1

Course Code: LR314

8.5 from part 1 which is summaries and 9.5 for your
reflection on poems. Reflection was good.
F2017119063
You have scored 18 out of 20. Good job!
Assignment 1
Summaries
Romanticism was an era of Literature and its basic concern was poetry. Poetry was
famous in that era because Romantic Era was mainly dealing with the emotions, feelings and
individual’s mind. As “poetry is associated with the spontaneous overflow of emotions and
feelings”. So that’s why poetry is famous product of Romantic Era. Enlightenment periods
was emphasized the importance of on science and technology and due to science and
technology, industrialization was very much in trend in that time. And people was more
shifting to globalization. Then Romantic era started and it changed the attitudes of public
from science to nature. The basic theme of Romantic era was nature and relationships of
human with nature. Poets of that era highlights the beauty of nature through their poems
which a common man couldn’t understand(see). They believed that poems did not need to
focus on something sublime writing was not need some special kind of feeling and
circumstances, infect it occurs when a poet is overcome with emotions. Which he has
witnessed through his eyes. The main feature of Romantic era was that it’sits main focus was
common people and they used to write in a simple language so that each and every person
could understand their poems. As they highlights nature in their poetry so they want to
engage more and more people with nature.

Elegy written in a Country Churchyard is a famous poem of “Thomas Gray". This

poem is a lament about death. Thomas Gray mourns the death that death creates a sense of
equality between rich and poor that no one is superior in front of death. In the opening lines
of the poem, the poet witnesses a sunset at churchyard which enforces him to think about the
bitter truth of nature. He uses “Curfew” as a metaphor that when the bell is rung at sunset
then every human leaves his work and starts walk back to home. Same when the bell of death
rings, every person has started his final journey toward God. It gave the idea about death and
darkness that after death will leave your dead body in a dark grave and there’ll no one
exceptexpect you.

This poem also gave us the idea that “always remember your death" and no one can
escape from it. In the later part of the poem, poet talks about the solitude and he said that in
the graveyard, there are many graves and many people were buried there but everyone has his
 2

different cell and no one could interact with each other. Further he added that there life in
graves had become so solid that nothing had impact on them. They didn’t care about
weather, season and time. Then he gave the idea of class difference in his poem that in death
there is no difference between rich and common people. Death didn’t care about the status of
a man and nothing can get back death into life that all his wealth and treasures are useless in
front of death. In short, he urged people to identify their reality and asked them to eliminate
all the class differences between them because everyone has common ending.

In “The Epitaph” Thomas Gray wants to be remain unknown because he thought that
if people didn’t accept one’s sufferings and devotion in his life then you should not highlight
it after his death. He highlights the social and moral issues of the society and he shows our
belief about life and death in a society.

Expostulation and Reply is William Wordsworth famous poem in which he explains

his encounter with his friend Matthew. This poem highlights the true love Wordsworth had
for nature as he has been sitting alone and doing nothing for last four hours. He described the
importance of dreams and imagination in one’s life. This poem is also highlights the
importance of books in that age. In Romantic era, one of the main there was only sources of
recreation and entertainment was books as they didn’t have Netflix or Amazon. He
highlighted that books are filled up with the emotions and excitements of dead people and if
we didn’t have these books then there would be very less knowledge of past.

Wordsworth believed that nature has caring carrying the attitude of a mother. When a
child was upset, his first priority is his mother’s lap leap to get some rest. In the sSame way
when Wordsworth became worried, he would be with nature mother. Later on, he clarified
that he was not sitting in idleness, he was feeling the sweetness of nature. He said that there
were a lot of things, which our mind examined in whole day but we didn’t have enough time
for ourselves. We didn’t have much time to think about ourselves and for our future. He also
highlights the supremacy of heart over mind. And he likes to live in the company of nature.
In short, he just wants to change the priority of his audience’s mindset. Because he believes
that nature is always there for a man’s help like a mother.

