William Blake as a Visionary Poet

 The onset of the Industrial Revolution made Blake aware of how the overall economy of the
country was changing and particularly of how social life was become increasing subservient to
the demands of wage labor and the new rules of life enjoyed by the factory system. He viewed
this as well as several tendencies of his time as an attempt to restrict human capacity and the
freedom of imagination.
 Romanticism laid considerable stress on the elements of imagination, nature worship,
humanitarianism, liberty, mysticism and symbolism which differed from the outlook of Neo-
classicism which promoted the nation of reason, balance and logic, Blake always saw immediate
events against a far wider and deeper background. In his staunch glorification of the imagination,
in his revolt against the bondage and restrictions that society and its institutions imposed on the
individual man, in his mysticism and his symbolic interpretation of thought and feeling and his
simplicity of expression indeed make Blake a harbinger of Romantic poetry in England.
Imagination and intuition were the dominant features of Romanticism and Blake's poems are
undoubtedly enriched with it.
 In Blake's poems, nature is associated with rejuvenating stimulants such as "the sound of the bell
in the spring season and the merry voice of thrush and sparrow". The Nature in Song of
Innocence Smells of Eden Where "sin is absent in man's conscience". The most characteristic
feature of Blake's poems is that they are based on his 'vision' which are embedded with Angels,
Gods and Goddesses and thus significantly, the poetic inspiration poetry itself becomes divine
and sacred.
 Blake's philosophy asserts, more than anything else, the contrariety of system with regard to
human soul and the other objects of creation. Blake is a devout admirer of intrinsic energies and
sublime instincts of human soul. According to him, any logical analysis of nature of universe
thoroughly based upon science and reason is grievously misleading. In brief, "it is man's
imagination which is eternal and everlasting"; only the world of imagination can bring about a
world of order and beauty in which all perspectives of universe and the entire faculties of human
soul fall into their own proper and fit order.
 W. Wordsworth is remembered as a poet of spiritual and epistemological speculation, a poet
concerned with the human relationship to nature and a fierce advocate of using the vocabulary
and speech patterns of common people in poetry.
 Wordsworth's theory of poetic of diction
 Poetic diction refers to the style of writing used in poetry (the linguistic style, vocabulary, and
use of figurative language--normally metaphors).
 Wordsworth's issue, essentially, with the use and adherence to poetic diction was the fact that it
tended to alienate the common man. Given that the common man did not speak using elevated
vocabulary and figurative language, Wordsworth believed, given he wanted poetry to speak to
all, that complete adherence to poetic diction needed to be dropped.
 I have done for the reason already alleged, to bring my language near to the language of men,
and further, because the pleasure which I have proposed to myself to impart is of a kind very
different from that which is supposed by many persons to be the proper object of poetry.
 The neo-classical poetic diction was mainly derived from the classical poets such as Virgil,
Spenser, Milton and was based on the principal of decorum. Moreover, prominent features of the
eighteenth century poetic diction where archaism, preference for resounding words derived from
Latin, a personification of inanimate objects and to avoid what were regarded as low, technical
or common place terms by means of substitute phrase that was dignity and decorum. In William
Wordsworth’s famed attack on the neo-classical doctrine of a special language for poetry,in his
preface to 1800 Lyrical Ballads, he claimed: “There is no difference between language of poetry
and language of prose.” He states that the poetic diction of eighteenth century writers as artificial
and unnatural.
 The Neo-classical poets insisted on the perfection of language rather than subject matter. They
adopted the method of revising their writing till it is said in the fewest possible as well as the best
possible words. The poets avoided writing the words which were coarse, vulgar and unsuitable in
their work. Their aim was not only to make language lofty and grandeur but also its style. In
result, they introduced artificial poetic diction and style that made the language different from
every day and rustic life.
