

 Do you feel the rushing of the river, the crash of the water against the rocks?

 If yes, then the poem is doing its job. Each image is meant to drive home that feeling

of wild natural force.

 In a sense these lines are like a symphony – a rush of feeling and sound and

excitement that's meant to pick you up and carry you along.

Lines 25-28

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

 Suddenly things calm down a little.

 Our favorite river reaches the flat plain of the valley where Xanadu is located, and it

begins to "meander with a mazy motion" (line 25).

 So, now we've gotten the whole story of the river, from the perspective of someone in

Xanadu.
  The first glimpse is of the river rushing down a deep canyon cut into a wooded

hillside. The water is moving fast and furious, almost like a waterfall, but not quite so

steep. It bounces off rocks and creates a lot of big ruckus.

 The river then flattens out and turns into a proper river, flowing gently through

Xanadu for five miles until it reaches a bunch of caves or "caverns."

 Nobody knows how deep these caverns are. They are so huge you couldn't possibly

measure them. But we do know that they seem to contain an underground ocean, into

which the river flows.

See all those "m" sounds? We call that repetition of the first sound in a word "alliteration."

 Coleridge has gotten us all worked up, and now, to show us he can, he slows it all

down.

 One minute the river's making a "fast thick pant," then it's lazy and murmuring in the

woods and dales.

 You know how some pop songs start out quiet, build up until they are fast and loud

and then quiet down again?

 That's what's happening here. The speaker took us up to peak, and now he's taking us

down again, circling back to the quiet, spooky images that started the poem.

 To bring this idea home, the speaker repeats the phrase "caverns measureless to man"

that we first heard in line 4. Remember that "sunless sea" in line 5? It's back too, this

time as a "lifeless ocean" (line 28).

 Different words, same gloomy idea.

Lines 29-30
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

 Coleridge could have ended the poem there, with that "lifeless ocean."

 In that case, it would have been almost perfectly symmetrical.

 But what fun would that be? This is supposed to an intense vision, after all.

 Plus, what about Kubla, our title character? It almost seems like Coleridge has

forgotten him.

 Well now he's back, in the last two lines of this section. As the poem's pace slows

down, the "tumult" of the river becomes an echo of the intense rush we just felt.

 Like us, Kubla listens from a distance, and what does he hear? "Ancestral voices

prophesying war" (line 30).

 This is Genghis Khan's grandson, after all, so he probably spent a lot of time thinking

about war, even when he wasn't listening to rushing rivers.

 This new image takes us away from the river, and into the even wilder second half of

the poem. Think this is all a little strange already? Just wait!

Popularity of “Kubla Khan”: A highly visionary poem of S. T. Coleridge, “Kubla Khan” is a

masterpiece of romantic poetry published in 1816, and it still maintains its romantic appeal

and artistic touch, though. Originally, it was written to describe a luxurious palace of a

Chinese king, Kubla Khan, about which the poet has read somewhere. The poet has won

accolades due to its appealing imagery and the way he has painted a lively and perfect picture

of that palace.
“Kubla Khan” a Representation of a Dream: The poem explores art and romanticism used to

paint a dream world. The expression of beauty runs throughout the poem. Coleridge has

skillfully applied the “willing suspension of disbelief”, despite knowing that the palace is a

dreamland. He has presented it to enchant the readers and to inspire by describing the

delightful and mesmerizing beauty of a dream.

Major Themes in “Kubla Khan”: The poem comprises diverse themes. True to its romantic

tradition, it presents various versions of the reality of the palace the poet has presented

through his imagination. The second theme is of the man and his significance in the natural

world as depicted by Kubla Khan himself. The concept of time as well as the permanence of

art, too are its other thematic strands presented by Coleridge.

Versions of Reality

Coleridge makes this one easy for us since the subtitle of the poem is "a Vision in a Dream."

This poem is meant to make us feel like we are in an alternate reality. We recognize all the

objects he describes, but the images he creates move in ways we don't expect. People appear

and disappear strangely, just like in a dream or a hallucination. Think of it as a scary Alice in

Wonderland.

Man and the Natural World

The interaction between man and nature is a major theme for Coleridge. It's painted all over

"Kubla Khan," as we go from the dome to the river, and then from the gardens to the sea.

Sometimes he's focused on human characters, sometimes on natural forces. In fact, it's

difficult to get away from this theme in this poem. Think of this tension as a tug-of war
between humans and their temporary constructions (buildings) and the seeming permanence

of nature.

Time

There's some strange stuff going on with time in "Kubla Khan." When exactly does this poem

take place? The Kubla Khan who actually lived belongs to the past, but is Coleridge recalling

the Kubla Khan of the past, or someone who transcends our linear notion of time? If you are

having a vision, are you looking backward or forward? Are you outside time? Whether or not

these questions have answers, it's evident that different understandings of time is a major

theme of the poem.

Art and Culture

Coleridge helps orient the reader by specifically mentioning music in a few places in "Kubla

Khan." Even when he explicitly reference music, we think it's underscoring every line. Do

you hear music in this poem? We definitely do, and we think he wanted his readers to as well.

Whether the sound you hear is monks chanting in a cave, or the swelling of a symphony, we

think music is all over this poem in the sounds it makes and in the way it moves.

Analysis of Literary Devices in “Kubla Khan”

Literary devices such as similes, personification, and irony are very important elements of

any literary text. These devices bring richness and clarity to the text. In addition, the use of

literary devices makes the text life like so that a reader can use imagination like “Kubla

Khan.” Here is the analysis of some literary devices used in this poem.

1) Simile: Simile is a figure of speech in which two things with different qualities are

compared to present a vivid description of an object or a person. There is one simile used in
the poem in line 21 such as “huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail.” The fragments

have been compared to pieces of hailstorm to show their impacts.

