Romanticism

Lord Gordon, George Byron

"mad, bad, and dangerous to know"; while aesthetically, Byron strived for a much more traditional sense of balance in his poetry, he's credited with the inception of the central Romantic character—the "Byronic (Anti)hero"

Flora

(often) the beautiful

The Oceans and Moutains

(often) the sublime

Percy Bysshe Shelley

A true anti-authoritarian revolutionary and individualist who was expelled from Oxford U. for arguing the necessity of atheism

Multiplicity of Forms

Blank Verse Sonnets Odes

The Aeolian Harp by S.T. Coleridge My pensive Sara! thy soft cheek reclined Thus on mine arm, most soothing sweet it is To sit beside our Cot, our Cot o'ergrown With white-flowered Jasmin, and the broad-leaved Myrtle, (Meet emblems they of Innocence and Love!) And watch the clouds, that late were rich with light, Slow saddening round, and mark the star of eve Serenely brilliant (such would Wisdom be) Shine opposite! How exquisite the scents Snatched from yon bean-field! and the world so hushed! The stilly murmur of the distant Sea Tells us of silence. And that simplest Lute, Placed length-ways in the clasping casement, hark! How by the desultory breeze caressed, Like some coy maid half yielding to her lover, It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs Tempt to repeat the wrong! And now, its strings Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes Over delicious surges sink and rise, Such a soft floating witchery of sound As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land, Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers, Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise, Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untamed wing! O! the one Life within us and abroad, Which meets all motion and becomes its soul, A light in sound, a sound-like power in light, Rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere— Methinks, it should have been impossible Not to love all things in a world so filled; Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air Is Music slumbering on her instrument. And thus, my Love! as on the midway slope Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon, Whilst through my half-closed eyelids I behold The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main, And tranquil muse upon tranquility: Full many a thought uncalled and undetained, And many idle flitting phantasies, Traverse my indolent and passive brain, As wild and various as the random gales That swell and flutter on this subject Lute! And what if all of animated nature Be but organic Harps diversely framed, That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the Soul of each, and God of all? But thy more serious eye a mild reproof Darts, O beloved Woman! nor such thoughts Dim and unhallowed dost thou not reject, And biddest me walk humbly with my God. Meek Daughter in the family of Christ! Well hast thou said and holily dispraised These shapings of the unregenerate mind; Bubbles that glitter as they rise and break On vain Philosophy's aye-babbling spring. For never guiltless may I speak of him, The Incomprehensible! save when with awe I praise him, and with Faith that inly feels; Who with his saving mercies healèd me, A sinful and most miserable man, Wildered and dark, and gave me to possess Peace, and this Cot, and thee, heart-honored Maid!

Eolian harp is like a wind chime • Sensuality of the word choice • Sense of touch • Never uses "blow" to describe the wind • Main symbols ○ Natural - the breeze (inspiration) ○ Man-made - the harp (creates music) • Has a rhymthm (progression) • The moment when you come back to reality • Language over matter • idealism ○ Senses, mind, spirit ○ Unity with God ○ We percieve but also create • Can be read as a love poem • Innocent love • Parathenses indicate things of unimportance • Star of eve • Silent murmur that tells you of silence • ------ • Birds are the breeze working along the harp • Wind over the hard represents the man's desire for his love • Universe over him • A muse kind of idea • Wind creates thoughts • His thoughts are becoming more free ○ The mind becomes disconnected form relatity like a bird away from its perch ○ Fairy-land • His lover is not willing to give up the realitites of society to be with him • Goes to fantasy world, to the normal, and then to the ideal • Sara represents conservative thoughts

1789

French Revolution; the movement takes form after it. the social contract (fight for freedom)

Imagination

Imagination emphasized over reason In part, a backlash against the rationalism characterized by the Enlightenment, AKA: Neoclassical period or "Age of Reason" Imagination considered necessary for creating all art British writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge called imagination "intellectual intuition."

1798

Lyrical Ballads by William Woodsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge - this is considered the beginning of literary Romanticism.

Idealism

Not simply positivity Idealism refers to any theory that emphasizes the spirit, the mind, or language over matter - thought has a crucial role in making the world the way it is. Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, held that the mind forces the world we perceive to take the shape of space-and-time, and Wordsworth writes of what the senses "half-create".

Foutains

Pouring forth from within

What is Romanticism

Romanticism refers to a movement in art, literature, and music during the 19th century. Romanticism is characterized by the 5 "I"s Imagination Intuition Idealism Inspiration Individuality

Individuality

Romantics celebrated notions of individuality over traditional authority (monarchies and formalized religion). During this time of revolutions--the French and the American, individual rights and women's rights were taking root as major movements. Shelley's "Ozymandias" reflects this anti-authoritarian movement, and his "Men of England" is distinctly "Marxist"—about 20 years before The Communist Manifesto. Byron's "Byronic Hero" was much patterned upon himself—a handsome, yet brooding and melancholy man who flees some unforgivable and un-namable sin of his past finding redemption not in traditional religion or society, but with himself in nature.

