William Blake’s poem, “The Lamb”, has two stanzas, the first stanza has a very clear rhyming scheme were as the second stanza has a less noticeable one with some lines rhyming and others not. The imagery in the poem is very clear for example when Blake says “gave thee clothing of delight” you can see he is comparing wool to actual cloths and furthermore “gave thee such a tender voice” shows he is comparing the noise a lamb makes to a human voice, by doing this it makes us think he is comparing a lamb to a new born child both associated with innocence and purity. The second stanza of “The Lamb” has a deeper significance, being associated with religion;
“Little Lamb I’ll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb”
This associates a lamb with Jesus Christ who was known as a lamb because he brought innocence to the human race, Jesus was created by God who also created the world and all its creatures, The Lamb is the link between mankind and God.
The beginning of France: An ode by S.T Coleridge reveals the passion and optimism at the beginning of the French revolution, we can see this through certain lines in the opening of the poem were Coleridge uses imagery to portray the uprising of the revolution;
“Inspired, beyond the guess of folly,
By each rude shape and unconquerable sound!”
This shows that Coleridge believes that the revolution was inspired without a doubt by “each rude shape” corresponding with the corrupt political system and “unconquerable sound” relating to the unstoppable uprising of the peasants. The whole opening of the poem describes the beauty of nature which Coleridge is matching with the beauty of France, which shows a passion for there country which they will not let be destroyed by the death of their lands and their families due to a lack of food.
The Bastille was a symbol of the monarchical system of government. It was a prison were ‘politically dangerous’ prisoners were sent, these prisoners were those in opposition to King Louis and his government. From the outset of ‘The Bastille: a vision’ we are told of the conditions that the prisoners are kept in with sentences like ‘unvisited by light’ and ‘Abyss were mercy never came’ we can get a glimpse of how the prisoners were kept and how they felt about there abode, by writing the poem in this way Helen Maria Williams makes the Bastille sound like a living hell, which makes us wonder who would let there fellow human beings live in such conditions and then we connect this with the French government and realise how corrupt it must have been to do such a thing. In the forth stanza Williams then goes on to describe Madame Guillotine:
‘That pond’rous mask of iron falls’
This is well hidden in the poem and the conclusion has to be desiphered by the reader, further more we realise that the guillotine was used for public executions and we understand, because of the way the poem is wrote, the fear the prisoners have for it. There is a lot of sensory language used in the poem to describe the conditions the captives were held in ‘Living tomb’ ‘Stains of blood defile’ these descriptions of the prison are vivid and unnerving and helps you understand what the rebels were fighting for, were as the final two lines of the poem are a complete comparison showing hope and relief and an unstoppable feeling of freedom.
Although these poems do reveal the hope and confidence at the start of the revolution, they also go onto show the revolution did not deliver what it promised, in stanza 3 of ‘France: an ode’ there is a disillusionment of what the revolution will bring to France;
‘The dissonance ceased, and all that seemed calm and
When France her front deep-scarr’d and gory
Concealed with clustering wreaths of glory;’
These three lines show that the French thought that when the revolution was over that peace would rein and the country would be returned to its magnificence, however the country fell under the rule of an emperor which is exactly what they didn’t want. The poem also talks about the way in which even nature becomes poisoned by the savage revolution;
‘Ye storms, that round the dawning east assembled,
The Sun was rising, though ye hid his light!’
This is a metaphor for how the smoke and smog of war can hide the light of the sun, even when it’s the middle of the day, this is a depressing thought meant to show what war does to the most beautiful of things. The freedom the revolutionaries thought they were going to achieve at the end of the war was snatched of off them by one Napoleon Bonaparte who took control of the nation and once more plunged into war.
The French revolution turned the hopes of the romantic poets into disillusion as the horrific events unfolded before them; this affected the romantic poets and turned them towards writing about innocence and new birth being as this is what they hoped would happen at the end of the French revolution.
By
James
O’Connell
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