2) Personification: Personification is attribution of human qualities to an inanimate object.

Coleridge has used personification in the first stanza where he states, “as if this earth in fast

thick pant was breathing,” comparing the earth to a breathing human being. He also has

personified rocks in line 23 as “the dancing rocks.” Dancing is a human characteristic, but the

poet has attributed this quality to rocks.

3) Metaphor: There are two metaphors in the poem. First is used in the twelfth line where

it is “deep romantic chasm.” Here the “deep romantic chasm” represents the creativity and

deep imagination of the poet. Second is used in the last stanza such as “woman wailing for

her demon-lover.” Here “wait” metaphorically represents the desire for love.

4) Synecdoche: Synecdoche is a literary device in which a part of something represents the

whole. Coleridge has used synecdoche in line 19 such as “A mighty fountain momentarily

was forced” where the fountain has been used for the waterfall or the streamlet that is coming

out of a gorge with force.

5) Assonance: Assonance is a repetition of the vowel sounds in the same line such as the

sounds of /e/ in “deep delight”, “A stately pleasure-dome decree” and /a/ sound in “Through

caverns measureless to man.”

6) Consonance: Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds such as /d/ sound in

“deep delight”, /t/ in “fast thick pants breathing” and /f/ sound in “from the fountain.”
7) Apostrophe: Apostrophe is a device used to call somebody or something from afar. Here

the poet has used an apostrophe to warn someone “Beware! Beware!” which means that he is

calling some anonymous person to be on the alert.

9) Alliteration: Alliteration is the repetition of the same consonant sounds in the same lines

of verse such as the use of /s/ sound in “sympathy and song.”

The analysis shows that Coleridge’s use of literary devices has helped him present a complete

and luxurious picture of the palace of Kubla Khan and the beauty in that realm.

Analysis of Poetic Devices in “Kubla Khan”

Although most of the poetic devices share the same qualities with literary devices, there are

some which can only be used in poetry. The analysis of some of the poetic devices is given

below.

1) Stanza: The poem is structured in two parts and four stanzas. The poet has applied the

mix of tetrameter and pentameter to these undefined stanzas.

2) Rhyme Scheme: As the poem does not follow any organized structure, hence the rhyme

scheme varies from stanza to stanza.

3) Rhyming Iambic Meter: It means that meter has no regular feet in each line. There are

four or five meters in some lines such as the first two lines are in tetrameter, but lines 8 and 9

are in pentameter.

4) Repetition: There is a repetition of the phrase “pleasure doom” that enhances the

musical quality of the poem.

5) Refrain: The lines that are repeated at some distance in the poems are called refrain. The

words “caverns measureless to man” are repeated and used as a refrain in lines 4 and 29 with

the same words.

Mr:Karrar Haydar
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley is one of the most popular English Romantic poets, and is
regarded as a great lyrical poet in English language. He was born on 4th of
August 1792 in England. Shelly harbored highly radical social, political views
setting him against the existing social norms. Therefore, he did not become
popular during his lifetime. However, the poetry of Shelley gained better
recognition following his death.

On July 1822, Shelly drowned in a sailing boat accident. However, many believe that his
death was not accidental, instead a suicide because he was disheartened at that time.

Uncompromising idealism and the unconventional life of Shelley combined with his
powerful disapproving voice made him a disparaged and authoritative figure in his lifetime.
He became a role model for later generations of writers and poets which include Victorian
poets and poets of the Pre-Raphaelite group such as Alfred Lord Tennyson, Lord Byron,
Algernon Charles Swinburne, Robert Browning, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, W. B Yeats, Edna
Saint Vincent Millay and Henry David Thoreau.

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Style and Popular Poems

The best known classic poems of Shelley include:

“Ode to the West Wind,

“Ozymandias”,

“Music, To a Skylark”,

Shelley was a famous English romantic poet whose poetry reflects passion, beauty,
imagination, love, creativity, political liberty and nature. Being very sensitive and possessing
distinctive qualities of hope, love, joy and imagination, Shelley strongly believed in
realization of human happiness.

“Ozymandias” was one of his major contributions to the English Romantic poetry, published
in 1818. Shelly often faced criticism due to his outspoken challenges to religion, oppression
and conventional politics. Shelley was the supporter of social justice for the masses. He had
strong feelings for the lower classes. He also saw how animals were maltreated and
slaughtered. Therefore, he became a fighter and an advocate for all those living creatures
mistreated or treated unjustly. Throughout his life, most journals and publishers turned down
his requests to publish his work due to fear of being arrested for rebellious activities.

Ode to the West Wind

I

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, *enchanter: magician

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, *hectic: feverish

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, *pestilence: plague

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until *corpse: dead body

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow * azure: sky-blue color

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill *clarion: curved trumpet

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: *lyre: ancient harp-like instrument

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies *tumult: uproar

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! *impetuous: hasty

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Commentary
“Ode to the West Wind” is a lyric poem that addresses the west wind as a powerful force and

asks it to scatter the poet's words throughout the world. A lyric poem presents the deep

feelings and emotions of the poet rather than telling a story or presenting a witty observation.