Intution

Romantics placed value on "intuition," or feeling and instincts, over pure reason. Because Romantics considered humanity "innately good" or at least a "blank slate", this "intuition" was fed by idealizing childhood, meditation in solitude, and time spent in concert with nature. Emotions were important in Romantic art: British Romantic William Wordsworth described poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings".

Romantic Motifs

The Lyrical "I" (the poet and speaker fuse) Lone individuals—hermits, rebels, cursed sailors Settings that utilize the exotic and the "far-away" Personification and Apostrophe

Inspiration

The Romantic artist, musician, or writer, is an "inspired creator" rather than a "technical master." Where poets like Swift and Pope liken art to a "mirror", romantics liken it to a candle. Romanticism emphasized going with the moment, or being spontaneous, rather than being precise, controlled, or realistic. It's said that John Keats composed "Ode to a Nightingale", one of his 4 "Great Odes" over the course of one evening (after his brother's death) while sitting in his friend's garden.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Wordsworth writing partner, famous for poetry glorifying wild flights of Gothic imagination, and his use of opium

William Wordsworth

began as a "child of nature" and poetic revolutionary, became England's poet laureate

Winds

breath of inspiration

John Keats

derided in his time as a working class poet, Keats wrote some of the most elegantly sensual English poetry that explores the powers of the imaginative mind, and the beauty of passion and tragedy of death —all before he died at the age of 25

Romantic Art

emotional, deeply-felt, individualistic, expressive, and exotic. It has been described as a reaction to Neoclassicism, and while not discounting the ancients, advocates for a European individual of imagination who strives for greatness.

Birds

longing for freedom; song as pure poetry

Neoclassic Art

rigid, balanced, orderly, didactic, and unemotional; it glorifies the learning of ancient Greece and Rome and the submission of the individual to a "greater social good".

"Apostrophe to the Ocean" by Lord Gordon, George Byron There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean,--roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin,--his control Stops with the shore;--upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. His steps are not upon thy paths,--thy fields Are not a spoil for him,--thou dost arise And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields For earth's destruction thou dost all depise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray And howling, to his gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth:--there let him lay. The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake And monarchs tremble in their capitals, The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make Their clay creator the vain title take Of lord of thee and arbiter of war,-- These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar. Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee; Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tryant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou; Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play, Time writes no wrinkles on thine azure brow; Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests; in all time, Calm or convulsed,--in breeze, or gale, or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime Dark-heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime, The image of Eternity,--the throne Of the Invisible! even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy I wantoned with thy breakers,--they to me Were a delight; and if the freshening sea Made them a terror, 'twas a pleasing fear; For I was as it were a child of thee, And trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane,--as I do here.

• Byronic Hero ○ Mysterious ○ Anti-social • In society ○ People expect you to express to them ○ This guy can't do that ○ There are things he is escaping • The verb used to express his leaving is "stealing" to steal away • So quiet that nature overwhelms all • Last stanza ○ He puts his hand on the ocean ○ Compares the ocean to an animal • The ocean is never not moving • Assonance - long vowel sounds • Speaker is like the ocean b/c they are deep and dark • Oak leviathans are ships and the hulls are ribs • Ocean is connected to God and God shows himself at sea in the form of a storm • Speaker hopes to be boundless • The speaker is alone • God can be alone if he is everything

The World is Too Much With Us by William Wordsworth The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

• Central visual image ○ The sea • Speaker focuses on materialism ○ Goes at the end by saying he'd rather be pagan than a person not engaged in nature • Personification (listening or speaking) • We ignore nature b/c we are too busy

Kubla Khan by S.T. Coleridge In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man 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, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. 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! 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 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, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.

• Humanity must control nature or else nature will go wild • He did not create the river ○ He can control all but the river ○ He wants to control the river but a river will always flow ○ Alph - alpha - first • Calmness to chaos ○ Birth is a wild act of frenzy ○ Cave is a symbol of our subconscious mind § Where we are trapped, the unreal ○ The river comes out of this unity • He has lost that moment of imagination (creation) • Having a vision of a woman, she is the woman from the abyss or the unconscious • Opium was called the milk of poppy • Milk of paradise for romantic poets are imagination • Tells to beware of opium but it brings you to places that cannot be reached without it

Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats 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: '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. O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim: Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs, Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain— To thy high requiem become a sod. Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that oft-times hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toil 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 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?