“Lines Composed A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" is another poem by “William
Wordsworth”. This poem is about his revisit to a landscape which he had gone to in old
times. He mentioned the time span again and again just to show his love and importance of
that place for him. As he was a true lover of nature and just wanted to highlight that how
 3

much he missed the nature anxiously and he keeps countinged every passing minute. Later he
discussed about Spring season that there’s greenery everywhere. Then he talked about a
Hermit who was there but he was not affected by his presence. Relationship of man with
nature is quite obvious in this poem as Hermit was seeking seclusion to refine his spirituality.
Then poet discussed about his “memories” and he added that mind helps a person to save his
memory about anything which he can imagine with his inner eye in solitude. Poet also
mentioned that nature had given so many good things to people but they didn’t pay attention
to these little acts of kindness. He said that nature exists all around us ourselves but we don’t
care.

Then in the last part of the poem, he talked about the existence of God. He believes
that the whole nature is God. And due to this he is called as “Pantheist". He also talked about
the transformation, as five years ago his relation with nature was based on his instincts but
now based on thoughts. In later section, he noticed his past in his sister that seeing her at
present makes him remember his past.and now he is noticing change in her consciously as
she is growing.

“Ode Intimations of Immortality from recollections of Early Childhood” by William

Wordsworth is one of his masterpieces. This poem is about the changing of human feelings
from early childhood to adult age with the passage of time. As we all know that, nature is
most common and important theme in William Wordsworth’s poems. But in this poem, he
described nature with reference to the children as he said that a child is more closer to nature
as compared to adults. He said that there was a certain period in human life when everything
hads something divine in it and attraction but as he grew grows old suddenly things had
changed. Now nature had no influence on his life. Later he described that when a child is
born, he has d some devotion for nature but the beauty of this world changed all his
intentions. He started to mimic others. In later section of this poem, he also talked about the
class difference/conflict that there’s no concept of rich/poor for children. This is the society
who teaches them about identity. Children learns from their parents. Further he added that
children were not materialists and precious things had no value in front of them.

“I travelled among unknown men” is another poem by William Wordsworth”. This

poem is a kind of memoir of the poet about his abroad visit. This poem shows the patriotism
and love of poet. He showed the value of a country for those who are was working and living
far from their re loved ones. He said that he loved England because his er lover is living
 4

there. This is a Lucy poem in which he describes all the qualities of his lover. Lucy was dead.
She was long dead ied when he returned to England but still he referred to England as a
country that no country can replace because Lucy lived and died there and she is one of the
precious country of the world because his lover “Lucy” is buried there.

Response

It’s my first encounter with Romantic Poetry and so far, I have a great experience
with it. We all know that nature has great influence on all of us and we all have some
connection with it based on our interest (some have more and some have less interest in
mature). Pakistan is one of those countries, who have four seasons in a year. Due to this
reason especially Pakistani people do more enjoy and experience different shapes of nature in
all four seasons. So nature is bestowed to Pakistan by God. And based on my reading, nature
and it’s relationship with human is the most common theme in Romantic Poetry. All the
Romantics highlight nature in their different poems e.g. Thomas Gray and William
Wordsworth.

I have read “Elegy written in a Country Churchyard” by “Thomas Gray" and William
Wordsworth’s “Expostulation and Reply”, “Lines Composed a few miles above Tintern
Abbey”, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality..” and “I travelled among unknown men". First of
all I want to clear “what is nature?” Everyone has his own opinion about it but according to
me “nature consists on all such things on which human(people) had no command”. Romantic
poetry helped me to understand nature more closely and clearly.