An ode is a lyric poem that uses lofty, dignified language to address a person or thing. The

time is autumn of 1819. The place is western Italy, from the Mediterranean coast inland to

Florence. Addressing the west wind as a human, the poet describes its activities: It drives

dead leaves away as if they were ghosts fleeing a wizard. The leaves are yellow and black,

pale and red, as if they had died of an infectious disease. The west wind carries seeds in its

chariot and deposits them in the earth, where they lie until the spring wind awakens them by

blowing on a trumpet (clarion). When they form buds, the spring wind spreads them over

plains and on hills. In a paradox, the poet addresses the west wind as a destroyer and a

preserver, then asks it to listen to what he says. The poet asks the west wind to turn him into a

lyre (a stringed instrument) in the same way that the west wind's mighty currents turn the

forest into a lyre. And if the poet's leaves blow in the wind like those from the forest trees,
there will be heard a deep autumnal tone that is both sweet and sad. Be "my spirit," the poet

implores the wind. "Be thou me" and drive my dead thoughts (like the dead leaves) across the

universe in order to prepare the way for new birth in the spring. The poet asks the wind to

scatter his words around the world, as if they were ashes from a burning fire. To the

unawakened earth, they will become blasts from a trumpet of prophecy. In other words, the

poet wants the wind to help him disseminate his views on politics, philosophy, literature, and

so on. The poet is encouraged that, although winter will soon arrive, spring and rebirth will

follow it. Nature is grander and more powerful than man can hope to be. The natural world is

especially powerful because it contains elements like the West Wind and the Spring Wind,

which can travel invisibly across the globe, affecting every cloud, leaf, and wave as they go.

Man may be able to increase his status by allowing Nature to channel itself through him. As

the speaker of "Ode to the West Wind" feels himself waning and decaying, he begs the wind

to use him as an instrument, inhabit him, distribute his ideas, or prophesy through his mouth.

He hopes to transform himself by uniting his own spirit with the larger "Spirit" of the West

Wind and of Nature itself. The West Wind in Shelley’s ode is depicted as an autumnal wind,

preparing the world for winter. As a result, the poem is filled with images of death and decay,

reminders of both natural and human mortality. The speaker hopes that the death of one

world will be inevitably followed by a new rebirth and a new spring, but the poem leaves this

rebirth uncertain.

Analysis of Ode to the West Wind

Canto 1

Stanza One
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing

In the opening stanza of Ode to the West Wind, the speaker appeals to the wild West Wind.

The use of capital letters for “West” and “Wind” immediately suggests that he is speaking to

the Wind as though it were a person. He calls the wind the “breath of Autumn’s being”,

thereby further personifying the wind and giving it the human quality of having breath. He

describes the wind as having “unseen presence” which makes it seem as though he views the

wind as a sort of god or spiritual being. The last line of this stanza specifically refers to the

wind as a spiritual being that drives away death and ghosts.

Stanza Two
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

This stanza of Ode to the West Wind describes the dead Autumn leaves. They are not

described as colorful and beautiful, but rather as a symbol of death and even disease. The

speaker describes the deathly colors “yellow” “black” and “pale”. Even “hectic red” reminds

one of blood and sickness. He describes the dead and dying leaves as “Pestilence stricken

multitudes”. This is not a peaceful nor beautiful description of the fall leaves. Rather, the

speaker seems to see the fall leaves as a symbol of the dead, the sick, and the dying. The wind

then comes along like a chariot and carries the leaves “to their dark wintry bed”, which is

clearly a symbol of a grave.

Stanza Three
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

The speaker continues the metaphor of the leaves as the dead by explaining that the wind

carries them and “winged seeds” to their graves, “where they lie cold and low”. He then uses

a simile to compare each leaf to “a corpse within its grave”. But then, partway through the

second line, a shift occurs. The speaker says that each is like a corpse “until” the wind comes

through, taking away the dead, but bringing new life. The use of the word “azure” or blue, to

describe the wind is in sharp contrast to the colors used to describe the leaves.

Stanza Four
Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill:

With this stanza of Ode to the West Wind, the speaker describes the wind as something

which drives away death, burying the dead, and bringing new life. It brings “living hues” and

“ordours” which are filled with new life.

Stanza Five
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!

Here, the speaker again appeals to the wind, calling it a “wild spirit” and viewing it as a

spiritual being who destroys and yet also preserves life. He is asking this spirit to hear his
pleas. He has not yet made a specific request of the wind, but it is clear that he views it as a

powerful spiritual being that can hear him.

Canto V (5)

Stanza One
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Again, the speaker begs the wind to make him be at its mercy. He wants to be like a lyre (or

harp) played by the wind. He wants to be like the dead leaves which fall to the ground when

the wind blows.

Stanza Two

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

In this stanza of Ode to the West Wind, the speaker asks the wind to come into him and make
him alive. This is yet another reference to the wind as a sort of god. In some religions,
particularly the Christian religion, there is the belief that to have a new life, one must receive
the Holy Spirit into his bodily being. This is precisely what the speaker is asking the wind to
do to him. He realizes that for this to happen, his old self would be swept away. That is why
he describes this as “sweet though in sadness”. But he asks the spirit of the wind to be his
own spirit and to be one with him.

Stanza Three
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

The speaker asks the wind to “drive [his] dead thoughts over the universe” so that even as he

dies, others might take his thoughts and his ideas and give them “new birth”. He thinks that

perhaps this might even happen with the very words he is speaking now.

Stanza Four
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The speaker asks the wind to scatter his thoughts as “ashes and sparks” that his words might

kindle a fire among mankind, and perhaps awaken the sleeping earth.

Stanza Five
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

The speaker has used spiritual and biblical references throughout Ode to the West Wind to

personify the wind as a god, but here he makes it a little more specific. When he says, “The

trumpet of prophecy” he is specifically referring to the end of the world as the Bible describes

it. When the trumpet of prophecy is blown, Christ is believed to return to earth to judge the

inhabitants. The speaker asks the Wind to blow that trumpet. Because of the speaker’s tone

throughout Ode to the West Wind, it would make sense if this was the speaker’s own

personal trumpet, marking the end of his life. He wants the wind to blow this trumpet. With

the last two lines of Ode to the West Wind, the speaker reveals why he has begged the wind

to take him away in death. He says, “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” This
reveals his hope that there is an afterlife for him. He desperately hopes that he might leave

behind his dying body and enter into a new life after his death.

