CHAPTER 3: LATER PERIODS IN ENGLISH LITEARTURE

Lesson 1: The Romantic Period

1. In the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor

Coleridge declared that “poetry should express, in genuine language, experience
as filtered through personal emotion and imagination; the truest experience was
to be found in nature.”
2. The most important tenets of Romanticism include:
• Belief in the importance of the individual, imagination, and intuition
• 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.
3. Because of this concern for nature and the simple folk, authors began to take an
interest in old legends, folk ballads, antiquities, ruins, “noble savages,” and rustic
characters.
• Many writers started to give more play to their senses and to their
imagination.
• They loved to describe rural scenes, graveyards, majestic mountains, and
roaring waterfalls.
• They also liked to write poems and stories of such eerie or supernatural
things as ghosts, haunted castles, fairies, and mad folk.

Romantic Writers

1. Robert Burns (1759-96) is also known as the national poet of Scotland because
he wrote not only in Standard English, but also in the light Scot’s dialect.
2. Horace Walpole (The Castle of Otranto), Ann Radcliffe (The Mysteries of
Udolpho) and Matthew Gregory Lewis (The Monk) are Gothic writers who
crafted stories of terror and imagination.
 • Gothic Literature is a literary style popular during the end of the 18 th
century and the beginning of the 19 th. This style usually portrayed fantastic
tales dealing with horror, despair, the grotesque and other “dark” subjects.
3. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) followed Gothic tradition in her
Frankenstein.
4. William Blake (1757-1827) was both poet and artist. He not only wrote books,
but he also illustrated and printed them. He devoted his life to freedom and
universal love. He was interested in children and animals the most innocent of
God’s creatures.
5. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) wrote a long narrative poem about
sinning and redemption in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
6. William Wordsworth (1770-1850), together with Coleridge, brought out a
volume of verse, Lyrical Ballads, which signaled the beginning of English
Romanticism. Wordsworth found beauty in the realities of nature, which he vividly
reflects in the poems: The World is Too Much with Us, I Wandered Lonely as a
Cloud, She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways, and She was a Phantom of
Delight.
7. Charles Lamb (1775-1834) wrote the playful essay Dissertation on Roast Pig.
He also rewrote many of Shakespeare’s plays into stories for children in Tales
from Shakespeare.
8. Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) wrote poems and novels. The Lay of the Last
Minstrel and The Lady of the Lake are representative of Scott’s poems. Between
1814 and 1832 Scott wrote 32 novels which include Guy Mannering and Ivanhoe
9. Jane Austen (1775-1817) a writer of realistic novels about English middle-class
people. Pride and Prejudice is her best-known work. Her other novels include:
Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Sense and
Sensibility.
10. George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) was an outspoken critic of the evils of his
time. He hoped for human perfection, but his recognition of man’s faults led him
frequently to despair and disillusionment. He is much remembered for his poems:
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, She Walks in Beauty, and The Prisoner of Chillon
11. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), together with John Keats, established the
romantic verse as a poetic tradition.
• Many of his works are meditative like Prometheus Unbound; others are
exquisitely like The Cloud, To a Skylark, and Ode to the West Wind.
Adonais, an elegy he wrote for his best friend John Keats, ranks among
the greatest elegies.
• In Ode to the West Wind, Shelley shows an evocation of nature wilder and
more spectacular than Wordsworth described it.
12. John Keats (1795-1821) believed that true happiness was to be found in art and
natural beauty.
• His Ode to a Nightingale spoke of what Keats called “negative capability,”
describing it as the moment of artistic inspiration when the poet achieved
a kind of self-annihilation – arrived at that trembling, delicate perception of
beauty.

Ode to the West Wind by P. 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 winged 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, oh 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 aëry 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: oh hear!

III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lull'd 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 gray with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: oh 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 seem'd 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 chain'd and bow'd

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 wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

 I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

By William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

 For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

By Thomas Gray

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,

The plowman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimm'ring landscape on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r

The moping owl does to the moon complain

Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r,

Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,

Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

 The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,

The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,

Or busy housewife ply her evening care:

No children run to lisp their sire's return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;

How jocund did they drive their team afield!

How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,

Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.

 The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,

If Mem'ry o'er their tomb no trophies raise,

Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault

The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?

Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,

Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;

Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,

Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page

Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;

Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,

And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,

 The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:

Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast

The little tyrant of his fields withstood;

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,

Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,

The threats of pain and ruin to despise,

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,

And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade: nor circumscrib'd alone

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin'd;

Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,

And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,

To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,

Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride

With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

 Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,

Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;

Along the cool sequester'd vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect,

Some frail memorial still erected nigh,

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,

Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd muse,

The place of fame and elegy supply:

And many a holy text around she strews,

That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,

Some pious drops the closing eye requires;

 Ev'n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,

Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who mindful of th' unhonour'd Dead

Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;

If chance, by lonely contemplation led,

Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,

"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn

Brushing with hasty steps the dews away

To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech

That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,

His listless length at noontide would he stretch,

And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,

Mutt'ring his wayward fancies he would rove,

Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,

Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.

 "One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,

Along the heath and near his fav'rite tree;

Another came; nor yet beside the rill,

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

"The next with dirges due in sad array

Slow thro' the church-way path we saw him borne.

Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,

Grav'd on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."

THE EPITAPH

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth

A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.

Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,

And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,

Heav'n did a recompense as largely send:

He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear,

He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,

(There they alike in trembling hope repose)

The bosom of his Father and his God.