The Romantic Period
1789-1832
The Romantic Period was actually a movement from one way of thinking to another. The main tenets of Romanticism included a shift from faith in reason to faith in the senses, feelings, and imagination; from interest in urban society and its sophistication to an interest in the rural and natural; from public, impersonal poetry to subjective poetry; and from concern with the scientific and mundane to interest in the mysterious and infinite. The most important tenets of Romanticism, however, were belief in the importance of the individual, imagination, and intuition.

This era is characterized by more than just a new slant on poetry. It was also a time of optimism and historic turbulence in England. The Romantic Movement was at odds with the Industrial Revolution, with the corruption and pollution of the growing large cities, and with the capitalistic motives of many businessmen. Out of its opposition to such changes, the literature of the movement reflected society’s conflicts. The Romantic Period also saw the resurgence of revolt and radical political thought that sought to change the status quo.

The Romantic Period was the shortest literary period we have studied so far, lasting only about fifty years, and was dominated by six poets:

William Blake
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
William Wordsworth
These three poets were born before the period began and lived through most or all of it.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
John Keats
George Gordon, Lord Byron
These three began their short careers in the second decade of the new century but died before 1825.

Beginning in 1776 in America, an age of revolution swept across Western Europe releasing political, economic, and social forces that produced, during the next century, some of the most radical changes ever experienced in human life.  It should have been obvious that the events in the new America and the later events in France could not help but change life in England.  But what would be the extent of those changes?  The poets and other activists wanted the changes to be as widespread as possible.  But they would be bucking a vested interest in the status quo.  How would the aristocrats react to a movement that would cause them to lose their sense of entitlement?  When someone gains something, many times someone else loses something.  Is that always true?  It is something that we will discuss in class.

Things to Know:

• The loss of the American colonies did not just affect England economically. It was also a loss of prestige and confidence. 

• The French Revolution started on July 14, 1789 and was a more radical revolution.  King Louis XVI convened the French Parliament to deal with an enormous national debt.  The common people's division of Parliament declared themselves the true legislature of France, and when the king resisted the move a mob destroyed the Bastille creating even more serious repercussions.  Aristocrats were jailed and executed to the point where blood ran down the streets.  A constitutional monarchy was established to help control the political unrest, but after King Louis and his wife, Marie Antoinette, tried to flee the country, they were arrested and executed by guillotine.  Control of the government passed to Robespierre and the extreme Jacobins, and the reign of terror followed.  After the terror Robespierre himself was executed.  The Directory, a new ruling body, came into power, but it was both incompetent and corrupt.  Napoleon Bonaparte emerged in 1799 as dictator and eventually emperor.  Napoleon's ascent to power marked the end of the revolution.

• For the ruling classes in England, the French Revolution represented their worst nightmare--that an anointed king could be overthrown by democratic "rabble." If these radical principals spread throughout England, the English aristocrats would also lose their positions and possibly their lives.

• "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven." This summarizes Wordsworth’s thoughts about the French Revolution. Later, though, after the September Massacre in which hundreds of French aristocrats were executed even though their ties to Louis XVI were tenuous at best, Wordsworth became disillusioned.

• Romantic poets turned from the formal, public verse of the 18^th century Augustans to the more private, spontaneous lyric poetry.

• Imagination was the best response to the forces of change.

• Romantic poets looked back to Renaissance poets Milton and Shakespeare for inspiration.   (Are there similarities in America's backward look to sixties music and messages?)

• Romantic poets were frustrated by England’s resistance to political and social change.

• "Romantic" signifies a fascination with youth and innocence, with "growing up" by exploring and learning to trust our emotions, our sense of will, our identity.

• "Romantic" is a term applied to the stage of social development when people need to question tradition and authority in order to imagine new and better ways to live.

• Industrialization demanded that people acquire a stronger awareness of change and that they find ways to adapt to it.  (Technology today makes the same requirement.   What happens to people who do not or cannot adjust?)

• Romantic poets explored the interrelationship of the mind, the imagination and nature. Nature is not a "beautiful, intricate system like an immense piece of clockwork, with the clockmaker being God. Nature is not a complex interdependent system of mysterious forces at work. If one part of it is "messed with," large unforeseen results occur. To the Romantics nature was beautiful and majestic, not hostile but does have mysterious forces that possible caused change. Nature and the human mind act upon each other.

"To a Mouse" by Robert Burns
A farmer uproots a mouse's home and then reflects on the mouse's fears and feelings.   The mouse just wants to get away from the threat of the farmer's plow.  He has no idea that he will face almost certain death because of the climate and the lack of food.  The farmer then compares his lot with that of the mouse.  He feels that the mouse is luckier than he is because the mouse is just concerned with the present.   The farmer can see the past, the present, and to some extent, into the future and has fears, regret, and dread concerning all three.  Burns uses Scottish dialect when he writes this poem.  John Steinbeck got his title of his best-selling Of Mice and Men from this poem.

"The Chimney Sweeper" I and II by William Blake
The first "Chimney Sweeper" accepts his lot in life.  After his mother's death, he was sold by his father to a chimney sweeper and is used by the master sweepers to go into the narrow chimneys to clean them.  The work is dangerous and dirty, but it appears to be the fate of the young boy.  His friend has shaved his hair so that the soot won't get caught in it.  He has a dream that his friends had died and had gone to heaven where they are now free from the slavery of chimney sweeping.   As a result of this dream,  he continues to do the work that God obviously has chosen for him to do, knowing that he will be free when he dies. (From Songs of Innocence.) 