Canto I (1)

Alliteration: wild West Wind (line 1).

Apostrophe, Personification: Throughout the poem, the poet addresses the west wind as if it
were a person.
Metaphor: Comparison of the west wind to breath of Autumn's being (line 1).
Metaphor: Comparison of autumn to a living, breathing creature (line 1).
Anastrophe: leaves dead (line 2). Anastrophe is inversion of the normal word order, as in a
man forgotten (instead of a forgotten man) or as in the opening lines of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge's "Kubla Kahn": In Xanada did Kubla Kahn / A stately pleasure dome
decree (instead of In Xanadu, Kubla Kahn decreed a stately pleasure dome). Here is another
example, made up to demonstrate the inverted word order of anastrophe:

In the garden green and dewy

A rose I plucked for Huey
Simile: Comparison of dead leaves to ghosts.
Anastrophe: enchanter fleeing (line 3).
Alliteration: Pestilence-stricken multitudes (line 5).
Alliteration: Pestilence-stricken multitudes (line 5).
Alliteration: chariotest to (line 6).
Alliteration: The wingèd seeds, where they (line 7).
Metaphor: Comparison of seeds to flying creatures (line 7).
Simile: Comparison of each seed to a corpse (lines 7-8).
Alliteration: sister of the Spring (line 9).
Personification: Comparison of spring wind to a person (lines 9-10).
Metaphor, Personification: Comparison of earth to a dreamer (line 10).
Alliteration: flocks to feed
Simile: Comparison of buds to flocks (line 11).
Anastrophe: fill / . . . With living hues and odours plain and hill (lines 10, 12).
Alliteration: Wild Spirit, which (line 13).
Paradox: Destroyer and preserver (line 14).
Alliteration: hear, O hear (line 14).

Canto V (5)
Apostrophe, Personification: The poet addresses the west wind as if it were a person.
Metaphor: Comparison of the poet and the forest to a lyre, a stringed musical instrument (line
57).
Metaphor: Comparison of the poet to a forest (line 58).
Alliteration: The tumult of thy mighty harmonies (line 59).
Alliteration: Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, (line 61).
Metaphor: Comparison of the poet to the wind (line 62).
Alliteration: Drive my dead thoughts over the universe (line 63).
Simile: Comparison of thoughts to withered leaves (lines 63-64).
Alliteration: the incantation of this (line 65).
Simile: Comparison of words to ashes and sparks (66-67).
Alliteration: my words among mankind (67).
Metaphor: Comparison of the poet's voice to the wind as a trumpet of a prophecy (lines 68-
69).
Alliteration: trumpet of a prophecy (lines 68-69).
Alliteration: O Wind, / If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
.......

Mr. Karrar Haydar 22/03/22

 John Keats (1795-1821),
John Keats lived only twenty-five years and four months (1795-1821), yet

his poetic achievement is extraordinary. His writing career lasted a little

more than five years (1814-1820), and three of his great odes--"Ode to a

Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," and "Ode on Melancholy"--were

written in one month. Most of his major poems were written between his

twenty-third and twenty-fourth years, and all his poems were written by his

twenty-fifth year. In this brief period, he produced poems that rank him as

one of the great English poets. He also wrote letters which T.S. Eliot calls "the most notable

and the most important ever written by any English poet.

Themes in Keats's Major Poems

Douglas Bush noted that "Keats's important poems are related to, or grow directly out

of...inner conflicts." For example, pain and pleasure are intertwined in "Ode to a Nightingale"

and "Ode on a Grecian Urn"; love is intertwined with pain, and pleasure is intertwined with

death in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," "The Eve of St. Agnes," and "Isabella; or, the Pot of

Basil."

Cleanth Brooks defines the paradox that is the theme of "Ode to a Nightingale" somewhat

differently: "the world of imagination offers a release from the painful world of actuality, yet

at the same time it renders the world of actuality more painful by contrast.
 Other conflicts appear in Keats's poetry:

transient sensation or passion / enduring art

dream or vision / reality

joy / melancholy

the ideal / the real

mortal / immortal

life / death

separation / connection

being immersed in passion / desiring to escape passion

Keats often associated love and pain both in his life and in his poetry. He wrote of a

young woman he found attactive, "When she comes into a room she makes an impression the

same as the Beauty of a Leopardess.... I should like her to ruin me..." Love and death are

intertwined in "Isabella; or, the Pot of Basil," "Bright Star," "The Eve of St. Agnes," and "La

Belle Dame sans Merci." The Fatal Woman (the woman whom it is destructive to love, like

Salome, Lilith, and Cleopatra) appears in "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and "Lamia.
Ode to a Nightingale

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, *hemlock: poisonous plant

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: , Lethe: a river in Hades (the underworld).

Souls about to be reincarnated drank

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
from it to forget their past lives.
But being too happy in thine happiness,—

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees

Dryad: a wood nymph or nymph of the trees. Dryads or

nymphs were female personifications of natural

In some melodious plot
features, like mountains and rivers; they were young,

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, beautiful, long-lived and liked music and dance. A

Dryad was connected to a specific tree and died when

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
the tree died.

