I have then briefly outlined the driving factors of the Romantic movement, and it can be clearly seen that far from being lovey dovey young men, the romantics had a deeper and further reaching comprehension of central issues than some would credit them with having. To further prove my point I will analyze two of the poems we have been reading and show how they reflect upon these definitions I have shown.
The first poem I will be looking at is “To a Skylark” by Percy Shelley. A little biographical research will uncover that Shelley was no idle songster; he was an ardent philanthropist who wished to rouse a soporific world from its moral stupor. A visionary anarchist he decried the enslavement of the mind by church, law, custom and tradition. He inveighed against priests, kings, soldiers and magistrates and other wielders of institutional authority. Despite his invective against organized oppression, Shelley spurned violent modes of redress. True emancipation, he believed, ensues from the cultivation of tolerance, austerity, temperance and unfettered discussion not armed revolt.
This was coupled with the view of him at the time as a notorious apostle of atheism, an affront to god and man. His nefarious reputation sprouted early with the “Necessity of Atheism and Queen Mab” a piece of literature for which he was expelled from Oxford University.
However this was not the only reason Shelley gained infamy, the abandonment of his wife Harriet Westbrook for the future author of Frankenstein Mary Wollstonecraft Goodwin. This personified the free living sexual spirit that existed in a number of the romantic poets, but what effect does this ethos have upon his poem “To a Skylark”? To help understand its relevance I will try an break the poem down a little and bring a more basic meaning to it.
The speaker, addressing a skylark, says that it is a "blithe Spirit" rather than a bird, for its song comes from Heaven, and from its full heart pours "profuse strains of unpremeditated art." The skylark flies higher and higher, "like a cloud of fire" in the blue sky, singing as it flies. In the "golden lightning" of the sun, it floats and runs, like "an unbodied joy." As the skylark flies higher and higher, the speaker loses sight of it, but is still able to hear its "shrill delight," which comes down as keenly as moonbeams in the "white dawn," which can be felt even when they are not seen. The earth and air ring with the skylark's voice, just as Heaven overflows with moonbeams when the moon shines out from behind "a lonely cloud."
The speaker says that no one knows what the skylark is, for it is unique: even "rainbow clouds" do not rain as brightly as the shower of melody that pours from the skylark. The bird is "like a poet hidden / In the light of thought," able to make the world experience "sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not." It is like a lonely maiden in a palace tower, who uses her song to soothe her lovelorn soul. It is like a golden glow-worm, scattering light among the flowers and grass in which it is hidden. It is like a rose embowered in its own green leaves, whose scent is blown by the wind until the bees are faint with "too much sweet." The skylark's song surpasses "all that ever was, / Joyous and clear and fresh," whether the rain falling on the "twinkling grass" or the flowers the rain awakens.
Calling the skylark "Sprite or Bird," the speaker asks it to tell him its "sweet thoughts," for he has never heard anyone or anything call up "a flood of rapture so divine." Compared to the skylarks, any music would seem lacking. What objects, the speaker asks, are "the fountains of thy happy strain?" Is it fields, waves, mountains, the sky, the plain, or "love of thine own kind" or "ignorance or pain"? Pain and languor, the speaker says, "never came near" the skylark: it loves, but has never known "love's sad satiety." Of death, the skylark must know "things more true and deep" than mortals could dream; otherwise, the speaker asks, "how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?"
For mortals, the experience of happiness is bound inextricably with the experience of sadness: dwelling upon memories and hopes for the future, mortal men "pine for what is not"; their laughter is "fraught" with "some pain"; their "sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought." But, the speaker says, even if men could "scorn / Hate and pride and fear," and were born without the capacity to weep, he still does not know how they could ever approximate the joy expressed by the skylark. Calling the bird a "scorner of the ground," he says that its music is better than all music and all poetry. He asks the bird to teach him "half the gladness / that thy brain must know," for then he would overflow with "harmonious madness," and his song would be so beautiful that the world would listen to him, even as he is now listening to the skylark.
So what is the relevance of the skylark? It is Shelly’s natural metaphor for pure poetic expression, the “harmonius madness” of pure inspiration. The Skylarks song issues from a state of purified existence, a notion of complete unity with heaven through nature; its song is motivated by the joy of the uncomplicated purity of being, and is unmixed with any hint of melancholy as human joy so often is. The skylark’s song rains down upon the world, surpassing every other beauty.
The Skylark is a “spirit” invisible in the sky, the bird sings and flies free of all human error and complexity, and while listening to its ong the poet feels free of these things too. So what bearing does this have upon the poem as a Romantic one? Well the first and perhaps most obvious is the poems connection to nature, which as I described earlier was a central theme to most romantic poetry of the time. It is also a study of untamed nature as the skylark is not something that can be easily caught; it is not a tactile being, but rather one on the edge of our atmosphere and our imaginations. It would be described even perhaps as a near mythical creature.
Another obvious trait that this poem shares with the romantic idea ia its spontaneity. It’s strange form of stanza, with four compact lines and one very long one, and its lilting songlike diction “profuse strains of unpremeditated art” work to create the effect of spontaneous poetic expression flowing musically and naturally from the poets mind, and therefore because of the constructed comparison the birds beak.
As I describe when outlining the boundaries for the romantic era a lot of pride was placed on natural genius and ample imagination. The figure of the Skylark epitomises this in the poem (and therefore the art of a poet is summed up in this way to.) The Skylark is a being on the far realms of our imagination, just perhaps within touching distance; this need for imagination twinned with the romantic’s desire for freedom makes the skylark a perfect body to encapsulate the ethos of romanticism. It is a substance barely touchable to man “Until we hardly see we feel it is there” and so satiates the Romantic worlds need for boundless imagination and copious personal freedom, but at the same time retains the translucent aura they liked to shroud themselves in.
