INTRODUCTION
The
theme of this essay is: Worship and Nature in Romanticism; we have
analysed
five important authors of this period, such as: Blake, Wordsworth,
Coleridge,
Shelley, Byron and Keats.
We
have written down of their most important poems linked to this theme
and
stressed the most relevant features, for instance, in Blake’s poems we
can
notice his use of pictures that complete written words and contribute
to the
complexity of his works; moreover, his conviction that only through
imagination
man can reach knowledge; as far as worship and nature concerns, god is understood as the creator of the
universe, one
being in whom good an evil converge. Whereas Nature is a representation
of the
fact of human fall, “He thought Nature was part of the earthly world,
he was
aware of her beauty and harmony”.
As
regards Wordsworth in relation to his poem “Lines written in early
spring”, the
most important features are: thinking of Nature itself in terms of the
sublime
and beautiful associated to his parents, the relationship between
Nature and
his childhood, acknowledging the powerfulness of imagination and the
subjectivity and freedom of the poetize creation; in addition to this,
to
Wordsworth: “Nature codifies the social apparatus while it appears to
dismantle
it”.
Coleridge
has been analysed in comparison with Wordswoth and analysing his poem
“Frost at
Midnight”, for instance, the effect of nature on the imagination, the
relationship between children and
the natural world, the contrast between this liberating country setting
and
city, and the relationship
between adulthood and childhood.
The Shelley’s poem is “Queen
Mab”; the poem is an
ode to Nature and he talks about Nature as it was God, he loves Nature,
in his
opinion human beings cannot control Nature but they depend on it;
The last two poets are: Byron and
Keats; Byron reflects his opinion about Nature and worship in his poems: “English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers” and “She Walks in Beauty”, whereas as far as Keats
concerns, the poem choosen are two fragments: “A fragment
of Ode to a Nightingale” and “A
fragment of To Autumn”; Keats declares that any contact with nature
defines the
happiness thought the nature
itself, and in the two poems the author compares the eternal and
transcendental nature with the physical world.
(By
Annalisa)
BLAKE
William
Blake was a poet and an engraver. These two occupations were closely
connected.
In his works he expresses his ideas through his poems and enriches the
images
they evoke, it could be almost said that he completes the concepts
contained in
his verses with his illustrations, which are ideas captured by symbols.
His
illustrations are printed by him by the method of etching and he paints
them as
well. These pictures are verses in themselves, expressions that
complete written
words and that contribute complexity to the poems they illustrate.
(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_blake)
Blake
was a visionary. It was his conviction that only through imagination
man can
reach knowledge. And, through it, man can overcome his limited five
senses
which hinder an approach to man’s awareness of his own fall. As he once
said:
(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_blake)
"The
imagination is not
a State: it is the Human existence itself."(Blake dixit, Wikipedia)
Blake was
a man in his incessant search of God. A god understood as the creator
of the
universe, one being in whom good an evil converge.
(cf.http://www.multimedialibrary.com/Articles/kazin/alfredblake.asp
)
For
Blake, Nature is a representation of the fact of human fall. For him,
to be in
Nature is to be isolated from the world of imagination, the world that,
through
exceptional and enlightening visions, approaches humankind to knowledge
and to
their awareness of their own existence.
(cf. http://users.dickinson.edu/~nicholsa/Romnat/blake.htm)
And
although he thought Nature was part of the earthly world, he was aware
of her
beauty and harmony, and that it is through Nature that man can reach
the awareness of his place in the universe, in
the Creation.
(cf. http://users.dickinson.edu/~nicholsa/Romnat/blake.htm)
Blake does not feel love or
worship of Nature. For
him, she was part of the material world, a way to express his ideas.
Ideas
derived from his imagination and abstraction.
(cf. http://www.multimedialibrary.com/Articles/kazin/alfredblake.asp. )
He uses Nature to frame his
verses, the scenes and
images these evoke, and to create a symbology which allows him to
communicate
his thoughts, ideas and wishes.
