Running header: THEMES IN ROMANTIC AND VICTORIAN POETRY 1

Themes in Romantic and Victorian Poetry

Debbie Barry

Ashford University
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Themes in Romantic and Victorian Poetry

The poetry of the Romantic period includes the themes of nature, of the contrast between

innocence and experience, and of dissatisfaction with Christian ideology. All three themes

appear in the work of William Blake. The poetry of the Victorian era includes the themes of

social injustice, of romantic love, and of the loss of innocence. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

writes about social injustice and about romantic love, and Alfred Lord Tennyson writes about the

loss of innocence.

Blake uses the nature imagery of the lamb in several of his poems. The lamb is a symbol

of innocence and purity. It is also a reference to salvation in the person of Jesus Christ, who is

depicted as the Good Shepherd and as the Lamb of God. In "The Lamb," Blake writes: "Little

Lamb, who made thee?/ ... He is callèd by thy name,/ For he calls himself a Lamb" (ll. 1, 13-14)

(Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, pp. 83-84). In this poem, Blake is using the lamb first to refer to a

child when Blake asks the question. He then uses the lamb to refer to Christ when Blake tells the

child that Christ made the child.

Blake contrasts innocence and experience in his paired poems from Songs of Innocence

and Songs of Experience. In his two poems that are each called “Holy Thursday,” Blake

illustrates this contrast. In the first of the poems, Blake writes: “O what a multitude they seemd,

these flowers of London town!/ Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own./ The

hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,/ Thousands of little boys & girls raising

their innocent hands” (ll. 5-8) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 86). In the second poem by the same

name Blake writes: “Is this a holy thing to see,/ In a rich and fruitful land,/ Babes reduced to

misery,/ Fed with cold and usurous hand?” (ll. 1-4) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 90). The first

version of “Holy Thursday” depicts the beautiful innocence of childhood. The second version
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contrasts it with the miserable experience of the children of poverty in industrialized England.

The nature imagery of the lamb is repeated in this poem, referring to the innocent children.

Dissatisfaction with Christian ideology is evident in Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and

Hell. Blake writes a section of “Proverbs of Hell” that mimics the book of Proverbs in the Old

Testament of the Bible. Among the perverted proverbs, Blake writes: "Prisons are built with

stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion. The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.

The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the Lion is the wisdom of God. The

nakedness of woman is the work of God" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 114). Blake opposes the

common beliefs that prostitution and nudity are in opposition with Christian religion, and that

pride, lust, and wrath are sinful. Blake uses the nature imagery of the peacock, the goat, and the

lion in these proverbs. The peacock is a symbol of beauty and pride, the goat is a symbol of lust

and sexual appetite, and the lion is a symbol of wrath and aggression.

Barrett Browning writes about social injustice in industrialized England when she

describes the lives of poor children who are forced to work in the mines in “The Cry of the

Children.” She writes: "They look up with their pale and sunken faces,/ And their looks are sad

to see,/ For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses/ Down the cheeks of infancy;/ ... Alas,

alas, the children! they are seeking/ Death in life, as best to have" (ll. 25-28, 53-54) (Greenblatt,

et. al., 2006, p. 1080). Browning describes the children’s misery in uncomfortably clear, stark

images of near-starvation, and she describes the children's preference for death over the life that

they experience.

Browning writes about romantic love in Sonnets from the Portuguese. One of the most

famous lines from poetry is in poem “43”: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” (l. 1)

(Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1085). In “22” she writes: "Let us stay/ Rather on earth, Belovèd, --
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where the unfit/ Contrarious moods of men recoil away/ And isolate pure spirits, and permit/ A

place to stand and love in for a day" (ll. 9-13) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1084). She proposes

remaining on earth with her husband rather than going to Heaven, so they can remain together in

their love for each other. She imagines a place that is apart from the rest of the world, where she

and her husband can be together in peace.

Tennyson writes about the loss of innocence in “The Lotos-Eaters.” “Tennyson expands

Homer’s brief account into an elaborate picture of weariness and the desire for rest and death”

(Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1119). The characters in Tennyson’s poem have lost the innocence

of seeing the beauty in “Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies./ … cool

mosses deep./ And through the mosses the ivies creep” (ll. 52-54) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p.

1120). Tennyson uses the nature images of moss and ivy to evoke a feeling of calm and an

image of lush life. With the loss of innocence, the characters experience the discomforts of a life

of experience: “Why are we weighed upon with heaviness,/ And utterly consumed with sharp

distress,/ While all things else have rest from weariness?” (ll. 57-59) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p.

1120). This shift from the beauty of innocence to the suffering of experience returns to the

Romantic theme of innocence and experience in the context of Victorian poetry.

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References

Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2).

New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.