VIII

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades *plaintive: expressing sadness. *anthem: song
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep

In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

Commentary
The poem was inspired by the song of a nightingale which the poet heard in the gardens of

his friend Charles Brown. The sweet music of the nightingale sent the poet in rapture and one

morning he took his chair from the breakfast table, put it on the grass plot under the plum tree

and composed the poem. After he had finished the poem he came back with scraps of paper

in his hand. Brown rescued the papers and found them to be the poem on the nightingale. The

poet wishes to forget himself and escape from this world of perplexity and sorrow into the

forest to be in the company of the nightingale. Life, he says, offers a depressing spectacle

with its weariness, fever, and fret. This is a world in which people hear, each other’s groans, a

world in which palsy may attack the old and consumption may attack the young, in which

merely to think is to become sad, and in which both beauty and love are short-lived.

The poem presents the picture of the tragedy of human life. It brings out an expression of

Keats's pessimism and dejection. He composed this poem at the time when his heart was full

of sorrow. His youngest brother Tom had died, the second one had gone abroad and the poet

himself was under the suspense and agony by the passionate love for Fanny Brawne. All

these happenings had induced in the poet a mood of sorrow. He could not suppress it. Thus

the poet enjoys the pleasure in sadness/ pain and feasts upon the very sadness/ pain into joy.

This complex emotion gives the poem a unique charm. The poet now contrasts the mortality
of human beings with the immortality of the nightingale. The nightingale’s song, he argues,

has not changed for centuries. The voice of the nightingale which he now hears is perhaps the

same as was heard in ancient times by emperor and clown, the same as was heard by the

miserable Ruth as she stood in the alien corn. It is the same voice which has often cast a spell

upon the enchanted windows of a castle situated on the shore of a dangerous ocean in “fairy

lands forlorn”. The word “forlorn” acts on the poet’s mind like the ringing of an alarm bell

and reminds him of his own forlorn condition. As the song of the nightingale becomes more

distant, his imagination which had carried him into the forest also decline and the poetic

vision fades. He knows that he is moving back from the region of poetic fancy to the common

world of reality. After all, “the fancy cannot cheat so well as she is famed to do.” In the

concluding stanza, the poet introduces two new ideas. One is that even the song of the

nightingale cannot be heard constantly and that it must fade away before long. Secondly, the

poetic imagination itself has only brief flights and that, at the end of a poetic flight to

beautiful regions, one must return to the painful realities of life-. Thus the ode, which had

opened on a note of ecstasy, ends on a note of frustration.

Stanza I.
LINES 1-4

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

The poem opens in media res—in the middle of the action. The speaker, alone in the forest,
listens to the nightingale's beautiful song. Through simile, the speaker's mood is compared to
a "drowsy numbness" full of "aches" and "pains," similar to the intoxicated feeling that
comes with ingesting hemlock (a toxic plant) or "opiate[s]" (a class of drugs that includes
opium and heroin). It's not immediately clear yet to the reader just what is causing this state
of mind (and body), however. The soft /m/, /n/, /s/, and /l/ consonance and /d/ alliteration in
these opening four lines give the opening its "drunk" and "drowsy" atmosphere:

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

These sounds are intended to intoxicate the reader, luring them into the poem as though
through hypnosis. In other words, the poem wants to put the reader in a similar state of mind
that the speaker is in during the poem. These lines also help set up the poem's main themes
(without spelling them out too explicitly). The reader can see/hear that the speaker is in some
kind of psychic pain—and it will be up to the rest of the poem to explore the causes of this
pain. Intoxication—which numbs the powers of perception—sets out the speaker's anxiety
about the limits of consciousness (how it is like a mental trap). And nature is immediately an
important presence, hinting at the poem's exploration of different types of beauty (specifically
those of human-made art and those of the natural world). The allusion to Lethe (pronounced
lee-thee) hints at the poem's concerns about death and decay (time and impermanence). Lethe
is a river in the ancient Greek mythological underworld—and drinking from its waters is said
to annihilate the drinker's memory (the word "Lethe" translates as "oblivion").

LINES 5-10

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thine happiness,—

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

Lines 5 to 10 explain the causes of the speaker's aching heart and "drowsy numbness." The
speaker addresses the nightingale, which the speaker perceives as "happy." Insisting that the
speaker is not jealous of the nightingale's apparent happiness, the speaker states that this
intoxicated and melancholy state of mind is down to "being too happy in [the nightingale's]
happiness." This is a paradox that anticipates the tension elsewhere in the poem. On the one
hand, the speaker is delighted and emotionally moved by the nightingale's song; on the other,
the speaker is troubled and anxious. Delicate /th/ alliteration in lines 5-7 emphasize the small
and graceful beauty of the bird:

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thine happiness,—

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees

These sounds represent the "light-winged[ness]" of the bird. And here, too, is the poem's
second allusion to Classical Greek mythology. Dryads are tree spirits, minor (and mortal)
goddesses that are intimately connected to the trees. They are also notoriously elusive, which
is also true of the nightingale bird (and its song). Enjambment between lines 7 to 9 recreates
the "full-throated ease" of the nightingale's song, as the poem is allowed to flow lyrically
without interruption. The /ee/ assonance in this section—"trees," "beeches green," "ease,"
etc.—is intentionally tuneful. These, combined with the enjambment, help give the reader a
somewhat distant but important feel for the presence of birdsong. Indeed, the bird is distant
from the speaker too, hidden somewhere in the dense forest. It's worth noting here that there
is some disagreement among critics about whether the poem is set during the day or night.
The bird itself is traditionally depicted at night-time (the clue is in the name!), but the
presence of "numberless" shadows suggests that there is a light source falling on the forest.
It's also "summer," which is the time of year in England when the days are longest.