Through Nature Blake shows us
the most inner part of man, man’s inner
self is represented by Nature facts, becoming these facts symbols of
Blake’s
ideas. He believes in the ability to apprehend not in the being itself. Therefore, he does not give value to what
exists, and therefore neither he does to Nature, to reality.
(cf. http://www.multimedialibrary.com/Articles/kazin/alfredblake.asp. )
He is aware that reality is
just how one understands
it. Just how one himself processes in his inner self through his
imagination
and his perception.
(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_blake.)
Then it can be said that
Blake’s affection for
Nature comes from her usefulness to
represent real existence and being of man, his ideas and his knowledge,
reached
through his imagination.
(cf.
http://www.multimedialibrary.com/Articles/kazin/alfredblake.asp.
)
INTRODUCTION
Piping
down the valleys
wild
Piping songs of pleasant glee
On
a cloud I saw a
child.
And he laughing said to me.
Pipe a
song about a
Lamb;
So I piped with merry chear,
Piper pipe that song again —
So I piped, he wept to hear.
Drop thy
pipe thy happy pipe
Sing thy songs of happy chear,
So I sung the same again
While he wept with joy to hear
Piper sit
thee down and write
In a book that all may read —
So he vanish'd from my sight.
And I pluck'd a hollow
reed.
And I
made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water
clear,
And
I wrote my happy songs,
Every child may joy to hear
(Introduction from Songs of Innocence and of
Experience)
(cf.http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/resultsdisplay.xq?objectid=songsie.a.illbk.03&term=introduction&type=and&limit=phystext&prox=25&coll=al.)
First
Milton saw Albion upon the
Rock of Ages,
Deadly pale outstretchd and snowy cold,
storm coverd;
A Giant form of perfect beauty outstretchd on
the rock
In solemn death:
the Sea of
Time & Space thunderd
aloud
Against the rock, which was inwrapped with the weeds of death
Hovering over the cold bosom, in its vortex Milton bent down
To the bosom of death, what was underneath soon seemd above.
A
cloudy heaven mingled
with stormy
seas in
loudest ruin;
But as a wintry globe descends precipitant thro' Beulah bursting,
With thunders
loud, and
terrible: so Miltons shadow fell,
Precipitant loud thundring
into the
Sea of Time
& Space.
Then
first I saw him in the
Zenith
as a falling
star,
Descending perpendicular, swift as the swallow
or swift;
And on my left foot falling on the tarsus, enterd there;
But from my left foot a
black
cloud redounding spread over Europe.
Then Milton knew that the
Three Heavens of Beulah were beheld
By him on
earth in his
bright pilgrimage of sixty years
(From Milton 1804, Plate 15, 37-53)
(cf.http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/resultsdisplay.xq?objectid=milton.c.illbk.16&term=milton&type=and&limit=phystext&prox=25&coll=all)
Bibliography
-http://www.multimedialibrary.com/Articles/kazin/alfredblake.asp.
AN INTRODUCTION TO WILLIAM BLAKE
by Alfred Kazin
-http://users.dickinson.edu/~nicholsa/Romnat/blake.htm
William
Blake (1757-1827)
Romantic Natural
History© by
Ashton Nichols, 2000, 2006
Home:http://users.dickinson.edu/~nicholsa/Romnat/index.html
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_blake.
Wikipedia. The Free
encyclopaedia. Article on William Blake.
Home: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/resultsdisplay.xq?objectid=songsie.a.illbk.03&term=introduction&type=and&limit=phystext&prox=25&coll=all)
Introduction from Songs of
Innocence and of Experience
Home:http://www.blakearchive.org
http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/resultsdisplay.xq?objectid=milton.c.illbk.16&term=milton&type=and&limit=phystext&prox=25&coll=all)
Milton
Home.http://www.blakearchive.org
These
websites were used the last week of October 2006.
(By
Elena)
WORDSWORTH
First
of all I would like to say that “Nature” has taken an important role in
poetry
of different periods of literature and countries. Nature is present not
only in
English literature but also in French and Spanish poets such as
Garcilaso de la
Vega and Émile Zola. But I would like to focus my attention in
Wordsworth
treatment of this topic and the romantic vision of nature.
