Romantic poetry/contribution of the British Romantic poets

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive

---William Wordsworth, The Prelude
Conventionally, the Romantic Period in the English Literature began in 1798, which saw the publication
of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge and ends in 1832, a year which saw the death of Sir Walter Scott
and the enactment by Parliament of the First Reform Bill. The Romantic temperament prefers feelings, intuition,
and the heart. For the Romantic writer the child is holy and pure and its proximity to God will only be corrupted
by civilisation. Wordsworth wrote that ‘the Child is father of the Man’ (“My Heart Leaps Up”) he stressed that
the adult learns from the experience of childhood. Romantic writers celebrate the freedom of nature and of
individual human experience. The six best known Romantic poets were William Blake, William Wordsworth,
S.T. Coleridge, P.B. Shelley, Lord Byron and John Keats. The three main figures of what has become known as
the Lakes School were William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey as they all lived in
the Lake District of England, United Kingdom, in the first half of the nineteenth century.
William Wordsworth: Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads attacks the artificial ‘poetic diction’ used in
conventional 18th-century verse. In Preface, Wordsworth professed the use of common language of prose as the
language for poetry. Thus, Wordsworth liberated poetry from the drawing room of the aristocrats. Many critics
rank The Prelude as Wordsworth’s greatest work. In 1807 Poems in Two Volumes was published. The work
contains much of Wordsworth’s finest verse, notably the super “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” the
autobiographical narrative “Resolution and Independence,” and many of his well-known sonnets. And The
Excursion was published in 1814. According to the subjects, Wordsworth’s short poems can be classified into
two groups: poems about nature and poems about human life. Wordsworth is regarded as a “worshipper of
nature.” He can penetrate to the heart of things and give the reader the very life of nature. Secondly, Wordsworth
thinks that common life is the only subject of literary interest. The joys and sorrows of the common people are
his themes. Wordsworth is also a poet in memory of the past. To him, life is a cyclical journey.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s (1772-1834) poems can be divided into two groups: the
demonic and the conversational. The first group includes the poets three masterpieces: “The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner”, “Christabel” “Kubla Khan”. The group is characterized by visionary memory, supernatural happenings,
and magic powers. The second group expresses the poet’s thought in a seemingly conversation. For example,
“Frost at Midnight,” the most important poem of the group, is a record of his personal thought in a midnight
solitude on his infant son, and “Dejection: An Ode” is also an intimate personal piece in which the poet utters his
innermost thoughts and sentiments. Coleridge is one of the first critics to give close critical attention to language,
maintaining that the true end of poetry is to give pleasure “through the medium of beauty.” He sings highly
Wordsworth’s “purity of language,” “deep and subtle thoughts,” “perfect truth to nature” and his “imaginative
power.” But he denies Wordsworth’s claim that there is no essential difference between the language of poetry
and the language spoken by common people. In analyzing Shakespeare, Coleridge emphasizes the philosophic
aspect, reading more into the subject than the text and going deeper into the inner reality than only caring for the
outer form.
Robert Southey: Robert Southey was a poet of the English Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets",
and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843. Although his fame has been long eclipsed by that
of his contemporaries and friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey's verse still enjoys
some popularity. Southey’s first published prose work was Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain
and Portugal. By then he had already published, with his friend and fellow Robert Lovell, a volume of Poems—
reflective pieces, “odes, elegies, sonnets, etc.,” in the manner of 18th-century Sensibility—and had acquired a
reputation as the author of an epic with revolutionary overtones, Joan of Arc.
Percy Bysshe Shelley: Shelley’s status as a poet is a matter of controversy. The list of his big works includes
poems that are not much read. Queen Mab is the work of a boy; but the boy is keen on fairies as well as on
lambasting institutions, civil, religious and marital. Alastor tells how ‘a youth of uncorrupted feelings and
adventurous genius’ idealistically seeks in vain. Prometheus Unbound, a poetic drama, is less imprecise and
elusive. In the person of Prometheus, sustained by his mother Earth and his beloved, Asia, mankind stands firm
against the hatred of Jupiter. The Cenci is a powerful, if flawed, tragedy based on a sixteenth century record of a
Count Cenci whose evil life culminated in an incestuous passion for his daughter, Beatrice. She conspired with
her brother and stepmother to have him murdered.
John Keats: John Keats’s short life of rich productiveness, terminated by consumption at the age of twenty-four,
added another facet to the figure of Romantic poethood personified. One of Keats’ outstanding traits was his use
of the fantastic and fairytale qualities. He is most known for his poems such as “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and “Ode
to a Nightingale,” but a couple of his most fairytale-like works are The Eve of St. Agnes and Lamia. These poems
were written at the same time the former two poems mentioned were. 1819 was a very creative, inspirational, and
productive time for John Keats. In Lamia, Keats gives us a shape-shifting, changeling serpent who is exposed by
a human for who she really is. In The Eve of St. Agnes, a superstitious girl, Madeline, believes that her lover will
meet her on a special, se aside night. For the Romantics, Wordsworth and Shelly focus much on nature and finding
“the sublime,” and Keats touches on that in “Ode to a Nightingale.” Keats has a strong connection with the
unknown, magical realm. Endymion deals allegorically with the love of Cynthia, the moon goddess, for the
shepherd Endymion and with his wandering search for her that it inspires. ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’, the
poem begins, but the four books of overwritten and under precise couplets, though drenched in lush imagery lack
coherence and restraint.
Lord Byron: Lord Byron was an English poet of the Romantic school, who was easily the most popular and
controversial poet of his time. After his return from his travels, the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
were published in 1812, and were received with acclamation. In his own words, "I awoke one morning and
found myself famous." He followed up his success with four equally celebrated Oriental Tales, The Giaour, The
Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, and Lara, which established the Byronic hero. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a
lengthy narrative poem describing the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned
with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks for distraction in foreign lands. The poem is quite autobiographical, as
Byron freely admitted, and is based upon his travels through the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea between 1809
and 1811. Don Juan is Byron's masterpiece, based on the Spanish legend of Don Juan, the story of a libertine who
seduces a young girl and kills her father, only to be haunted by the father's ghost and taken to hell. Byron's retelling
of the legend is considerably less grim. It is a variation on the epic form.