THE VICTORIAN POETRY

High Victorian Poetry

The Victorian era was a period where Queen Victoria reigned during a long period (18371901). Therefore, and because of it, the poetry that was written during this period was
called Victorian poetry .

Throughout this era poetry addressed issues such as patriotism, religious

faith, science, sexuality, and social reform that often aroused polemical
debate. At the same time, the poets whom we classify as Victorian
frequently devised experiments that expanded the possibilities of the
genre, creating innovative forms and types of prosody that enabled new
kinds of poetic voices to emerge in print. (cf.Bristow, xv Preface).
The Victorian poetry is divided in two main groups of poetry: The High Victorian Poetry
and The Pre-Raphaelites. Dealing with the first group, the major High Victorian poets
were Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barret Browning, Matthew
Arnold and Gerard Manley Hopkins.
(cf.< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_poetry#Victorian_poetry. >).
Queen Victoria's reign made the idea of empire appear in poetry, and one of the poets who
used it was Tennyson. For Robert Browning, the dramatic monologue was a great
innovation, but Alfred Tennyson and Dante Rossetti invented and used it too (in the PreRaphaelites). T o be a dramatic monologue a poem must have a speaker and an implied
auditor, and that the reader often perceives a gap between what that speaker says and what
he or she actually reveals, but there are some poets that does not agree with this last idea
as Glenn Everett who proposes that Browninesque dramatic monologue has three
requirements (1.The reader takes the part of the listener. 2. The speaker uses a casemaking, argumentative tone. 3. We complete the dramatic scene from within, by means of
inference and imagination.). Elizabeth Barret Browning's poetry was important for the
feminist literature because before her poetry there were not too much poetry about
feminism. Matthew Arnold was influenced by Wordsworth and often considered a
precursor of the modernist revolution. And Hopkins wrote in an unusual style and
influenced a lot of the 1940s' poets.
(cf.<http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/rb/dm1.html>)
Victorian poetry does not have a topic in the poems about love and worship of Nature as
the Romantics had in their poetry. It is because the Romantics loved Nature and it was
shown through their poems adoring and blessing her as if she were God. But, in the
Victorian poetry we have not found themes related to the topic of this paper, love and
worship of Nature because the Victorians do not talk about her in their poetry. Therefore,
we will not relate this topic with the Victorians, but we will talk about the Nature that the
Victorian poets refer to in the descriptions of places in the poems and the love and

worship of God in comparison with love and worship of Nature, Nature understood as part
of God, created by Him, maybe as a personification of God himself in the Earth.
First of all, it can be mentioned that, the selection of poems has been made taking only the
topic of this work into account and not the importance of the poem itself in the poet's
poems. Then, we are going to show some of the poems of the most important High
Victorian poets that refer to Nature or that have some aspects related with Nature:
HIGH VICTORIAN POETRY
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
(cf. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_poets> )
Tennyson was a poet laureate of England by the Queen Victoria, and became very popular
in the Victorian public. He makes a reference to Nature in the poem Song: The winds, as
at their hour of birth':
The winds , as at their hour of birth,
Leaning upon the ridged sea ,
Breathed low around the rolling earth
With mellow preludes, We are free.'
The streams, through many a lilied row
Down-carolling to the crisped sea ,
Low-tinkled with a bell-like flow
Atween the blossoms , We are free.'
(<http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/rb/lippi/iwama6.html .>)

This poem is about that freedom that Nature gives us. When we look at Nature we feel
free, without any tie that binds us to live as happens in society, because we live with rules
and we have to follow them. Therefore, this freedom only can be found in Nature, looking
at the sea and the earth with its flowers (lilies and blossoms). In Tennyson's poetry his
polished verses seem to express the important cultural, social and religious concerns of
the Victorians.
Robert Browning (1812-1889)

(cf.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_poets/)
Browning got married with Elizabeth Barrett (another Victorian poet who appears in this
work too). Browning's poetry presents a wide variety of voices. He broke the mold of
conventional Victorian poetic style and thus became an especially important influence on
the great moderns. He makes another reference to Nature in the poem Fra Lippo Lippi ,
whose name makes reference to an Italian Renaissance painter, Fra Filippo Lipi :
[...] 286 You speak no Latin more than I , belike;
However, you're my man, you've seen the world
-- The beauty and the wonder and the power,
The shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades,
290 Changes, surprises, and God made it all!
-- For what? Do you feel thankful, ay or no,
For this fair town's face, yonder river's line,
The mountain round it and the sky above,
Much more the figures of man, woman, child,
295 These are the frame to? What's it all about?
To be passed over, despised? Or dwelt upon,
297 Wondered at? Oh, this last of course! you say. [...]
(<http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/rb/lippi/iwama6.html>)
The Victorians were influenced by the Romantics in terms of religion, and this poem
shows us that love and worship that we are dealing with relating to Nature in this paper,
but in this case, Browning has these feelings of love for God because He has created the
world and all the things that live in it. Browning is talking to Fra Lipo Lipi, the painter,
who as a painter and as a man (who: speak no Latin more than I , line 286), has seen all
the things that God has made for human beings. He is telling that the word of God is
known in all places, to understand the word of God the language does not matter. His
word is universal, it does not matter the language that you speak because you can
understand Him. Therefore, for Browning, the world is a beautiful place, then, perhaps, he
might love Nature looking at the rivers, mountains and at the sky created by his beloved
God.
Elizabeth Barret Browning (1806-1861)
(cf< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_poets. 17/12/06)
Elizabeth makes a reference to Nature in the Sonnet XLIV that appears in Sonnets from
the Portuguese (1850), a sequence of sonnets where is detailed her love with Browning
(her husband):
XLIV
Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers
Plucked in the garden , all the summer throught,