Secondly,
I am going to enumerate some characteristics that have something to do
with the
romantic’s vision of nature and Wordsworth own perception.
Romanticism
is a general, collective term to describe much of the art and
literature
produced during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Romanticism
can be seen as a revolution in the arts, alongside the political,
social and
industrial revolutions of the age: all spheres of human activity were
undergoing great change. Wordsworth and Coleridge were among the first
British
poets to explore the new theories and ideas that were sweeping through Europe. Their poems
display many characteristics of Romanticism, including:
1- An emphasis on
the emotions (a fashionable word at the beginning of the period was
‘sensibility’. This meant having, or cultivating, a sensitive,
emotional and
intuitive way of understanding the world)
2- Exploring the
relationship between nature and human life
3- A stress on the
importance of personal experiences and a desire to understand what
influences
the human mind
4- A belief in the power of
the imagination
5- An interest in
mythological, fantastical, gothic
and supernatural themes
6- An emphasis on
the sublime (this word was used to describe a spiritual awareness,
which could
be stimulated by a grand and awesome landscape)
7- Social and political
idealism.
(c.f.http://www.wordsworth.org.uk/Default.asp?Page=119
)
We
can say that “nature” is always present
(sometimes meaning something different depending on the poem) in
Wordsworth
poetry and it is the main theme in most of his poems. Furthermore, I
would like
to say what this poet thought about this topic.
William
Wordsworth is the Romantic poet most often described as a "nature"
writer; what the word "nature" meant to Wordsworth is, however, a
complex issue. On the one hand, Wordsworth was the quintessential poet
as naturalist,
always paying close attention to details of the physical environment
around him
(plants, animals, geography, weather). At the same time, Wordsworth was
a
self-consciously literary artist who described "the mind of man" as
the "main haunt and region of [his] song." This tension between
objective describer of the natural scene and subjective shaper of
sensory
experience is partly the result of Wordsworth's view of the mind as
"creator and receiver both." Such an alliance of the inner life with
the outer world is at the heart of Wordsworth's descriptions of nature.
(c.f. http://users.dickinson.edu/~nicholsa/Romnat/wordsworth.htm )
With
regard to his poems, we can say that all
of them deal, in some way, with nature. And this is what we are going
to see
now.
For example:
The presence
of water in those poems where the sea appears, such as “Lines written
near
Richmond upon the Thames, at evening” when Wordsworth says:
Oh glide,
fair stream! for ever so;
Thy quiet
soul on all bestowing,
Till all our
minds for ever flow,
As thy deep
waters now are flowing.
In this poem,
appears a very huge ocean, and that ocean’s majesty and greatness still
controls the individual and the species.
Another
example would be “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey”:
How oft, in
spirit, have I turned to thee o Sylvan Wye!
Thou wanderer
through the woods,
How often has
my spirit turned to thee!
Here, that
deep blue sea or that river, show us that water which is apparently
calm, can
change into huge strength waves and that would produce some inspiration
in the
poet that would change his feelings.
We can also
find “nature” in his poem named “The Excursion” where he defends the
nature’s
contemplation to achieve the moral knowledge.
(c.f.
Corugedo y chamosa, 11, 12 and 13)
I have
written all these examples because I think that it is interesting to
see how
Wordsworth saw nature in some of his poems as we can say that nature is
his
main topic and this theme takes a very important role in all his works.
However, I would like to focus my attention on the poem called “Lines
written
in early spring”, also written by Wordsworth, where we can find a lot
of
examples of nature. It mainly talks about this topic.
Lines Written In Early Spring
I heard a
thousand blended notes,
While in a
grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet
mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad
thoughts to the mind.
To her fair
works did Nature link
The human
soul that through me ran;
And much it
grieved my heart to think
What man has
made of man.
Through
primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The
periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my
faith that every flower
Enjoys the
air it breathes.
