A
Romantic Poet vs. A Victorian poet
In this second paper we will be looking at two poems written by the famous poets; William Blake and Gerard Manley Hopkins. The two poems I have chosen are, ¨Pied Beauty¨ by Gerard Manley Hopkins and ¨The Lamb¨, by William Blake. In this essay we will look into both poems carefully and comment on the analysis of the poem that I will provide, leaded by a comparison between both these poems in a historical context.
The first poem that we will be looking at will be The Lamb:
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou
know who made thee?
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed,
By the
stream and
o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing,
woolly,
bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales
rejoice?
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee,
Little
Lamb, I'll tell thee.
He is called by thy name,
For He calls
Himself a
Lamb.
He is meek, and He is mild;
He became a little child.
I a
child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by His name.
Little Lamb,
God
bless thee!
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
This poem belongs to the collection of Songs of Innocence, published in 1789 by William Blake.
Songs of Innocence mainly
consists of
poems describing the innocence and joy of the natural world, advocating
free
love and a closer relationship with God, and most famously including
Blake's
poem The Lamb. Its poems
have a
generally light, upbeat and pastoral feel and are typically written
from the
perspective of children or written about them. (Internet source)
To start of, we should give a quick overview of this first poem. In this poem we can see that the structure is divided into two stanzas and it starts off with a question, like in The Tyger
(Another poem in Songs of Experience). The question is, ¨Little Lamb who made thee? ¨, which is made by the speaker, who is known to be the child. The listener on the other hand, is an animal, the lamb. The question made by the child is later answered in the following stanza. Here we can see Blake’s intention in reminding the readers where we come from and gives God’s place, as we can see throughout the poem.
Religion plays an important role in Blake’s life and this is reflected in many poems written by the author. We can say that the lamb, as well as us human beings are creatures of God therefore this relation between both terms have a symbolic meaning. We can see a clear example of this in the poem when Blake gives the lamb human qualities. We should also mention that according to the Christian faith, Jesus was given the name of the lamb of the God. Going back to the bible we can also point out another factor between the relationship between the lamb and Jesus which is when Jesus was crucified, this was caused by the sins of the people. We can see a similar act with the lambs, because back then the lambs were slaughtered in the temple of Jerusalem in order to take away the sins of the people.
Now that this is clear, we can say that the theme of this poem potrays three main Romantic themes: childhood, nature and spiritual truth. (Which includes religion that plays a big role in this specific poem, specifically about Christianity).
The second poem we will see is, Pied Beauty, by Hopkins. This poem is divided into two stanzas as we can see in the following page:
GLORY be to God for dappled
things—
For skies of couple-colour as a
brinded
cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon
trout
that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls;
finches’
wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold,
fallow,
and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and
tackle and
trim.
All things counter, original,
spare,
strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who
knows
how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour;
adazzle,
dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is
past
change:
Praise him.
The first part of the poem begins by mentioning God and then moves on and then praises all of His creations. In the last lines of the first stanza we can see how it changes the order and he starts mentioning the characteristics of things in the world and then tracing them back to a final affirmation of God. Here Hopkins acknowledges an absolute subject which is God the creator. Another thing that we can point out is that the natural world is a testimony to the perfect unity of God and the infinitude of His creative power. In the context of a Victorian age that valued uniformity, efficiency, and standardization, this theological notion takes on a tone of protest. We will discuss this in a more historical context further on in the essay.
The
theme of this poem is not so different from the first poem. It also
deals with
religion putting God as the centre of everything. Hopkins in this poem
talks
about how God created things that are multicoloured such as skies,
cows, trout,
roasted chestnuts, wings of birds, landscapes, and tools used by
humans. These
things are dappled, branded, stippled, strange, and freckled. Hopkins'
poem
celebrates the wondrous variety that God has created. ¨All things
counter,
original, spare, strange are manifestations of God's greatness¨(Hopkins
7). In
the poem glory is given to God and all of his creations deserve praise.
As we can see the theme of both Pied Beauty and The Lamb, is that the beauty of
the
earth proves the existence of a benevolent creator. Hopkins and Blake
use style
to promote their theme. Pied
Beauty
is a short and complex poem, which shows that man, can not comprehend
God's
creations. Hopkins uses free verse showing that the world varies and is
changeable. The rhythm reinforces the beautiful world created by God.
Also in
Hopkins' work, the use of sprung rhythm is quite common. The stylistic
devices
advance the theme that the world's beautiful variety indicates the
existence of
an amazing Father. The elements of style in 'The Lamb' bring out the
thematic
message. The poem contains sentences with an irregular rhyme and length
that
reinforces the idea hat the world is full of variety. Blake uses a
casual, clear
and simple style of writing, which shows that God is unchangeable and
understanding. Blake is symbolic in the fact that he uses the Lamb to
represent
God's perfect and pureness. Blake uses repetition when he continuously
questions
the Lamb as to who made it. He does this to communicate the amazement
that is
seen towards God's creations. The style reinforces the idea that
without God,
this beautiful world would not exist.
