Jonah Sanders

ENG-202-701

Professor Marc Steinberg

3/5/2024

Midterm Part 1

Romantic literature serves as a lens through which to view the world that could be as

opposed to the one that is. The poems of this period challenge the reader’s perception of the

world by asking not what they see, but how they see it in their mind- how it makes them feel.

The value placed on the boundless realm of imagination throughout the Romantic period created

an environment where emotions were at the forefront of important discussions, and opinions on

the world around us were taken with just as much if not more consideration than solid fact when

writing poetry. There are moments throughout the canon of Romantic literature where the lines

between what is real and what could be real in our minds blend, and this is the rock upon which

the emotional value of “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats and “To Night” by Percey Shelley

stands.

“Ode on a Grecian Urn” is relatively simple when viewed through the narrow scope of

reason: it is a description of a work of art. Yet this work would not be interchangeable with the

information on a placard at an art museum. Why is this? The Grecian Urn immediately captivates

the mind of the narrator and in so doing becomes more powerful than any words he could use to

describe it. The complexity in “Grecian Urn” is born out of the piece’s immediate attachment to

the infinite scope of his mind. The urn is unable to respond to his questions, yet Keats repeatedly

utilizes rhetorical questions posed to the urn to remind the reader that it is the unanswerable
question that is the most intriguing. Keats expresses that it is this quality more than any other that

makes the urn valuable. The death of the artist that created the urn means that any question posed

will remain unanswered forever, meaning that there is no logical end to the musings that Keats

could have on the piece. It can be concluded that Keats finds this a positive aspect almost

immediately in the first stanza when he expresses that the tale told by the urn is far sweeter than

anything that could be written about it. In the second stanza the value of the song being played in

that frozen moment in time is only truly made special by the fact that it will always only be in his

mind. The Urn is itself an object grounded in reality, and it is this tether to the material that

allows it to outlive its creator and inspire the minds of its viewers. The author understands this

but places a far greater emphasis on what the urn can’t say as opposed to what it does.

“To Night” achieves a similar goal of making imagination more powerful than reality by

morphing time and its effects into beautiful personifications of themselves. Dreams are uplifted

again very early in the poem, as the first stanza confirms that the “weaving of dreams” is the

feature that makes night as impressive and beloved as it is. “To Night” uses the language of

physical desire as a core aspect of the poem, which is only given credence in its physicality by

this realistically impossible personification. Night grows more enticing by the cyclical nature of

this relationship to dreams: Shelley describes his desire for night in physical terms using a

personification that is only possible in dreams, and dreams are only possible because of night.

This desire based in imagination grows so powerful that eventually Shelley can overcome fear of

death on desire for night alone, though he does note the similarities that death must sleep. It is

here that the reader is able to extrapolate the true power of the imagination over reason: by

properly pointing the desires of his mind, Shelley has found himself able to conquer the fear of
death in the real world. He offers this as an affirmation of comfort to his reader in the statement

“Death will come when thou art dead”.

Where “Grecian Urn” and “To Night” differ is the nature of the perception of time in

relation to imagination. “Grecian Urn” empowers time as a tool that gets us further away from

the limitations of reality, and it serves as the veil of mystery that allows the important

unanswerable questions to be asked in the first place. “To Night” expresses time as a barrier to

his desire, serving to make his reuniting with his beloved Night even more passionate as distance

makes the heart grow fonder.

Midterm Part 2

1. “The Chimney Sweeper” does not hesitate in its reminder to the reader that we

understand far more about the nature of the tragedy of the chimney sweepers than they

do. The selling of the narrator into the life of a chimney sweep occurred before the child

could cry out, ergo the child has permanently had their outlook on the world warped by

the fact that they have been enduring hardship since before they were able to comprehend

being upset by hardship. Blake expects the reader to carry their understanding of the

sweeper’s inability to comprehend how depressing his situation is throughout the rest of

the work to understand the irony behind the deaths of these poor children. The suicide of

these children is not one born of depression, nor intent to “end their suffering”, but rather

something the kids take up willingly in hopes of the joys of heaven. They don’t kill

themselves directly with implements of death, but rather take joy in knowing they will

die from their work and be free of the torment they have endured near since birth.

2. Nature is given value before all else in Wordsworth’s classic “The World Is Too Much

With Us.” The poem utilizes old pagan imagery to evoke feelings of a bygone era and
showcase that modernity has isolated us from nature unlike the peoples that came before.

Nature is here able to connect us to our hearts, the value of this action enhanced by the

negative effects of the alternative option “laying waste to our powers”. Utilizing

legendary gods of the sea to convey this bygone era puts a raw, primal power behind the

image of nature, one that dwarfs man while giving them a reason to be whole through

worship of the natural world.