The birds
around me hopped and played,
Their
thoughts I cannot measure: --
But the least
motion which they made,
It seemed a
thrill of pleasure.
The budding
twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the
breezy air;
And I must
think, do all I can,
That there
was pleasure there.
If this
belief from heaven be sent,
If such be
Nature's holy plan,
Have I not
reason to lament
What man has
made of man?
(c.f.http://quotations.about.com/od/poemlyrics/a/wordsworth17.htm )
"Lines
Written In Early Spring" is a classic Wordsworth poem. Basically, it
expresses his love of simplicity, tenderness and love of nature.
In this poem,
Wordsworth contrasts the perceived happiness and pleasure of the
natural world
with the grim state of mankind. He introduces this theme with the last
two
lines of the first stanza: "In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
bring sad thoughts to the mind."
Wordsworth
then suggests that the happiness of nature should be paralelled by a
hapiness
of mankind: "To her fair works did nature link the human soul that
through
me ran; and much it greaves my heart to think what man has made of man."
(c.f.http://www.englishforums.com/English/WrittenEarlySpringWilliam/xmn/Post.htm )
This poem is
mainly talking about nature in a very positive way. It really recreates
a
spring atmosphere because he says “and ‘tis my faith that every
flower”(line
11) or “the birds around me hopp’d and play’d”(line 13). What he is
describing
in this examples is very much related with that season( the spring).
It makes you
feel very calm and relaxed because he describes that season with
harmonious
adjectives and tenderness. We can also see that calm in lines 17, 18,
19 and
20) where he says “the budding twigs spread out their fan, to catch the
breezy
air, and I must think, do all I can, that there was pleasure there”.
Here he
also recreates that feeling of breathing pure air, because it has
always been
said that when you are close to nature, the air is not polluted so it
is more
pure and there are not difficulties for breathing. So, here he is
saying that
he was lying in a tree seeing the lovely nature and breathing that pure
air
that nature brings him.
I think that
in this poem, nature has a very important role and, although for
Wordsworth,
nature had different meanings depending on the poem he is talking
about, in
this one we can easily see that nature is here described as that
sensation of
calm, of being in harmony and seeing birds playing or leaves
flourishing and
breathing. So, we must say that this poem is a very good example of
Wordsworth
view of nature.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.wordsworth.org.uk/Default.asp?Page=119
Home: <www.wordsworth.org.uk>
http://users.dickinson.edu/~nicholsa/Romnat/wordsworth.htm
Home:< www.users.dikinson.edu>
.http://quotations.about.com/od/poemlyrics/a/wordsworth17.htm
Home: <www.quotations.about.com>
.http://www.englishforums.com/English/WrittenEarlySpringWilliam/xmn/Post.htm
Home: <www.englishforums.com>
(c.f. Corugedo y
chamosa, 11, 12 and
13)
Corugedo, Santiago
and Chamosa, Jose Luís. Baladas
líricas, Madrid, Catedra, Letras Universales, 1990.
(By Arantxa)
Like the
other romantics, Coleridge worshiped nature and recognized poetry’s
capacity to
describe the beauty of the natural world. His most
famous works – The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner,
Kubla Khan and Christabel – all took supernatural
themes and presented exotic images, perhaps
affected by his use of the drugs. In great part of
Coleridge’s poems is
expressed the concept of nature. Wordsworth and Coleridge are the
romantic
poets who have mostly used the concept of nature in their poems.
The
Eolian
Harp,
use images of nature to explore philosophical and
analytical ideas. Still other poems, including The
Nightingale,
simply praise nature’s beauty. Even poems that
don’t directly deal with nature, including Kubla
Khan
and The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner,
contain some symbols and images
from nature.
Coleridge through
his experience with
nature becomes almost completely human. Wordsworth and Coleridge
realize that
no matter how strong the poet's connection with nature,
he is still separate from it.
Nature has made
Coleridge in his depression feel his
separation as a human from nature:
I see, not feel, how
beautiful
[the stars] are!