 The Neo-classical poetic diction was mainly derived from the classical poets such as Virgil,
Spenser, and Milton. These poets used to write poetry by using embellished language and
particular decorum. Other prominent features of that period were the extensive use of difficult
words, allusions, the personification of abstracts, and avoidance of things considered as low or
base. The poetry of that time was treated as something sacred. It was only subjected to the people
with high intellect and of high status in the society.
 Wordsworth prime concern was to denounce such superficial and over-embellished language.
Wordsworth’s aim was to write poetry which symbolizes the life in its simple and rustic state.
The poetry, for Wordsworth, must be like the part of daily life speech. It should be written in
such language that anyone who wants to read it could comprehend it easily. Wordsworth
believes that all such ornamented poetry clocks the genuine and passionate feelings of the poets.
He only justifies the use of an embellished language of poetry when it is naturally suggested by
the feelings or the subject matter of the poetry.
 Wordsworth begins the preface by asserting that the aim of poetry is to "choose incidents and
situations from common life and to relate or describe them throughout, as far as was possible, in
a selection of language really used by men."
 Literary critic T.S. Eliot, for instance, critiques Wordsworth's definition, stating, "The language
of poetry... can never be the language of ordinary conversation. In the language of poetry, the
language of the intellect and that of the passions are one and the same."
 One of the poems that exemplifies Wordsworth's emphasis on everyday life is "We Are Seven."
The poem centers on a conversation between the speaker and a little girl, where the girl insists
that she has seven siblings, even though two have passed away. Despite the simplicity of the
 subject matter, Wordsworth uses it to explore profound themes of life, death, and the resilience
of the human spirit. The poem challenges the notion of what constitutes a valid understanding of
reality and highlights the imaginative power of the child's mind.
 Another poem that highlights Wordsworth's interest in ordinary life is "The Old Cumberland
Beggar." In this poem, Wordsworth depicts an impoverished beggar and tells the story of his life
with compassion and empathy. Through vivid descriptions, the poet humanizes the beggar and
emphasizes the dignity and worth of even the most marginalized members of society.
Wordsworth's choice of subject matter and his ability to find beauty in the commonplace reflect
his belief that poetry should illuminate the lives of ordinary people.
 While Wordsworth's focus on everyday life, nature, and childhood experiences constitutes the
core of his subject matter, he also explores social and political issues in his poetry. "The Female
Vagrant" is a poem that addresses the plight of a homeless woman and the social injustices she
faces. Wordsworth highlights the contrast between the beauty of nature and the harsh realities of
human suffering, shedding light on the societal inequalities of his time.
 According to Wordsworth, prose is the language used for everyday communication, and its
primary purpose is to convey information and express thoughts in a straightforward manner.
Prose is characterized by its utilitarian nature and lack of elevated or ornate language. It is the
language of ordinary people and is generally devoid of any heightened emotional or imaginative
qualities. Wordsworth emphasizes that prose is essential in society for its practicality and clarity
of expression.
 On the other hand, metrical composition, which refers to poetry, differs significantly from prose
in its use of language and form. Wordsworth asserts that the language of poetry should not be a
departure from ordinary language but rather a selection and arrangement of ordinary words that
are more deeply infused with passion and emotion.
 During the period of romanticism, nature was the significant theme which captured scholar’s
attention. William Wordsworth had a unique feeling for nature, which laid the foundation for
him to become a master of natural poetry. For William Wordsworth, nature was like his mother,
his teacher, his friend and his lover. Nature was the representative of perfect humanity. Nature
nourished and soothed the human mind, and provided pleasure and education.
 William Wordsworth claimed that nature was the collision of reason and emotion. Wordsworth
believed that nature had the magic power of reason, which endowed human beings with a certain
spirit and provided them with a rational thinking in the living environment. It was proper to say
that human nature was the lesson Wordsworth learned from nature in his childhood, and rational
nature was Wordsworth’s obsession to pursue a certain spirit under the inspiration of his nature
teacher. William Wordsworth believed that nature had the power to heal the wounded heart and
pacify emotion.