Blake and Hopkins use
tone to
build their theme. In Hopkins'
Pied Beauty, he describes the
amazing
variety of nature, from the speckled to the dappled things. Hopkins
also
describes how things come in many shapes. The author's tone seems to be
one of a
child because he seems amazed at the smallest thing like children do.
Hopkins'
awe filled tone proves the theme that God is the creator of all that is
beautiful. Blake's approving tone expresses his awe, and wonder for God
in his
poem The Lamb. Blake uses the speaker
to
represent human beings that act like children. People are amazed that
God can
create something so beautiful as the Lamb. Because God's identity can
be
perceived in what he creates, the Lamb reflects God's character. Like
the Lamb,
God is perfect and beautiful beyond man's understanding. The poem
reveals the
childish nature and human beings that can not comprehend God's
reasoning and
motives them to do so. Blake's awe filled tone reinforces the theme
that God is
the creator of all that is beautiful even the most ugliest thing.
Everything is
beautiful for God has created it.
Both Hopkins and Blake
express the
theme that in a world full of such variety and beauty, one can only
believe that
God is the creator. God's world is the ideal home to all things that
breathe
life in our world. The world is intricate and full of amazing variety
and beauty
beyond man's understanding. Gerard Manley Hopkins and William Blake,
both prove
this in their poems, 'Pied Beauty' and 'The Lamb.'
Now we will get into the historical backgrounds of these two poets. Both William Blake and Gerard Manley Hopkins were influenced by their historical time periods and we can see this in their works.
We will first look into Blake’s background. Blake's life (1757-1827) spanned two time periods and reflects both in his poems. He lived at the end of the Enlightenment (eighteenth century) and the beginning of the Romantic Period. The historical events that influenced him were the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the Agricultural Revolution. Blake was a pre-romantic poet who 'reacted against the emphasis on reason and the intellect' which was popular in the eighteenth century (Prentice 506). Like other pre-romantic poets, Blake 'disregarded the tastes of the time and re-established the lyric' (Prentice 506). Blake's poems are closer to romantic poetry because they appeal to both, the reader's emotions and reason, they contain ordinary language, and in them, man and nature are closely related, for example we can see this in the poems that belong to Songs of Innocence.
During the time of the Romantic era, we can say that it was defined by the works of William Blake followed by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The three poets were very well known for their romantic works. The movement was, in a sense, formalized with the joint publication by Wordsworth and Coleridge. The work emphasized what would become the key tenets of Romanticism, namely the reconciliation of ´man and nature´, along with an attempt to abandon the high language of 18th century English poetry and to attempt to convey poetic ideas via a common vernacular. (Internet source)
One of the most complex developments during this period is the transformation of religion into a subject for artistic treatment far removed from traditional religious art. The Enlightenment had weakened, but hardly uprooted, established religion in Europe. As time passed, sophisticated writers and artists were less and less likely to be conventionally pious; but during the Romantic era many of them were drawn to religious imagery in the same way they were drawn to Arthurian or other ancient traditions in which they no longer believed. Religion was estheticized, and writers felt free to draw on Biblical themes with the same freedom as their predecessors had drawn on classical mythology, and with as little reverence.
Faust begins and ends in Heaven, has God and the devil as major characters, angels and demons as supporting players, and draws on wide variety of Christian materials, but it is not a Christian play. The Enlightenment had weakened the hold of Christianity over society to the extent that some at least, like Goethe, no longer felt the need to engage in the sort of fierce battles with it Voltaire had fought, but felt instead free to play with it. A comparable attitude can be seen in much of the work of the English Pre-Raphaelite painters who began in mid-century to treat Christian subjects in the context of charmingly "naive" Medievalism.
The mixture of disbelief in and fascination with religion evident in such works illustrates a general principal of intellectual history: artistic and social movements almost never behave like rigid clock pendulums, swinging all the way from one direction to another. A better metaphor for social change is the movement of waves on a beach, in which an early wave is receding while another advances over it, and elements of both become mixed together. For all that many of its features were reactions against the rationalist Enlightenment, Romanticism also incorporated much from the earlier movement, or coexisted with the changes it had brought about.
Secondly, Hopkins (1844-1889) lived at the end of the Victorian Period. He lived at a time when England was the world's richest and strongest country. He was influenced by the middle-class beliefs in social responsibility and the work ethic. He became a Catholic priest to serve the poor. Like many Victorian writers, Hopkins expressed optimism in his poetry. He paved the way for Modern writers by experimenting with rhyme and rhythm. 'He developed what he called 'sprung rhythm.' This is a system of versification in which accented syllables are grouped in emphatic patterns somewhat like those of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse. The resulting meter is quite different from conventional English meter' (Prentice 852).