My genial spirits fail;
And what can these avail
To lift the smothering weight from off my breast?(ll. 38-41)
The two men revere
nature and know they are essential
to its beauty, because they must appreciate it for the beauty to exist.
However, they are still separate from it; they are human. These two
poets use a
technique that departs completely from the neoclassical tradition where
the
emphasis was placed on order and balance and reasoned thoughts, even in
form.
Coleridge and Wordsworth take the liberty to write in blank verse,
often
without punctuation between lines, underlining the Romantic ideal of
emotion.
Further, Coleridge's
poems complicate the phenomena
Wordsworth takes for granted: the simple unity between the child and
nature and
the adult's reconnection with nature through memories of childhood; in
poems
such as Frost
at Midnight, Coleridge
indicates the fragility of the child's
innocence by relating his own urban childhood. In poems such as Dejection: An
Ode
and Nightingale, he stresses the
division between his own mind and
the beauty of the natural world. Finally, Coleridge often privileges
unusual
tales and strange imagery over the commonplace, rural simplicities
Wordsworth
advocates; the "thousand slimy things" that crawl upon the rotting
sea in the "Rime" would be out of place in a Wordsworth poem. . The
mind, to Coleridge, cannot take its feeling from nature and cannot
falsely fill
nature with its own feeling; rather, the mind must be so covered with
its own
joy that it opens up to the real, independent, "immortal" joy of
nature.
The Frost performs its
secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud--and hark, again ! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings : save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed ! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness.
Sea,
hill, and wood,
This populous village ! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams ! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.
But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!
Dear Babe, that sleepest
cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the intersperséd vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful ! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes ! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky
and stars.
But thou, my babe ! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes
and sandy shores,
beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain,
and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes
and shores
And mountain crags : so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher ! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.
Therefore all
seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness,
or the
redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts
of snow on
the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree,
while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw ; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
The effect of
nature on the imagination (nature is the Teacher that "by giving" to
the child's spirit also makes it "ask"); the relationship between
children and the natural world ("thou, my babe! shall wander like a
breeze..."); the contrast between this liberating country setting and
city
("I was reared / In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim"); and
the relationship between adulthood and childhood as they are linked in
adult
memory.
However, while the
poem conforms to many of the guiding principles of Romanticism, it also
highlights a key difference between Coleridge and his fellow Romantics,
specifically Wordsworth. Wordsworth, raised in the rustic countryside,
saw his
own childhood as a time when his connection with the natural world was
at its
greatest; he revisited his memories of childhood in order to calm his
feelings
and provoke his imagination. Coleridge, on the other hand, was raised
in
London, "pent 'mid cloisters dim," and questions Wordsworth's easy
identification of childhood with a kind of automatic, original
happiness;
instead, in this poem he says that, as a child, he "saw naught lovely
but
the stars and sky" and seems to feel the effects of that separation. In
this poem, we see how the pain of this unfriendliness has strengthened
Coleridge's wish that his child enjoy an idyllic Wordsworthian
upbringing "by
lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags / Of ancient mountain, and
beneath
the clouds..." Rather than seeing the link between childhood and nature
as
an inevitable, Coleridge seems to perceive it as a fragile, precious,
and
extraordinary connection, one of which he himself was deprived.
In expressing its
central themes, Frost at Midnight relies on a
highly personal idiom whereby the reader follows the natural
progression of the
speaker's mind as he sits up late one winter night thinking. His idle
observation gives the reader a quick impression of the scene, from the
"silent ministry" of the frost to the cry of the owl and the sleeping
child. Coleridge uses language that indicates the immediacy of the
scene to
draw in the reader; for instance, the speaker cries "Hark!" upon
hearing the owl, as though he were surprised by its call. The objects
surrounding the speaker become metaphors for the work of the mind and
the
imagination, so that the fluttering film on the fire grate plunges him
into the
recollection of his childhood. His memory of feeling trapped in the
schoolhouse
naturally brings him back into his immediate surroundings with a surge
of love
and sympathy for his son. His final meditation on his son's future
becomes
mingled with his Romantic interpretation of nature and its role in the
child's
imagination, and his consideration of the objects of nature brings him
back to
the frost and the icicles, which, forming and shining in silence,
mirror the
silent way in which the world works upon the mind; this revisitation of
winter's frosty forms brings the poem full circle.