 Pantheism was spread widely among European countries in the 19th century, and it influenced
many poets. Some scholars claimed that the description of nature’s divinity in Wordsworth’s
poetry was influenced by pantheism. William Wordsworth was a devout Christian, and the
Christian doctrine had a great influence on the creation of his poetry. Just like Christians argued
that God was the only one who could save mankind, William Wordsworth believed that nature
 was the symbol of God, and everything Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences in
nature had the light of God’s divinity. Returning to nature was the only way for human beings to
achieve liberation and self-redemption.
 Pantheism may encourage academics whose ultimate objective is to understand God via the
study of natural objects of the universe found in English literature, despite the fact that it is
fundamentally antithetical to God’s oneness.
 Pantheism is a theological philosophy theory frequently adopted by a group of poets and literary
artists who believe that God exists everywhere in nature. Pantheism is the belief that the
Universe (Nature) and God are the same thing.
 The term comes from the Greek words pan, which means “all,” and theos, which means “God.”
One recalls the lyrics from ‘Tintern Abbey’ here:
“A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things,all objects of all thought
And rolls through,all things.”
 “On the imagination or esemplastic power”. Oxford dictionary defines the adjective esemplastic
as: “moulding into one; unifying” Coleridge refers to the “esemplastic power of the
imagination”, “esemplastic” meaning “shaping into One”. Imagination- Coleridge‟s
“esemplastic” power is intuitive, unitive, faculty that sees the Whole behind the parts, the One
behind the many.
 Where reason analyzes and reduces into parts, Imagination puts the parts back together into a
Whole and takes us to the hidden metaphysical unity behind multiplicity. Fancy, by contrast, is
rational and decorative. A similie within a secular humanist poem in which one “part” of the
Whole is compared to another “part” of the Whole is an example of such decorative fancy.
 “The Imagination then I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary Imagination I hold
to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite
mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am. The secondary I consider as an echo of the
former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its
agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation.
 The primary imagination is spontaneous, involuntary what Coleridge calls “the necessary
imagination”. It is a reflex or instinct of the mind and what Kant calls an empirical -as distinct
from a transcendental- degree of the imagination. It “unifies” by bringing together sensory data
into larger units of understanding.
 Coleridge uses the term secondary imagination to refer to human ability to transcend this primary
organization, to reassemble perceptual elements or fragments and create new meaning. The secondary
imagination is basically the creative or poetic imagination.
 Fancy is what today we call taste or at best aesthetics: the arrangement of form and colour in pleasing
proportions. The difference between imagination and fancy, according to Coleridge, is one of kind
rather than degree.
 Coleridge’s poetry differs from that of Wordsworth, and his association with Wordsworth
overshadows Coleridge’s individual accomplishments as a Romantic poet. In addition,
Coleridge’s poetry complicates experiences that Wordsworth views as very simple and very
commonplace. Samuel Taylor Coleridge has a poetic diction unlike that of William Wordsworth,
he relies more heavily on imagination for poetic inspiration
 He stated, “my endeavors would be directed to persons and characters supernatural – Mr.
Wordsworth, on the other hand, was…to give charm of novelty to things of everyday”.
 Coleridge and Wordsworth clearly had contrasting opinions about “what constituted well written
poetry.”
 Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner uses very deliberate phrases in order to describe
images. The descriptions portray a bleak atmosphere with vivid images of the “rotting deck”
where “dead men lay”. His lines directly address the despair of the situation with very concise
language, leaving little to the imagination. The essence of the poem is summed up in the lines,
“The many men so beautiful/ And they all dead did lie! / And a thousand slimy things/ Lived on –
and so did I.
 This criticism proves that Wordsworth and Coleridge were not completely compatible, and it
points out how Coleridge developed his own independent poetic diction, regardless of whether or
not Wordsworth approved. In Wordsworth’s opinion, “The poem of my friend has indeed great
defects,” and he goes on to say, “the principle person has no character…[the mariner] does not
act, but is continually acted upon…the events have no necessary connection”.