LINES 71-74

“ Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf”

The final stanza opens with a repetition of the last word of the previous stanza: "forlorn!"
This form of repetition, in which the same word ends one sentence and begins the next, is
technically known as anadiplosis. Just the mention of this word works like "a bell" (a simile)
in the speaker's mind, pulling the speaker back from the nightingale to the speaker's "sole
self." This "sole self" is a kind of admission, the speaker realizing that, though beautiful, the
nightingale's song ultimately can't answer the questions and worries that the speaker harbors
so deeply (questions about time, suffering, death, and beauty).

The enjambment at the end of line 71 means that the word "bell" rings out loud and clear ("...
bell / To toll ..."), the /l/ sound also chiming through consonance with "toll" and "sole" (and
these last two are assonant long /o/ sounds as well).

Ultimately, then, this is goodbye, with the speaker bidding "adieu" to the nightingale. (It's
worth noting that this same word appears in almost all of Keats's odes.) The speaker resigns
to the fact that "fancy"—the human imagination—can neither match up to the purity and
simplicity of the nightingale's song, nor capture its beauty. The human imagination is
personified as a "deceiving elf"—enchanting, but, when all is said and done, based on
falsehood and deception. As if on cue, the nightingale then flies away.

LINES 75-80

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep

In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

In the poem's closing lines, the nightingale flies away. Its song thus "fades" away—a word
used throughout the ode. At the start of line 75, the speaker again bids the bird "Adieu!" and
this time repeats the word immediately (an example of epizeuxis). The nightingale's flight
away from the speaker represents the speaker's inability to find satisfactory answers to the
poem's main problems and anxieties—human suffering, the relentless march of time, death,
whether human art can match up to the natural world, and so on. The repeat of "Adieu" is
intentionally like the ringing of a bell, ringing out to mark the separation of the speaker and
the nightingale and indeed to toll the poem's ending.

The nightingale's song, once so happy that the speaker was practically too happy (stanza 1),
now sounds "plaintive" (which essentially means sad and mournful) as it fades away. Lines
76 to 77 describe the passage of the bird away from the speaker, the song fading out as it
passes "the near meadows," heads "over the still stream," and "up the hill-side." The similar
grammatical construction of these three phrases, combined with the caesura that separates the
first two and the line break, conveys the way that the bird becomes increasingly distant, as
though each phrase is another stage on the flight away from the speaker.

Soon enough, the song becomes "buried deep / In the next valley-glades," returning the
speaker to the speaker's "sole self." The nightingale once seemed like it could provide an
answer to some of the speaker's most profound questions, but that now feels long ago.
Instead, the speaker is left only with more rhetorical questions:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

Notice how the two options in the first question are both based on falsehood and unreality.

The question isn't poised between reality and illusion, but "a vision" and "a waking dream."

The mention of "vision" is also unsettling because the poem has relied so heavily on the

auditory sense, almost entirely foregoing visual description. These questions, then, have a

disorientating effect that matches with the speaker's own confusion. Indeed, it does feel like

the speaker has just awoken from some kind of stupor. The shift into the past tense with

"fled" is important too, signaling that the nightingale—and everything that it represented—

now well and truly eludes the speaker. For that reason, then, the speaker's entire

consciousness is disrupted, leaving the speaker unable to tell what is real anymore.
The Victorian
Age (1830-
1900)
The Victorian age in English literature, though commonly associated with the reign of Queen
Victoria, who came to the throne in 1837, does not exactly cover the period of that august
Queen’s reign. This designation, however, is particularly given because of the importance of
the age of Queen Victoria and its effect on the literature of the time. The Victorian Age has a
specific significance in the history of England, as it was an era of peace and growth on all
fronts. The Victorian Period is found to mark the advancement of the English people in
political expansion, scientific knowledge as also materialistic pursuits and progress.

Characteristics of the Victorian Age Poetry

The Victorian Poets wrote on multiple themes and subjects which is why Victorian Poetry
needs to be analysed by separating the Victorian Poets from the Pre-Raphaelites. While
Tennyson, Browning and Arnold led Victorian Poetry from the front, Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
his sister Christina Georgina Rossetti and A.C. Swinburne are said to have been the pioneers
of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The major difference between these two distinct groups of
poets is seen in their choice of style and poetry. The Pre-Raphaelites stressed on the
connection of poetry and painting. Therefore Victorian Poetry differs in form, rhyme and
length from one poet to another.

1) Conflict between Religion and Science-

The most remarkable characteristics of Victorian poetry is its conflict between religion and
science. It was a byproduct of the intellectual developments of this age. The leading poets of
this age reacted to this religious scepticism through their works. Robert Browning attempted
to criticize religion in his poems like ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’. He also questioned the demands of
the church that go against human nature. Similarly, When Tennyson wrote ‘In Memoriam’
(1850), he raised many questions on life and death. The scientific approach to nature and
human became a central theme in Victorian Poetry. Arnold’s poem ‘Dover Beach’ (1867),
also addresses the eroding religious faith of the time.

2) Showing the Responsibility-

Victorian poetry can be seen as the object of displaying the rural and rustic life. They raised
voice for indiscrimination against the commoner masses that had been done due to
industrialization. Victorian poets took a stand of social reform.

3) Use of Sensory Elements-

In the preceding era poets, they used the imagery vividly. However, Victorian poets also used
imagery and senses to convey the chaos or struggle between Religion and Science, and ideas
about Nature and Romance.

Lord Alfred Tennyson prominently used the sensory and Imagery elements in his poems. One
notable example in Tennyson’s poem “Mariana”, he writes- The doors upon their hinges
creaked; / The blue fly sung in the Pane; the mouse / Behind the moldering wainscot
shrieked. These images of the creaking door, the blue fly singing in the window, and the
mouse with the moldy wood paneling, all work together show a very definite image of an
active, yet lonely farmhouse.