(By Tani and Ani,
I have also presented the paper in class )
PERCY BYSSHE
SHELLEY (1792-1822)
Shelley was one of
the major English Romantic poets
and he is widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets of the
English
language. He is perhaps more famous for such anthology pieces as “Ozymandias”,
“Ode to the West Wind”, “To a Skylark” and “The Masque of Anarchy”. However,
his major works were long visionary poems. And as his contemporaries
did, the
poems that he produced were dealing with: nature, to see the artist as
a
creator, to believe in the goodness of human being and to be against
rationalism and exaltate the feelings. Above all, it was the effects of
the
French Revolution; furthermore Shelley was influenced by Keats’ death
too.
(<http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1879.html> from
Amazon.com).
But now, we are
going to talk about
an other of his poems, “Queen Mab”, which was written
in 1812 and it
was published in 1813 celebrating the atheism, free love, vegetarianism
and
republicanism. As “Queen
Mab”
is one of the Romantic poets’ works
that deals with the topic of the love and
worship of nature in Romanticism, therefore we can use it as an
example for
our paper. (<http://www.bartelby.com/65/ro/romantic.html> from
Amazon.com).
We can see that the
poem is an ode to
Nature because the poet, Shelley, talks about Nature as if it was God.
He
treats it as an <<universal
spirit>> that is in all places like God, and as an <<eternal universe>> that never can
die because Nature is the mother of all: <<thou
mother of the world!>>, it creates and destroys what it
wants;
therefore, the poem is a worship of Nature because the poet loves
Nature. Furthermore,
a lot of words that deal with Nature appear in “Queen Mab” as: earth
(the world when all human beings
live); tempest, lightnings and storm
dealing with the weather (which
sometimes we are afraid of it because it can destroy and kill us); and groves, clouds, rock, sunbeams... There
is a feeling of darkness and death <<on
the darkness of our prison>> that contrasts with the feeling
of
brightness and life <<the lamp of
earthly life>> that deals with Nature <<eternal
spring of life and death, of happyness and woe>>;
<<where pain and pleasure, good and evil join>>. Human
beings
cannot control Nature but we depend on it; without water there is no
life and
then we die and Nature seizes of our bodies and souls. Then we build graves to keep our bodies and temples or
altars to protect and keep our souls, as we do in
churches when
somebody dies, we pray for the salvation
of his/her soul. But in the poem Shelley says Nature does not need we
pray for
it <<no prayers or praises>>
as we do with God, but as the poem is a worship, then it is a
contradiction.
(From the poem).
The poem itself is
divided into
different parts. Firstly, the three first lines are an introduction
where
Shelley introduces to the reader “Queen
Mab”,
but Who is Queen Mab? It is the spirit of activity and decay: <<A
Spirit of activity and light>>, with <<no
cessation>>,
with <<no term>>, no condition, it has not to
follow any rules,
and it has not to die because it/she (Queen Mab) is a spirit.
Secondly, in the
following large
sentence the poet is describing to us which is the power that Nature
has, a
power that can <<strengthens in healthy, and poisons in
disease>>, <<The strom of
change>> changes are storms, and we are surrounded by natural
influence (of the moon, weather “storms”).
Thirdly, the next
sentence is a
worship of Nature: <<The universal spirit>>, <<soul
of the Universe! Eternal spring of life and death, of happiness and
woe>>
and a comparison between God and Nature, because we can feel the
Nature’s and
God’s spirits but we cannot see them: <<We feel, but cannot
see>>. Thee is incredibility of the Christian religion and
Shelley
says in the poem “There is no God”, but God sends the storm and
everything
happens because of God will. For human beings God became a man with
human
qualities and he governs the universe as a monarch governs his kingdom
and
people address to him as those of subjects to a king; we acknowledge
his
benevolence, deprecate his anger and supplicate his favour. But without
some
insight into its will respecting our actions religion is vain. Then,
here,
“There is no God” in the poem, and because of it maybe Shelley put
“Queen Mab”
as the title of his poem.