The second "Chimney Sweeper" has a different attitude.  He wonders at the hypocrisy of parents who would sell him into slavery when he had been happy, and then that the parents would feel blessed by God even though they have "clothed him in the clothes of death."  They feel that they have done their son no harm because he makes the best of his difficult life.  But God's heaven is made from the souls of those children who died in this slavery.  (From Songs of Experience.)

The Poison Tree by William Blake
This poem is a great illustration of the effects of anger in our lives.  When we are angry with someone that we love, we usually will find a way to talk about the problem and work things out.  When we are angry with someone that we don't like much, we won't care if the relationship is ruined forever--in our minds the relationship is worthless anyway.  Consequently we will stay angry with that person and allow our anger to fester inside of ourselves.  Eventually our anger will get the better of us and our foe will suffer his just consequences.  But who really suffers? If it were just our enemies that would be bad enough, but usually we punish ourselves with our own anger.  Anger is a double-edged sword.  It hurts the one who wields it as much as it hurts the one who is slashed by it. To the author anger is a poison. This poem is written in four stanzas with four lines per stanza.  The author used rhymed couplets so that the rhyme scheme is aabb. Notice the construction of the lines. Some are written in a very interesting way.

From Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
This is a great poem.  If you have ever thought that the best part of your life is behind you (and everyone thinks that from time to time), this poem speaks your heart. It talks about how we see things as a child that we don't see as an adult. Wordsworth once said that as a child he did not really believe that his body would ever die, that he would be taken up to heaven in a chariot as Elijah the prophet was. As he grew older, he knew that this childish belief was just that, but that kind of childlike innocence is presented in this poem. Children see things differently that adults do. An adult sees a backyard. A child sees a jungle where interesting creatures and adventures await. To a child a day is such a long time.  To an adult a day speeds quickly by. The speaker has seen things as a child that he no longer sees.  They are still there, but he cannot appreciate their glory any longer. The last stanza given in our text is an extended metaphor comparing the journey of the soul to the daily journey of the sun. The speaker refers to our birth as a sleep after our heavenly beginnings but before our journey on earth begins.

The World Is Too Much with Us by William Wordsworth
For all of us who feel that we give up too much of our lives to the daily grind of making a living, this poem is dedicated.  The speaker implies that the decision is ours. Do we stay in our work-till-we-die world, or do we reconnect ourselves to life's true meaning? Which does the speaker say that he would rather do? Is there a change in emotion in this poem? Where does it occur? How caught up are we in the material things of this world? Can we change? What would we give up if we did?  What would we gain? This poem could have been written by all of the modern Type-A personalities that are having regrets about how they have spent their lives.

I Have Visited Again by Alexander Pushkin
My grandfather had a beautiful rose garden and pool and the biggest front yard I had ever seen.  That's how I remembered his home.  And then as an adult I saw it again.  And it was different--smaller that I had remembered. Pushkin writes about his childhood home revisited.  The last stanza invites his grandchild to visit his childhood home and experience what he experienced as a child so that they can have that connection to unite them. This is a sweet poem. You will like it.

"She Walks in Beauty"  by Lord Byron
Almost any woman alive would love to have a poem like this written about her.  Byron is beautifully descriptive and uses poetic devices that are soft, dark, and velvety.  The speaker pays tribute to the woman's beauty but doesn't dwell on any sexual aspect of it.  Instead he describes her soft beauty, her pure expression, and her peaceful mind.  Was the woman seduced by the beautiful poem?  We don't know the answer to that.

Ozymandias by Percy Shelley
What is power? In the days of ancient Egyptians, Ramses II defined power.  He wielded the sword of life and death. His power was total.  His statue embodies the sneer of authority and control. But when he died his power died with him. And now even his statue lies decaying, becoming part of the dust of Egypt and Ramses II. So what is power? Does any earthly being have real power? As soon as that being dies, their power ends. Hitler terrorized his enemies and his countrymen. But now he is a memory with a mustache, a reminder that nothing temporal lasts. 

"England in 1819" by Percy Shelley
This poem was not published until 1832, twelve years after King George had died, ten years after Shelley's own death, and the year that great measures of reform were passed by the English Parliament. It is a scathing criticism of the state of England in 1819 which might explain why it was not published at the time it was written.  The sonnet is actually one long sentence.  The subject of the sentence consists of eight compound subjects--the King, Princes, rulers, a people, an army, laws, religion, and a senate.  The predicate of the sentence is found in the last two lines of the poem.   In this poem he condemns the king, princes, the army, and rulers who literally are destroying a country they profess to love so that they can maintain their own interests.   He condemns the laws that are biased to one segment of society while discriminating against another.  He condemns religion (and laws made in support of this religion) in the form of the Church of England that imposed restrictions on people who believe differently.  He calls all of them graves from which the revolution will get its life-blood.  The revolution is called "the Phantom" and will bring light to a country which is currently, in 1819, bathed in the darkness of tyranny.  This poem could have been written at so many times in American history--it is that relevant.   (A slave might have felt the same things during the dark days before the Civil War.   A person today might feel the same anger toward that part of society which he perceives to be getting rich on the backs of laborers.  Can you think of other examples?)

"When I Have Fears" by John Keats
When I read this poem, I think about the part of death that most of us fear the most--that we will die before we are able to do the things that we really want to do in our lifetimes.  Keats faced that.  He knew that he had a disease that would take his life in just a short time.  He had seen it happen to other members of his family.   He was aware of the gift of poetry that he had and was afraid that all of his poems would die inside of him before he could express them on paper.  He was afraid that he would die without ever knowing real, unconditional love.  In the last three lines he gives us a profound image of loneliness--a man staring off into the ocean until ideas of fame and love sink into the endless sea.  This sonnet is Shakespearean in form.   He even includes the shift that Shakespeare's poems are famous for.  Where does that shift occur?  John Keats died three years after this poem was written.