• Keats ○ Died at 25 from TB; he knew for a while ○ His parents and brother died ○ He probably got TB from his brother • Wrote this poem after his brother died • Main symbol - nightingale • Nightingale's sings at night ○ Song of sadness • Other symbol - the speaker • The speaker is in opposition to the nightingale • First four lines ○ Speaker can't feel pain, the pain of not feeling pain ○ Drowsy, hemlock, dull opiate, lethe-wards had sunk § Deadening of everything ○ Lethe is the river of forgetfulness according to Greek mythology § To become unminded ○ People say that the first four lines are what depression feels like § Like a wet blanket is being put over you ○ It is like the world around you is shades of grey • If he sank, the bird rises up and flies • This dryad has light wings ○ Visions, like light ○ He is of darkness, it is of light • The bird sings • Singing is a metaphor for humans to love • It sings of summer • The bird's song comes from its throat ○ You drink wine • Trying to find out how to be a bird • Vintage means value b/c its old (aged well) • "beaded bubbles" - sounds like what it feels like; alliterative, assonance, onomatopoeia, plosives • Poem is an apostrophe Climax - "Away! away! for I will fly to thee . . ." ○ Usually an apostrophe when poem starts or is titled "To . . ." • Hippocrene is a fountain of the muses; if you drink from it you can sing • The wine tastes like flowers, the greeness of the country-side, and the sun-burnt mirth, dancing ○ We dance cuz we're happy ○ Synesthesia ○ Purple is the color of royalty, living • Keats's wrote this over a period of two days • Wine is a fading escape, a dimming - the speaker doesn't want a dimming escape • Beauty is temporary ○ Beauty and Love are characterized are feminine ○ Young to dead § Exaggeration (hyperbole) • The bird never thinks • Speaker is obsessed and depressed • Says Bacchus is the god of wine • Poesy • He is with the bird ○ The bird has wings and freedom and purity and is spontaneous ○ The night before, dark was a depression • Light cannot blown ○ Synethesia ○ He is no longer in his own mind • The moon-queen's fays are fairies • The speaker wants death b/c death seems easy and he is miserable • Retreats from fantasy at the end of the poem • Anthem for the bird is it's song • You can hear the motion of the bird leaving ○ The motion of it moving across and leaving the speaker • Interogatory sentences

She Walks in Beauty by Lord Gordon, George Byron She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o'er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express, How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent!

• Main symbol is "she," the woman ○ Represents everythign good and bad (the darkness) ○ She is the perfect balance • Darkness is associated in this poem with mystery • Balance is physical, spiritual, and social

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away."

• Main symbol is broken stone sculpture of Ramses II (in the Bible, he was the Pharaoh and adoptive brother of Moses) • The speakers ○ The narrator ○ Traveler ○ Sculptor in the 6th line ○ Ozymandias

My Heart Leaps Up by William Wordsworth My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

• Rainbow represents the covenant between God and man • Heart leaps up - emotion • He moves through the stages of life • Natural, not forced, piety • "Child" is Jesus ○ Innocence, purity, pure love ○ The Christ child • His heart does not leap up at cathedrals • It leaps up at rainbow • Colridge and keats embrace it but it is problematic for them

Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley 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, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 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 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: Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear! II Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like Earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith's height, The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre Vaulted with all thy congregated might Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear! III Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic's level powers Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear! IV If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O Uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. V Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened Earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

• Shelley ○ He hates authority ○ Atheism ○ The powers the individual needs to fight are kings (social authority) ○ Individuals fight w/revolutions § Advocacy of stripping of old things and beginning of the new § Violence is necessary • Wind ○ Uncontrollable, can't be contained ○ Can be very destructive ○ Hills destroyed by fire become green again • Shelley is saying that the wind is a metaphor for both creation and destruction • Form ○ Five sonnets that interlock in the metaphors ○ Every sonnet has its own metaphor ○ Sonnets are in three b/c of the trinity (the holy trinity § The father, the son, and the holy spirit ○ Destruction and creation are one thing ○ Interconnectedness of the poem ○ Terza rima stanzas have three interlocking rhymes • First Stanza ○ West wind means closing (east end is beginnings) ○ The west wind drives out ghosts § Ghosts are the past § West mind makes way for the present § Ghosts are driven by an enchanter ○ Fall is change, winter is death ○ Autumn takes them to death and are revived in spring ○ Change and death is necessary b/c old things decay ○ Multitudes were stricken by poverty § The need to change things in our society § To drive out this disease ○ Spring causes the seeds to awaken by blowing a horn § Wind ○ Speaker returns to talk to the wind ○ The wind is the muse for the speaker ○ Wind is a preserver b/c • Second stanza ○ Sky sheds its clouds like a tree sheds its leaves ○ Clouds are like angels of rain of lightning ○ Wildness of these rites create new life ○ Closing on the old ○ A dirge is a sad song you sing § Autumn, wind ○ Sepulchre - a tomb ○ Hail of gunfire, bullets • Third stanza ○ Two oceans § Mediterranean - the elite, the high-up □ Greece was having a revolutoin at the time □ Personfiying the sea as someone awakening to what is actually happening § Atlantic - The French Revolution and the American Revolution ○ Thou is the wind • Fourth Stanza ○ The "I" is introduced ○ Things that need to change ○ As an individual, change isn't easy ○ It isn't easy to face growth/non-growth ○ Thorns of life are the things you are forced to do ○ Childhood is a time of no responsibilities ○ Romantic's saw children as intouch w/nature in a way older people aren't ○ At the end the speaker has a recompence for getting older ○ This poem is more hopeful than keats's