The Victorian Era of the United Kingdom also referred to the period of Queen Victoria’s reign from 1837 till 1901. This reign was the longest reign in all of British history. During this time there were remarkable changes in; culture, politics, economical, industrial and scientific changes. From the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign till her death Britain became from being primarily agrain and rural to the strongest and most industrialized country of Europe. A great example would be the expansive railway network.
Discoveries and inventions started to give way along with new assumptions of man and the world, about science and history, and finally about religion and philosophy. For example, photography was realized in 1839 by Louis Daguerre in France and William Fox Talbot in England. Another great change that we can see is the social change as could be the legal changes in women’s rights, (Married Women´s Propert Act), which meant that women could file for divorce or fight for the custody of their children.
This period is also characterised as a long period of peace and economic, colonial and industrial consolidation, although Britain was always at war.
As far as the social institutions, Britain had a very rigid social structure that was divided into four classes: the church, and aristocracy, the middle class, and the working class. In the late 18th century the class structure was changed dramatically due to the industrialization, which caused a conflict between the upper and lower classes.
Most of the Middle English and Modern English poetry was based on a rhythmic structure inherited from the Norman side of English literary heritage. This structure is based on repeating groups of two or three syllables, with the stressed syllable falling in the same place on each repetition. Hopkins ran contrary to the antic conventional ideas of meter, and brought to light what is called the structure of running rhythm. We can see this structure in some of Hopkins early verse. Hopkins called his own rhythmic structure as a way to escape the constraints of running rhythm. ¨His work has no great affinity with either of the contemporary pre- Raphaelite and neo-romanticism schools, although he does share their descriptive love of nature and he is often seen as a precursor to modernist poetry or as a bridge between the two poetic eras.¨ (internet source)
Victorian literature is the literature produced during the reign of Queen Victoria and corresponds to the Victorian era. It forms a link and transition between the writers of the romantic period (mentioned in the beginning of the essay) and the very different literature of the 20th century.
The 19th century saw the novel become the leading form of literature in English. The works by pre-Victorian writers such as Jane Austen and Walter Scott had perfected both closely-observed social satire and adventure stories. Popular works opened a market for the novel amongst a reading public. The 19th century is often regarded as a high point in British Literature as well as in other countries such as France, the United States of America and Russia. Books, and novels in particular, became ubiquitous, and the "Victorian novelist" created legacy works with continuing appeal. (internet source)
During the Victorian era both ´religion´ and ´science´ undergo dramatic changes. Both terms heavily influenced by the writings of the 20th century. In the beginning of the 19th century in Britain, religious faith and the sciences were seen as a beautiful accordance. The study of God’s word, in the Bible, and His works, in nature, were assumed to be twin facets of the same truth. Most works of the Victorian poets were enormously influential for its emphasis on nature as God’s creation, even though, by the 1830´s, few Christians saw a need to prove God’s existence, preferring to take this as an act of faith. ( Internet source)
This harmony between science and faith, mediated by some form of theology of nature, continued to be the mainstream position for most men of science, and most interested individuals right up till the 1860´s. Publishers with explicit religious credentials continued to publish popular works on the sciences right up till the end of the century, and their works competed in the marketplace with the secular versions. Although much has been made of a mid-Victorian crisis of faith, perhaps tiggered by the sciences, this seems to have been a feature of a certain class of intellectuals, and not an accurate description of the majority of society ( especially the middle class society), which retained a religious faith long after most expert men of science. ( victorian web.)
We can say that both Blake and Hopkins are products of their times, yet both are rebels who developed new techniques and ideas as we can see in almost all their works.
Bibliography
Prentice Hall
Literature:
The English Tradition. Eds.
Roger
Babusci, et al. Englewood Cliffs,
New Jersey: Prentice Hall,
1989.
Blake,
William. 'The Lamb.' Language of Literature: British Literature. Eds.
Arthur
Hopkins, Gerard
Manley.
'Pied Beauty.' Language of Literature: British Literature. Eds.
¨Victorian Era.¨ Wikipedia. 2008. January 2008
¨Romantic poetry.¨ Wikipedia 2007. December 2007
¨Blake, William.¨ Wikipedia. 2008. January 2008
¨Hopkins, Gerard Manley.¨ Wikipedia. 2007. December 2007
¨Songs of Innocence.¨ Wikipedia. 2007. December 2007
¨Hopkins, Gerard Manley.¨ The Victorian web. 2008. January 2008
¨Science & Religion.¨ The Victorian web. 2008. January 2008