And winter , and it seems as if they grew

In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers . [...]
http://www.everypoet.com/Archive/poetry/Elizabeth_Barret_Browning/el
izabeth_browning_sonnets_44.html
This is a little extract of the poem, but in a few lines we can find a lot of references to
Nature: the flowers of the garden, and the changes that take place in the flowers passing
from summer to winter, and the sun and showers that appear and help the flowers to grow
up and be beautiful flowers. Elizabeth is talking to her loving husband (Browning), at the
same time that she is telling us her love story. She has an attractive intensity and a clear
and vigorous language in her poetry.
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_poets)
Arnold was an English poet who criticized the materialism of the Victorian age and
laments the fargility of love, but he also describes scenes of natural beauty that reminds
one of the Romantic poets. He makes a reference to Nature in Lines Written in
Kensington Gardens:
[...] 5 Birds here make song, each bird has his,
Across the girdling city's hum.
How green under the boughs it is!
8 How thick the tremulous sheep -cries come!
[...] 13 Here at my feet what wonders pass,
What endless, active life is here!
What blowing daisies , fragrant grass !
16 An air-stirr'd forest , fresh and clear. [...]
(<http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/94.html>)
In these extracts of the poem the birds on the trees are singing, perhaps, that song that
shows us the importance of Nature in our life, because Nature is everywhere, as God is,
and when we are walking on the grass our feet are on Nature.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
(cf.< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_poets >)

Hopkins was an intellectual who was captivated by the ritual of Roman Catholicism. He
makes reference to Nature in the poem The Windhover where we can read the note (To
Christ our Lord) which means that the poem is addressed to God:
1 I caught this morning morning's minion, kingDom of daylight's dauphin , dapple-dawn-dwan Falcon , in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air , and striding
Hight here, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
5 In his ecstacy! Then off, off forth on swing.
As a skat's heel sweeps smooth on bow-bend:
The hurl and the gliding
Rebuffed the big wind . My hearth in hiding
Stirred for a bird , --the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air , pride, plume, here
Buckle! And the fire [...]
(http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hopkins/hopkins10.html )
Hopkins is talking about Christ, but as He made the world (the Earth), the morning and
the wind appear together with the Falcon and the bird that fly in the sky. This can mean
that making reference to the sky (air) Hopkins is talking about God because He leaves in
heaven, which we traditionally think that is above us, and maybe, this Falcon can be God
who observes all things. His poems repeatedly unite opposing attachments to the
permanent things of the spirit and to the passing beauties of the physical world. Hopkins
believes that each thing in the world contains a similar union of spiritual and physical
elements. Hopkin's meter, which he calls sprung rhythm, uses heavily stressed beats
occurring at variable intervals imposed on a regular metrical base.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Alfred Lord Tennyson's Poetry : <
http://home.att.net/~tennysonpoetry/index.htm>17/12/06
Bristow, Joseph. The Cambridge Companion to Poetry. Cambridge University Press
2000. (xv Preface)

 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Every Poet . Home: < http://www.everypoet.com >

<http://www.everypoet.com/Archive/poetry/Elizabeth_Barrett_Browning/elizabeth_brow
ning_sonnets_44.html>17/12/06
Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Archive of Classic Poems. Home:
< http://www.everypoet.com>
<http://www.everypoet.com/Archive/poetry/Elizabeth_Barrett_Browning/elizabeth_brow
ning_sonnets_44.html>17/12/06
Representative Poetry Online . The University of Toronto Libraries:
< http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display/index.cfm >
< http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/94.html >17/12/06
The Victorian Web: Home: < www.victorianweb.org >
< http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/rb/dm1.html>17/12/06
< http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/rb/lippi/iwama6.html>17/12/06
< http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hopkins/hopkins10.html>17/12/06
The Wikipedia Web: Home: < www.wikipedia.org >
Victorian Poetry The Wikipedia Web.
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_poetry#Victorian_poetry >17/12/06
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_poets >17/12/06
The other parts of the paper
INTRODUCTION
THE GROUP: Carmen Mora Vives (http://mural.uv.es/mamovi3/group)
AESTHETIC PRE-RAPHAELITISM: Annalisa Garofalo (http://mural.uv.es/Love
%20and%20Worship%20of%20Nature%20in%20the%20Poetry%20from%20Victorians
%20until%201970.s.htm)
GEORGIAN POETS: Tania Sendra (http://mural.uv.es/tasenfe/georgianpoets)

MODERNISM: Ani Tadevosian (http://mural.uv.es/tadevosy/secondcoll.html)

NEW ROMANTICISM IN THE FORTHIES: Elena
Mrmol(http://mural.uv.es/memaro2/secondcolcomp.html)
MODERNIST TRADITION: Sara Lozano
(http://mural.uv.es/saloa/colective2.html)
THE EXTREMIST ART POETS: Sara Lozano
(http://mural.uv.es/saloa/colective2.html)
THE BRITISH POETRY REVIVAL: M Aranzazu Sarri
(http://mural.uv.es/masacha/colective2.html)
THE MERSEY BEAT: M Aranzazu Sarri
(http://mural.uv.es/masacha/colective2.html)