Bright Star by John Keats Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art— Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite [Christian Hermit], The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors— No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

• Sonnet • Iambic pentameter • Water is cold (the permanent) • Warmth (the transient)

When We Two Parted by Lord Gordon, George Byron When we two parted In silence and tears, Half broken-hearted To sever for years, Pale grew thy cheek and cold, Colder thy kiss; Truly that hour foretold Sorrow to this. The dew of the morning Sunk chill on my brow— It felt like the warning Of what I feel now. Thy vows are all broken, And light is thy fame; I hear thy name spoken, And share in its shame. They name thee before me, A knell to mine ear; A shudder comes o'er me— Why wert thou so dear? They know not I knew thee, Who knew thee too well— Long, long shall I rue thee, Too deeply to tell. In secret we met— In silence I grieve, That thy heart could forget, Thy spirit deceive. If I should meet thee After long years, How should I greet thee?— With silence and tears.

• This is a man's monologue about a former fling he had • The fling did not end well • Lines 17-18: The speaker compares hearing the woman's name to hearing a "knell" (the bell rung to announce a death). This is a metaphor that gives us some idea of how painful hearing this woman's name is. It's like being suddenly told somebody has died. Or rather, it reminds him that a part of him is dead, or a relationship he once had is no more. You get the idea. • Departure and Separation ○ Lines 1-2: The speaker and the woman part with "silence and tears." Silence will continue to be a big part of the poem. It is also a symbol of the speaker and the woman's impending separation (people who are apart don't talk and are thus "silent" toward one another). ○ Lines 3-4: Images of separation abound here. The half-broken hearts symbolize the pair's sadness as well as their breakup or "severance." ○ Line 13: Not only have the speaker and the woman broken up, she, apparently, has broken some "vows" she made to him. The "vows" that once united them, in other words, no longer hold. ○ Lines 17-18: "Knell" here is a metaphor for how the woman's name sounds to the speaker. It sounds like the bell that is rung to announce somebody's death. So, the woman's name even reminds him of the separation that is death (somebody who dies is no longer "with us"). ○ Lines 21-24: The speaker imagines an end to what has been a lengthy separation. Ironically, the potential reunion of the lovers will resemble their departure: it will be quiet and tearful, at least on the speaker's part. It sounds like he will be eternally separated from his old flame, even if he "meets" her again.

Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur.—Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky. The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves 'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms, Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees! With some uncertain notice, as might seem Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire The Hermit sits alone. These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration:—feelings too Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence On that best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered, acts Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on,— Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things. If this Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft— In darkness and amid the many shapes Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have hung upon the beatings of my heart— How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods, How often has my spirit turned to thee! And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, And somewhat of a sad perplexity, The picture of the mind revives again: While here I stand, not only with the sense Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That in this moment there is life and food For future years. And so I dare to hope, Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first I came among these hills; when like a roe I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, Wherever nature led: more like a man Flying from something that he dreads, than one Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, And their glad animal movements all gone by) To me was all in all.—I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, Abundant recompence. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of 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 the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being. Nor perchance, If I were not thus taught, should I the more Suffer my genial spirits to decay: For thou art with me here upon the banks Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend, My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while May I behold in thee what I was once, My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make, Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy: for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty mountain-winds be free To blow against thee: and, in after years, When these wild ecstasies shall be matured Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, Thy memory be as a dwelling-place For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then, If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance— If I should be where I no more can hear Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams Of past existence—wilt thou then forget That on the banks of this delightful stream We stood together; and that I, so long A worshipper of Nature, hither came Unwearied in that service: rather say With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget, That after many wanderings, many years Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, And this green pastoral landscape, were to me More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!

• Wordsworth ○ Grew up in the lake district • A murmur - a lover would murmur ○ Nature as a lover • Outerworld creates something deeper • The speaker imagines the smoke is the fires of a hermit living in the forest ○ Hermits b/c they live in solitude from society • He talks to his sister ○ Prays for his sister • Cities and towns take away nature • Things are unintelligible become intelligible