“To a Skylark” incorporates everything it was to be romantic the sense of revolution, of imagination of freedom and the wildness of nature. It could even be described as a hand book for subject matter in Romantic poetry. However it is also a fantastic illustration of the way poets considered themselves as human members of society. The atheism of Shelley is clear in the poem which places the skylark and through that vessel the poet in the space vacated by god with the departure of the metaphysical poets. It is a casebook of how certain poets of the time saw themselves as saviors of the conscience who reflected the new and exciting order of the time.
I will now move onto the poem “To Autumn” by John Keats a contemporary of Shelley’s whose upbringing and adolescence was far less scandalous and radical, but who never the less embodied the romantic spirit of the time.
Jhn Keats once said about Lord Byron “He describes what he sees - I describe what I imagine, mine is the hardest task” To Autumn is evidence of his way of thinking, as the poem is a vivid, lyrical portrayal of the English autumn, as he imagined it.
The poem celebrates autumn as a season of abundance, a season of reflection, a season of preparation for the winter, and a season worthy of admiration with comparison to what romantic poetry often focuses upon - the spring. The poem is rather literal in its meaning as it does not convey a deeper level of meaning that relates to the reader. The poem fails to “move” the reader in a philosophical, idealistic or moralistic way, and therefore bears no significant message to the reader.
That is not to say that the poem lacks meaning or metaphorical significance, the poem was written to convey a sense of purpose to life and the worth of death. The poem achieves this by using descriptive and vivid expressions to describe the essence of autumn.
The poem uses powerful language to achieve effect. It often makes use of imagery, exaggerated language and onomatopoeia to create an atmosphere of the English autumn, for the reader. Language such as this excerpt from the first stanza,
And fill all fruits with ripeness to the core,
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
This type of language, especially adjectives such as ripeness and plump, provide the reader with an excellent description of the landscape. Onomatopoeic effect and alliteration are used rather well in the following example,
Thy hair soft lifted by the winnowing wind;
This use of language creates a rather humble and peaceful atmosphere for the reader. It emphasizes the harmony of autumn and this effect, which is used often throughout the poem, could also be a metaphor for the slow down of life during autumn, and the imminent death of the season.
The poem follows the traditional framework of an ode. It is overly lyrical and has a rhythmic device, generally common to all three stanzas, with the exception of the first stanza. The poem follows a rhyme scheme of ABAB CDED CCE for the first stanza, and ABAB CDEC DDE for the second and third. It is unclear why Keats chose to follow a different rhyme scheme for the last two stanzas, but it is certainly not an accident. D and C “swap” rhythmic positions from line eight onwards. The poem employs iambic pentameter, each line as ten syllables.
The poem compares autumn to spring in the third stanza.
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-
This is where the true meaning of the poem is conveyed. Obviously Keats had recognized the almost cliché use of spring, as new life in romantic poetry, and of the poetry before this era. His motive behind this poem is to employ an understanding that the autumn, which represents the end of life, is just as important as the spring, which represents new life. The autumn has its own music too. The personification of autumn in this poem is used to give the reader an alternative view of the seasons, and life in general.
It could be speculated that To Autumn is a metaphor for existence. Death, or ending, is just as important as life, or the beginning, for without one, there could not be the other. But I believe that it could be simply, that to appreciate the simple things in life, such as the warmth of summer or the new life of spring - the decay of life, and the almost monotonous experience of autumn, is essential to existence.
So what does Keats do in this poem that helped him fulfill the criteria of the Romantic Movement? Well the obvious starting point to comment on this poem is its reference to nature. Keats manages to suggest develop and explore an abundance of themes without ever ruffling its calm and gentle description of autumn. This allows any reader to appreciate the obvious beauty of the scene and in doing so celebrate nature, a theme which is in keeping with the Romantic description.
The power of imagination is also vital to the poem, with Keats descridibng the cottage and other such images with definite success. I make the images tactile; one can almost feel them, almost smell them. Keats conjures up images of the season as a cycle, and just as the wheat is sewn it will be chopped down, the sense of coming loss permeates this poem and confronts the sorrow underlying the seasons creativity. When autumns harvest occurs, the fields will be bare; the swathes with there “twined flowers” will be cut down. But the connection of the harvest to a cycle softens the tragedy. In time spring will come again, the fields will grow again and the birdsong will return.
This is an elaborate metaphor for spirit of Romanticism which the poets felt would always come round again, because there was such a nee for conveyers of conscience such as themselves in the world. What makes “To Autumn” a beautiful poem is that it brings an engagement with the connection out of the realm of mythology and fantasy into the real world. This after all was a device the Romantics were trying to convey.
A final aim that the romantics had which Keats fulfills exceptionally is the association of human moods with nature. The lazy almost lethargic pace of the poem and richness of down make the reader of the poem fell almost weighted down with the “flowers for the bees” and “the mossed cottage trees.” Keats has extreme success in making the reader feel the laziness of the season and in doing so reflecting the “mood” of the season with the mood of people within that season.
Keats and Shelley both successfully fall into the category of Romantic poets and the general ethos of Romanticism, as I have shown above in slightly differing ways. However they are very similar in showing the current of freedom running through both poems, basking in the now highly exulted position of intellectuals after the revolution in France. Both are extremely good poems and perhaps did not get the recognition they deserved during there lifetimes as some such as Lord Byron did, what is clear however is that both Keats and Shelley were instrumental in defining the role of the poet in that time and what they should stand for.
3226 words Jordan Anderson 12NCR Mr. Saunders