 Wordsworth draws from nature in association with “spontaneous overflow[s] of powerful
feelings” and “spots of time.” This is what he judges to be essential in the creation of poetry. The
“spots of time” are moments from the past that are forever present in the mind, therefore they can
constantly be reflected upon.
 "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"
 Keats has wide experience in the reading of poetry and is familiar with
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, but not until now has he had the special aesthetic enjoyment to be
gained from reading Homer in the translation of George Chapman. For him, the discovery of
Homer as translated by Chapman provides the same kind of overwhelming excitement felt by an
astronomer who has discovered a new planet or by Cortez when he first saw the Pacific from a
summit in Central America.
 The poem is brilliant testimony of the effect of poetry on Keats. He had spent a night in the
autumn of 1816 reading poetry with his friend Charles Cowden Clarke, who introduced him to
some of the best passages in George Chapman's translation of Homer. Keats was delighted with
the vigorous language of the Elizabethan; to him, Chapman spoke out "loud and bold."
 To convey to the reader the thrill of discovery he has experienced in hearing his friend Clarke
read from Chapman's Homer to him, he uses two smiles that are both beautiful and apt. "Then felt
I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken."
 Keats seeks an escape into the past from the passive realities of the present. His imagination is
attracted by the ancient Greeks and by the splendour of Middle ages.
 All sorts of poetry deals with but Romantics go a step ahead. Keats sees beauty in ordinary things
of nature. Earth to him is a place where beauty renews itself everyday, Keats finds beauty in
flower, in the stream and in the cloud. Ode to a Grecian Urn becomes a symbol of the universal
and everlasting spirit of beauty.
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty--- that is all
Ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.
 The poem itself is very unhappy; Keats is stunned at the happiness of the bird and despairs at the
difference between it and its happiness and his own unhappy life. At the start of ‘Ode to a
Nightingale,’ the heavy sense of melancholy draws allusions to ‘Ode on Melancholy,’ and Keats
– despite the death imagery – does not really want to die. The conflicted nature of human life –
a mixture of pain/joy, emotion/numbness, the actual/the ideal, etc. – dominates the poem, so
much so that, even at the end, it is unclear whether or not it happened – ‘do I wake or dream?’
 There are heavy allusions to mythology: Lethe, the river of forgetting that flows through the
underworld; Hippocrene, the fountain of the Muses made by Pegasus’ hooves which brings
inspiration; dryads, the spirit protectors of the forest; Bacchus, god of wine and debauchery;
Ruth and the corn-field is a reference to the book in the Bible; hemlock, the poison that killed
Socrates; Flora, the Roman goddess of nature.
 Nature and imagination are shown to be a brief reprieve from human suffering, hence the song of
the nightingale, and its impressions. There is also a shift from reality to idealism: Keats says that
he would like to drink from ‘a draught of fine vintage’ (a very fine wine) and transport himself
to the ideal world that the nightingale belongs to. He states that he will not be taken there by
Bacchus and his pards (Bacchanalia, revelry, and chaos) but by poetry and art. (Escapism).
 Keats uses the senses heavily in all his poetry, relying on synaesthetic descriptions to draw the
reader into ‘Ode to a Nightingale’. It works especially well here because Keats’ fantasy world is
dark and sensuous, and he ‘cannot see what flowers are at my feet’; he is ‘in embalmed
darkness’. The darkness may have helped his imagination to flourish and furnish his ideal
creation, as well as lending a supernatural air to ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.
