Brit Lit II: Romanticism Poet's Poem Passages
Author: William Blake Name: The Lamb (SOI) Why: theme of religion and innocence
"He is called by thy name / For he calls himself a Lamb" (lines 13-14) -"I a child & thou a lamb / We are called by his name" (lines 17-18)
Author: William Blake Name: Infant Sorrow" (SOE) Why: dark wording; childbirth is not always joyful, can bring sorrow/pain; short poem
"My mother groand! my father wept. / Into the dangerous world I leapt" (lines 1-2)
Author: William Wordsworth Name: "Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey" Why: Lots of nature imagery; positive language; tone - wonder, happiness
"Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes / The still, sad music of humanity, / Nor harsh nor grating, through ample power / To chasten and subdue. And I have felt / A presence that disturbs me with the joy / Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime / Of something far more deeply interfused, / Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, / And the round ocean and the living air, / And the blue sky, and in mind of man" (lines 90-99)
Author: William Blake Name: "Infant Joy" (SOI) Why: theme innocence and happiness; short poem
"Pretty Joy! / Sweet Joy but two days old, / Sweet Joy I call thee" (lines 7-9)
Author: Percy Shelly Name: "England 1819" Why: theme of political anger and hope; sonnet
"Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know, / But leechlike to their fainting country cling / Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow." (lines 4-6)
Author: Percy Shelly Name: Ozymandias Why: theme of transience of power and glory; sonnet (Petrarchan)
"Tell that its sculptor well those passions read / Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things" (lines 7-8)
Author: William Blake Name: "The Tyger" (SOE) Why: theme the nature of God and creation; short poem; lots of questions
"What the hammer? / what the chain? / In what furnace was thy brain? / what the anvil? what dread grasp? / Dare its deadly terrors clasp?" (lines 13-16)
Author: William Blake Name: "London" (SOE) Why: dark depressing imagery/wording; misery in London; being "chained" mentally in London; critiquing the Church and British monarchy for not helping the poor; realistic view of London
-"And mark in every face I meet / Marks of weakness, marks of woe" (lines 3-4) -"How the youthful Harlot's curse / Blasts the new-born Infant's tear, / And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse" (lines 14-16)
Author: William Blake Name: "The Little Black Boy" (SOI) Why: innocence being explored from child perspective
-"But O! My soul is white (line 2) -"Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove" (line 16) -"When I from black and he from white cloud free, / And round the ten of God like lambs we joy" (lines 23-24)
Author: William Blake Name: The Chimney Sweeper (SOI/SOE) Why: dark imagery about childhood innocence; complaining about a problem
-"Could scarcely cry 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! / So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep" (lines 3-4) -"And by an Angle who had a bright key / And he open'd the coffins & set them all free" (lines 13-14)
Author: William Wordsworth Name: "Lines Composed on Westminster Bridge" Why: lots of nature imagery; ideal view of London (what it could be); tone = happy, bold, aweing;
-"Earth has not any thing to show more faire: / Dull would he be of soul who could pass by" (line 1-2) -"Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; / And all that mighty heart is lying still" (lines 13-14)
Author: William Blake Name: "The Clod and the Pebble" Why: views about love being selflessness vs selfishness
-"Love seeketh not Itself to please, / Nor for itself hath any care" (lines 1-2) -"Joys in another's loss of ease, / And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite" (lines 11-12)
Author: Charlotte Smith Name: "Written in the Church-Yard at Middleton in Sussex" Why: agressive towards nature; ocean = powerful/dangerous; nature will do what it wants; real storm is the storm of life
-"Press'd by the Moon, mute arbitress of tides, / While the loud equinox its power combines (lines 1-2) -"And breaks the silent sabbath of the grave!" (line 8) -"While I am doom'd -- by life's long storm opprest, / To gaze with envy on their gloomy rest" (line 13-14)
Author: William Cowper Name: "The Negro's Complaint" Why: talking about slavery; critique of nature; white man writing from perspective of a black slave
-"Skins may differ, but Affection / Dwells in White and Black the same" (lines 15-16) -"Prove that you have Human feelings / 'Ere ye proudly question ours" (lines 55-56)
Author: William Blake Name: "Holy Thursday" (SOI/SOE) Why: critics rather than praises the charity of the institutions responsible for helpless children; complaining about a problem within society
-"The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs," (lines 7-8) -"Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor; / Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angle from your door" (lines 11-12)
Author: William Wordsworth Name: "Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey" Why: line about trees and what they make possible; nature imagery; imagination + brain; overflow of feeling
-"Therefore I am still / A lover of the meadows and the woods" (lines 102-103) -"...They have create, / And what purpose..." (lines 106-107) -The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, / The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul / Of all my moral being" (lines 109-111)
Author: Samuel Taylor Colridge Name: "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" Why: poetic faith;
-believes that you enter into the story of the moment and get to be in that fictional world -you learn something from the story