4) Pessimism-

Victorian poets understood the misery that industrial Revolution had brought about in the
society. Thus, Victorian poetry became object and real; in terms of displaying the urban life.
The poets wrote on isolation, despair, doubt and general pessimism that surrounded the era.
On the surface, Victorians seemed to enjoy the wealth and prosperity but the feelings of
uncertainty, Cynicism and self-doubt was reflected in the poems of this age. The issue of
psychological isolation is common in almost all the great poems of the Victorian Era.
Tennyson’s poem, ‘Locksley Hall’ (1842) is about the restless “young England”. Mathew
Arnold explored the “strange disease of modern life” and the loneliness of modern-age men
in his poem ‘The Scholar-Gipsy’ (1853). In ‘The City of Dreadful Night’, Arthur Hugh
Clough deals with the note of Insomnia and Pessimism.
 5) Interest in Medieval Fables and Legends-

Victorian Poetry is also marked by medieval legends and fables. Just as the Pre-Raphaelites
attempted to restore the essence of medieval art in their poems, poets like Tennyson, William
Morris and Swinburne wrote poetry on Arthurian legends of the Medieval Age. Tennyson’s
‘Idylls of King Arthur’ (1859-1889) was a series of four books that were centered on King
Arthur and the Round Table. In his other works such as ‘Sir Launcelot and Queen
Guinevere’, ‘Sir Galahad’, and ‘Morte d’ Arthur’, Tennyson explored the vision of Medieval
quests and tales. Swinburne idealized Medievalism in his works as the golden Age of tragic
love and Tragic Heroism. It is noteworthy that Victorian poets went back to Medievalism not
as escapists but in order to redirect it to the contemporary developments in politics, literature
and art.

6) Realism

The Victorian Poets was quite realistic and had less idealized view of nature as compared to
the Romanic Poets who were idealists and believed in Art for the Art Sake. Nature had lost
its idealize position which are more often found in the Romantic Age. In the Tennyson age,
Nature had become a source of leisure and inspiration for the poets.

7) Sentimentality-

Another one of the most important characteristics of Victorian poetry is sentimentality. The
Victorians wrote about artistic creations thus giving way to deeper imaginations. Poets like
Alfred Tennyson, Emily Bronte prominently used the element of sentimentality in their
poems.

8) Development of Dramatic Monologue-

Though the Victorians used medieval settings, forms and themes, many other forms of poetry
also held prominence during the Victorian Era. The dramatic monologue became one of the
most popular gifts of Victorian Poetry to English Literature. Through works such as Alfred
Tennyson’s “Ulysses’ (1842), ‘St Simeon Stylites’ (1842) and Mathew Arnold’s ‘Dover
Beach’ and ‘Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse’. Robert Browning popularized dramatic
monologue in most of his works such as ‘My Last Duchess’, ‘Porphyria’s Lover’, ‘Soliloquy
of the Spanish Cloister’, ‘Men and Women’ and such others. These poems were published in
Browning’s ‘Dramatic Lyrics’ in 1842. Apart from the famous dramatic monologue, the
Victorian poets also explored Sonnets, Epics, Elegies and Ballads.

In this way, the Victorian poetry is the direct outcome of the Prevailing socio-economic,
political and literary activities of the time.

Victorian Poetry:
It produced three great poets- Tennyson, Browning and Arnold. Tennyson is the most
representative poet of the age. He represents Victorian conflict and compromise. He is a great
lyric poet. His lyricism is deep rooted and dominates all of his poems. It makes his poetry
sweet and smooth. His lyric can be divided into many parts like personal, dramatic, patriotic
and musical lyrics or songs. Among Tennyson’s personal lyric “ In Memorium” is very
important. It is a collection of lyrics composed on the death of his bosom friend Arthur
Hallam. Tennyson’s dramatic lyrics are in the form of dramatic monologues. Tennyson is
admired as a pictorial artist. His description of the nature is highly sensuous. Robert
Browning is known for his dramatic monologues and philosophy of hope. Browning is the
greatest writer of dramatic monologues. All of his monologues deal with different aspects of
love. Mathew Arnold is regarded as the greatest elegiac poet of Victorian age. He contributes
a number of elegies but the following five are of great merit: (i) Thyrsis (ii) Rugby Chapel
(iii) The Scholar Gipsy (iv) A Southern Night (v) West Minister Abbey

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was the most renowned poet of the Victorian era.
His work includes 'In Memoriam,' 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' and
'Idylls of the King.’

Born in England in 1809, Alfred, Lord Tennyson began writing poetry as a

boy. He was first published in 1827, but it was not until the 1840s that his
work received regular public acclaim. His "In Memoriam" (1850), which
 contains the line "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all," cemented
his reputation. Tennyson was Queen Victoria's poet laureate from 1850 until his death in
1892.

Crossing the Bar

BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

"Crossing the Bar" is a poem by the British Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. The
poem, written in 1889, is a metaphorical meditation on death, which sees the speaker comparing
dying—or a certain way of dying—to gently crossing the sandbar between a coastal area and the
wider sea/ocean. In essence, it is a poem that argues that death is in fact a kind of comfort, a
point of view based on the speaker's religious faith in the afterlife. Accordingly, the speaker
wants to die quietly and gently, without fear, reassured by the knowledge that what comes next
is a meeting with God. "Crossing the Bar" was written shortly before Tennyson's own death, and
is the poem that Tennyson wanted placed at the end of all future collections and editions of his
poetry.
 Commentary

Tennyson wrote “Crossing the Bar” in 1889, three years before he died. The poem describes
his placid and accepting attitude toward death. Although he followed this work with subsequent
poems, he requested that “Crossing the Bar” appear as the final poem in all collections of his
work.