 The drowsiness comes from the longing to flee the world and join the nightingale – to become
like the nightingale, beautiful and immortal and organic – and after rejecting joining the
nightingale through Bacchanalian activity, he decides that he will attempt to join the bird
through poetry. Thus, the rapture of poetic inspiration matches the rapture of the nightingale’s
music and thereby links nature to poetry to art.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
 He defined his new concept in a letter ‘Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being
in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason—.’ Keats
regarded Shakespeare as the prime example of negative capability, attributing to him the ability
to identify completely with his characters, and to write about them with empathy and
understanding; he contrasts this with the partisan approach of Milton and the ‘wordsworthian or
egotistical sublime’ of Wordsworth. "Negative capability" is the capacity of artists to pursue
ideals of beauty, perfection and sublimity even when it leads them into intellectual confusion
and uncertainty, as opposed to a preference for philosophical certainty over artistic beauty.
 A poet, then, has the power to bury self-consciousness, dwell in a state of openness to all
experience, and identify with the object reflected. See Keats’s “To Autumn.” The inspirational
power of beauty, according to Keats, is more important than the quest for objective fact; as he
writes in his “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’—that is all / Ye know on
earth, and all ye need to know.”
 Against Coleridge's obsession with philosophical truth, Keats sets up the model of Shakespeare,
whose poetry articulated various points of view and never advocated a particular vision of truth.
 This concept of Negative Capability is precisely a rejection of set philosophies and preconceived
systems of nature.[6] He demanded that the poet be receptive rather than searching for fact or
reason, and to not seek absolute knowledge of every truth, mystery, or doubt.
 Keats's poetry is sensuous not in the sense of being 'sensual' or abounding in feelings of
sensuality; it is sensuous in the sense of holding an appeal to the senses or having its origin in
the sense impressions. It is sensuous in the sense that it does not deal with mere abstractions or
 ideas. It is sensuous, again, in the sense of not abounding, unlike Shelley's poetry, in intellectual
content or, unlike Wordsworth's, in spiritual content. Thus, the word 'sensuous' as applied to
Keats's poetry, has mostly to do with the five senses as opposed to abstractions, philosophical
concepts or intellectual elements.
 The sensuous quality of Keats's poetry is revealed in the rich sensuous imagery employed especially in
his early poems, and in the sensuous appeal of most of the scenes, situations and descriptions contained
in his poems.
 A delicate appeal to the sense of sight is also made in the following lines in the ode To Autumn where
Autumn is presented and addressed as a person.
sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind.
The sensory perception of smell is presented in the Ode to a Nightingale, such as in the following lines:
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet;
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Where with the seasonable month endows
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
.
.
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
.
.
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
Transient nature of human life
 Thomas Chatterton was an English poet whose short, tragic life continues to fascinate and
inspire. While he died young and his work was published posthumously, Chatterton's poetry left
an indelible mark on English literature. He is best known for his Medieval-style poems,
presented as the work of a fictional 15th-century monk named Thomas Rowley.
 Chatterton's Rowley poems exhibit characteristics of the emerging Romantic movement that
would flourish in the decades following his death. His use of dramatic language, melancholic
themes, and historical settings paved the way for later Romantic poets like William
Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
 Although fatherless and raised in poverty, Chatterton was an exceptionally studious child,
publishing mature work by the age of 11. He was able to pass off his work as that of an
imaginary 15th-century poet called Thomas Rowley, chiefly because few people at the time were
familiar with medieval poetry.
 One of the most prominent traits of Victorian poetry was that most poems portrayed the
themes of isolation, alienation, and the distinction between love and life. The poem ‘Ulysses’ by
Tennyson is a monologue which reflects on his isolation and hunger to explore the world. His
poem talks about a range of issues from political to historical and even scientific matters.
 Another feature of Victorian poetry was that most of the literary writings had a moral purpose.
The poems intended to oppose and speak against the unfair social and political systems in
England during the Victorian era. Through his poems, Tennyson tackled issues that were of
social and political concern to the Victorian society. He gave voice to the poor and reforms on
the society in which he lived.