I like all poems but “Elegy written in a Country Churchyard ” is my most favorite poem
among all of them. The reason is behind is its “theme of death". As a Muslim, we all have
firm faith that this whole world is artificial and one day everything will decay. Everything has
its end. This poem inspired me very much because the theme of this poem is also related to
my religion. Because “Islam" is also gave us the same idea that we shouldn’t forget our goal
and aim and we should always think about our death and we should have beliefve on the last
day. I can relate this whole poem with the teachings of Islam. From this poem I have learned
the idea that everything of this world is temporary and we should deal with it according to
its’s temporary nature.

From this poem, I got the idea that we should utilize this time and we should spent our
precious time for the welfare of the people and we should obey the rules of nature because
once we died, then we’ll never come back. And there’ll be darkness forever. Once we buried
 5

in the grave then we’ll not be able to enjoy the company of nature. Then there’ll be a
permanent loneliness. From this concept I learned that we should devote some time for
ourselves and we should meditate daily. Because this meditation will enhance your ability to
understand the nature and to think about yourself. Because it has been scientifically proved
now that we should encourage self-talk.

Today, we live in a such world where everyone considers himself superior. Everyone
is filled up with arrogance and we all try tried to oppress others. But poet has given the idea
that every all the glory and pride will go in the grave. And graves will be same for all the
human beings.

“The boast of Heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er grave” (Graytext)

In a nutshell, this poem inspired me very much and gave the idea about death, to
eradicate class conflict, strong imagination, identity yourself, loneliness and all the
relationships of the world are temporary.

I want to write commentary on another poem “Expostulation and Reply” by “William

Wordsworth”. The reason behind to chose this poem is the current scenario which is going
on. Today world has become a global village. And everyone is super busy in this globalized
world. Everyone is trying to defeat the other. Today, when everyone is more materialistic and
no one has time for himself. Everyone is busy on social media and no one is ready to pay
attention to nature. I chose this poem due to the two characters. I’ll describe my point with
the reference of Matthew (today’s global village) and poet (nature lover).

My point is that as world has become more global and no one is ready to enjoy the
company of nature now a days. Before reading this poem, I was also not able to understand
the nature in true sense. I didn’t enjoy the company of nature maybe I didn’t even try to
understand nature in true sense. Because like other people I was also busy to enjoy global
world. But now I have great sense to understand nature. As Matthew believes that books had
great knowledge and you’ll find knowledge about every matter. I admit this but nature has
great power of knowledge as compared to books.

Wordsworth said that he was not sitting in idleness on a stone, he was in dreams and
in imagination. According to me, imagination is strong key for your success because
imagination give you power to think about yourself, think about your problems and when you
 6

concentrate on a specific matter, definitely you’ll find a solution for that particular problem. I
also learned from this poem that nature plays a role of mother. As we all have expectations
from other human beings that he’ll help me in my hard time. But when we have such
problems then no one is willing to help us. They betrayed. But poet points out that we should
believe in on nature. Nature will never betray us.

What I learned from this point I’ll prove it with Islamic perspective that here nature
refers to God. According to me, nature is the second name of Deity. So we should always
believe inon God that He'll never betray you. This poem bring me more close to nature
because I have learned from this poem that meditation and loneliness also teaches you. Like
Matthew, many people don’t believe in on it and they labeled it as psycho. Because now
everyone is more close to social networking, they consider nature as a rubbish thing. But I
believe that solitude has great power and it enhances our confidence, it enhances our dreams,
it enhances our personality, it enhances imagination skills, in short it enhances our whole
life. As we all are fed up with Netflix, YouTube and all social networking as the poet said
that

“The eye it cannot chose but see

We cannot bid the ear be still:”

I agreed with the poet’s point that we all get tired of our daily routine we should reschedule
it. We should spend time with nature. I’ll connect meditation and solitude idea with current
Pandemic Situation where we all enforced isolation. I want to say that now nature has
givenave us the opportunity to get more close to nature and social distancing is highly
demanded by people. But according to me, we should adopt social distancing from global
people meanwhile. And we should quarantine ourselves with nature. This will help us to fight
against Covid-19 and we’ll get more close to nature.
7