In 'Crossing the Bar', Tennyson is speaking about his own impending death. Within the poem,
the image of the sea is used to represent the 'barrier' between life and death. The construction of
this metaphor centres on the image of 'crossing the bar'; a 'bar' is physically a bar of sand in
shallow water. The 'bar' which Tennyson must cross, however, can only be crossed in one
direction. This is made explicit in a couple of ways by the poet.

Firstly, we should consider the wider imagery of the poem. The poem opens with the phrase
'Sunset and evening star', immediately placing the reader in a setting at the end of the day. The
metaphor can be extended to represent a late stage in the poet's life. This reading is supported
by the opening of the third stanza: 'Twilight and evening bell, / And after that the dark!' Time is
progressing as the poem develops, and after each reference to physical time, Tennyson makes a
personal reference to his future:

'And may there be no moaning of the bar, / When I put out to sea'

'And may there be no sadness of farewell, / When I embark'

The clear reference to Tennyson's 'moving on' enables us to interpret the image of evening as
representing old age. The notion of passing time, evident in the physical darkening of the sky
from 'sunset' to 'twilight' to 'dark' is echoed in the rhythm of the poem. Clearly, the poem speaks
about the sea, about a tide which 'turns again home'. The tide, we are reminded, has done this
before; its rhythm will not be interrupted by the death of the poet. The lengths of the lines
alternate between 10, six and four syllables with no fixed rotation:

10 But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

6 Too full for sound and foam,

10 When that which drew from out the boundless deep

4 Turns again home.

The differing lengths of lines evoke the movement of a tide washing upon a beach, something
which we all recognise to be cyclic.

Secondly, in considering how the poet has constructed the 'bar' between life and death, we must
look at the specifics of his language. The poet is certain of his destination:

'When I put out to sea'

'When I embark'

'When I have crossed the bar'

The repetition of when makes it clear to the reader that the event the poet is discussing is firmly
placed in the future; it will happen, but hasn't happened yet. We can contrast this to the use of
indefinite phrases in the poem:

'And may there be no moaning of the bar'

'And may there be no sadness of farewell'

'I hope to see my Pilot face to face'

Tennyson makes a clear distinction between events which he knows will happen, and events
which he hopes will happen. He cannot assure that there will be 'no sadness of farewell', so he
cannot solidify the matter within the poem itself.

The final stanza of the poem is particularly interesting, and deserves some consideration within
itself:

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crossed the bar.

There are three aspects of this final stanza that are immediately striking; the capitalisations of
'Time', 'Place' and 'Pilot'. We capitalise proper nouns, such as names and locations, suggesting
that Tennyson sees 'Time and Place' as a specific location, such as 'London', and 'his Pilot' as a
personal figure. This adds to the element of certainty in the poem: Tennyson has in mind a
location in which he will end, and though he can only 'hope' to see his 'Pilot', he has an image he
aspires to meet with.

Themes
Theme of Death

If the sandbar is Tennyson's metaphor for the boundary between life and death, then "Crossing
the Bar" is all about crossing from life to death. But if you think you're in for a morbid poem,
you're in for a surprise instead. This poem is all about accepting and embracing death, rather
than fearing the dark unknown.

Theme of Old Age

"Crossing the Bar" isn't just about death; it's also about what comes before death in most cases—
old age. The references to sunset and evening in the poem remind us that the evening of the
speaker's life is in full swing and that night, or death, is fast approaching. But the nice thing
about old age is that it comes with its fair share of wisdom. And in this case, our speaker has
grown wise enough to know that death isn't an end, but a beginning.

POETIC DEVICES

 Alliteration: This is when two consonant sounds follow each. This device is
employed in stanza one, line two “And one clear call for me” and line two of the
second stanza, “Too full for sound and foam”.

 Symbolism: This is the use of symbols and symbolic expressions to depict an idea.
Expressions like “sunset and evening stars” symbolizes beginning and the end
respectively. “Bar” symbolizes death, and “bell” symbolizes time.

 Repetition: This is the mentioning of a word or group of word twice or more times in
a poem mainly for emphasizes. The poem hints more on the time, as such, the word
“when” is repeated in the poem in the last lines of the third and last stanza. It
emphasizes that death will surely come in time, though the time is often unknown to
us. “May” is another word that is repeated in the poem in line 3 of the first stanza and
line 3 of the third stanza. It is emphasized to hint the notion of no mourning when
 death comes. Also in the poem, the notion of death is repeatedly emphasized in all the
stanzas.

 Imagery: This is when a word or group of words create(s) sound, image, smell, and
taste in our mind. Audio and visual imagery can be found in line 1 of stanza three:
“evening bell”. It creates sound in the reader’s mind and a picture of a bell too. In line
1 and 2 of stanza two, the poetic personae creates an audio image with the idea of the
sound made when the sea tide moves. Words like, the dark, flood, boundless deep,
pilot, bar and so on creates visual image. The reader is made to visualize them in
his/her mind when reading the poem.

 Metaphor: This is the direct comparison of two phenomenon (things, persons etc.).
The quality of the pilot as the one who directs the cause of an aero plane and the
passengers is used metaphorically in the poem to refer to the quality/ability of the one
who directs the cause of the universe and all the living things in it – God. More so, the
act of crossing the bar is compared to the act of dying or transiting to the next world.

 Irony: This simply means opposite of what is meant. The use of this technique is not
obvious in the poem. However it can be fished out easily with a close attention. In
reality, death is not something to cheer about since it means that someone, probably
someone dear to heart, is gone and gone forever. But the poem encourages the reader
to accept the event of death with a good heart, whether you are the deceased or a
relation. Hence, it is ironical as the reader expects that death will be condemned,
rather, it is condoned.

Mr:Karrar Haydar