 Another important characteristic of the Victorian poetry was that it was highly idealistic and
tackled issues of truth, love and justice. Many of the poems of this era dealt with problems like
women repression in the society and corruption by those in authority. The poem “Goblin
Market” by Christina Rosetti reflects the role of women in the society and especially their role in
building the economy. In the poem “An Artist Studio”, the writer talks about the tendency of
Victorian poets to objectify women and experiment on them as, if they were objects of beauty in
the poem.
 Arnold once wrote that “poetry is at bottom a criticism of life,” an enterprise of the utmost
artistic and moral stakes. Over the course of Queen Victoria’s long reign (1837–1901), Arnold
and his contemporary British poets criticized contemporary life amid its epochal changes: the
radical ideas of evolution and materialism, shifting understandings of gender and class, and an
economic and industrial explosion that helped make the British Empire the largest in history.
 “What Is Poetry?” the philosopher John Stuart Mill responded with terms pilfered from drama:
“Poetry is feeling, confessing itself to itself, in moments of solitude. … All poetry is of the
nature of soliloquy.” In the era’s most heralded poetic innovation, Alfred, Lord
Tennyson and Robert Browning hybridized drama, fiction, and lyric into the dramatic
monologue form: a poet impersonates a fictional or historical character and addresses a silent
audience without any narrative framing or guidance.
 The Victorian poets were, to a large extent, influenced and in many cases directed by the Romantic
poets who preceded them. As such, the characteristics of their work were in many ways a response to
the Romantic period.
 The Victorian period, in comparison, was a decisive break from its predecessor, and a striking contrast
in terms of form, style, and subject matter. In contrast to the Romantics, Victorian poetry is most often
dedicated to the description of a concrete situation. The common theme was a social or moral problem
and the poem's protagonist would be used as a mouthpiece in order to denounce an individual social
injustice and appeal to the readers, who were often from the same social class as the poet, to support the
movement.
 As the foremost poet of the Victorian era, Alfred, Lord Tennyson's themes, subjects, and attitudes
mirror most of the writers in his time. The romantic aspects of Tennyson's poetry reach clearly in his
interest in nature and his detailed love of sensory imagery, as well as in his feelings of melancholy
which overcome a couple of his works.
 In "The Lotos-Eaters", the mariners use the freedom which they find on the island as an opportunity to
muse on the pressures of life back in what Tennyson saw as the increasing responsibilities of a
contemporary: a grinding industrial existence. Similarly, the Lady of Shalott and her confinement is
employed as a way to highlight the constraints that were felt by women in Tennyson's time. By
presenting problems in his society through the romantic perspective that individual thoughts and
experiences are the most significant, Tennyson lays the groundwork for people to start to look towards
a democratic solution to that problem as his readers too reflect on the message of his work.
 The language used in Victorian poetry was no longer the language of the people or the folk traditions,
but the language of the establishment. As mentioned earlier, religion, faith, and the scrutiny of the
individual through the use of the 'mirror' were now high on the agenda. And poets started to move
 away from the more structured forms of verse that you see in Romantic poetry to more experimental
forms, such as using free verse.
 Tennyson's famous work, "The Charge of Light Brigade", serves as an evidence for the transition from
Romanticism to Victorianism in his poetry. The poem praises the noble deaths of hundreds of British
soldiers during the Crimean War in a tone of high moral, military ideal and respect. Such heroic and
optimistic spirit was commonly associated with early Victorian literature which reflected in the
idealistic portrayal of the world and social developments influenced by the Industrial Revolution.
 In Memoriam became hugely popular, especially with Queen Victoria after the death of her
husband, Prince Albert, in 1861. Its melancholy tone, not without a degree of self-pity, became a
keynote of late Victorian taste and sentiment.
 Tennyson’s emotion is recollected in regret, rather than in Wordsworth’s ‘tranquillity’. His sense
of loss, doubt and anxiety gives his work a tone of melancholy which contrasts with much
Romantic optimism, commitment and wit.
 Nature for the Pre-Raphaelites is different from the nature of the Romantics or of Tennyson:
there is mysticism in, for example, Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s The Blessed Damozel (1850) which
uses lilies and a white rose for essentially symbolic purposes.
 Victorian poetry is a bridge b/w romantic and modernist poetry as it takes a lot from the
romantics like melancholic attitude like Tennyson and love for nature and transience of life and
medieval interest blended with contemporary concerns (Idylls of the King) and it had given
Monologue to modern poetry like The Love Song J Alfred Prufrock.
 The most important and obvious characteristic of Victorian Poetry is the use of sensory elements.
Most of the Victorian Poets used imagery and the senses to convey the scenes of struggles
between Religion and Science, and ideas about Nature and Romance, which transport the readers
into the minds and hearts of the people of the Victorian age.
 Tennyson is one of the most skilled and self-conscious poets of the Victorian age.
 He did experiment with different meters.
 The Victorian age refers to contradictory qualities of the mind and the spirit (Material prosperity
on the expenses of lower working class even on children). It was outwardly materialistic but
inwardly it was guided by a deep spiritual vitality.
 Vic poetry was versatile in its expression as Tennyson was conservative more looking into the
and past and looking into the myths and medievalism. A lot of nostalgia, what was is no longer
in the present, in his poetry. Sad mood… overburdened with the mood of something lost forever.
 The Vic compromise, compromise bw Darwin and Christ
 Vic poets were not confronting the current issues like romantics but they were seeking escapism
from them like Tenneysons long poen Laddy of Shallot a long poem of 10000 lines she just
looks into the mirror and see the reflections of life, rather than leading a life, seeking
compensation in something that is not real. Ref to Darwin
 Vic poets strived to find solace and affection in distant things which is not present in their
immediate settings like in Ulysses Tennyson praises Greek god Odysseus. Glorifies the spirit of
ullysses that they will go on to explore life Still speaking to himself he proclaims that he “cannot
rest from travel” but feels compelled to live to the fullest and swallow every last drop of life.
  Ulysses declares that it is boring to stay in one place, and that to remain stationary is to rust
rather than to shine; to stay in one place is to pretend that all there is to life is the simple act of
breathing, whereas he knows that in fact life contains much novelty, and he longs to encounter
this.
Robert Browning
The dramatic poem 'Pauline' published anonymously in 1833 polished his talent.
 Dramatic Monologue.
A poem in which an imagined speaker addresses a silent listener, usually not the reader. Examples
include Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess,” T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,”
 A monologue — from the Greek monos ("single") and legein ("to speak") — is an extended speech
given by a single person/Character on stage to an audience. Marc Antony delivers a well-known
monologue to the people of Rome in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. You probably know how it starts:
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones:
So let it be with Caesar.
 A monologue might be delivered to an audience within a play, as it is with Antony's speech, or it
might be delivered directly to the audience sitting in the theater and watching the play.
 But a soliloquy — from the Latin solus ("alone") and loqui ("to speak") — is a speech that a single
character on stage delivers not intending to make the audience listen, gives to oneself. In a play, a
character delivering a soliloquy talks to herself — thinking out loud, as it were — so that the
audience better understands what is happening to the character internally.
The most well-known soliloquy in the English language appears in Act III, Scene 1 of Hamlet:
To be, or not to be, — that is the question
 Browning is a major Victorian poet who voiced the mood of optimism in his works. For Browning
the intellect was more important than the music. His great knowledge was the result of his self-study
and travels.
 Unlike Tennyson he didn’t hang up to myths and legends. Talking straight about the theme of love
which is lost and cannot be regained like pippa passes. Pippa is a girl singing a hopeful song while
going on the work but the contrasting scenes of doubts and sorrows, the realites of the age and
dreams and desparations of the individual. The poet situates the hopes and desparations of the
individual with the grim realities of the age.