Fourthly,
and related to the previous one, the
poet is showing us that because of all the power that Nature has: <<thou
mother of the world>> he has to pray for Nature. Furthermore,
we can
see, by reading between lines, that to pray for Nature is better than
to pray
for God because Nature is pure and it is not guilty of anything because
it has
not rationality as human beings have: <<Because thou hast not
human
sense, because thou art not human mind>>. But Shelley tells
us we do
not need to pray for Nature: <<thou requir’st no prayers or
praises>> because Nature has <<no love, no hate
thou
cherishest; revenge and favouritism, and worst desire of fame thou
know’st
not>>, Nature treats us equally: <<with an
impartial
eye>>.
Finally, Shelley
shows us we can see
Nature as a God because it is <<unchangeable>> and
time
cannot destroy its <<universal spirit>>, it is a
Nature <<where
pain and pleasure, good and evil join, to do the will of strong
necessity, and
life, in multitudinous shapes>>. (From the poem itself).
In conclusion, this
poem is one of
the examples that the Romantic poets write with the topic of the
love and worship of nature in Romanticism, dealing
with a universal love to Nature because she is the mother of
all human beings and of all life that stays in the Earth, and a worship
of
Nature because of it too, comparing
Nature with God and treating her
(Nature, the spirit) as a queen.
VI
"Throughout these
infinite orbs
of mingling light,
Of which yon
earth
is one, is wide diffus'd
A Spirit
of activity and
life,
That knows no term, cessation, or decay;
That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,
150
Extinguish'd in the dampness of the grave,
Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe
In the dim newness of its being feels
The impulses of sublunary things,
And all is wonder to unpractis'd sense:
But, active, steadfast and eternal, still
Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest
roars,
Cheers in the day, breathes in the
balmy groves,
Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease;
And in the storm of change, that ceaselessly
160
Rolls round the eternal universe and shakes
Its undecaying battlement, presides,
Apportioning with irresistible law
The place each spring of its machine shall fill;
So that when waves on waves tumultuous heap
Confusion
to the clouds,
and fiercely driven
Heaven's lightnings scorch the uprooted
ocean-fords,
Whilst, to the eye of shipwreck'd mariner,
Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering
rock,
All seems unlink'd contingency and chance,
170
No
atom of this
turbulence fulfils
A vague and unnecessitated task,
Or acts but as it must and ought to act.
Even the minutest
molecule
of light,
That in an April sunbeam's fleeting glow
Fulfils its destin'd, though invisible work,
The universal Spirit guides; nor less,
When merciless ambition, or mad zeal,
Has led two hosts of dupes to battlefield,
That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves,
180
And call the sad work glory, does it rule
All passions: not a thought, a will, an act,
No working of the tyrant's moody mind,
Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boast
Their servitude to hide the shame they feel,
Nor the events enchaining every will,
That from the depths of unrecorded time
Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass
Unrecogniz'd or unforeseen by thee,
Soul of the Universe! eternal spring
190
Of life and death, of happiness and woe,
Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene
That floats before our eyes in wavering light,
Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison,
Whose chains and massy walls
We feel, but cannot see.
"Spirit
of Nature! all-sufficing Power,
Necessity! thou mother of the world!
Unlike the
God of human
error, thou
Requir'st no prayers or praises; the caprice
200
Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee
Than do the changeful passions of his breast
To thy unvarying harmony: the slave,
Whose horrible lusts spread misery o'er the world,
And the good man, who lifts with virtuous pride
His being in the sight of happiness
That springs from his own works; the
poison-tree,
Beneath whose shade all life is wither'd up,
And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affords
A temple where the vows of happy love
210
Are register'd, are equal in thy sight:
No love, no hate thou cherishest; revenge
And favouritism, and worst desire of fame
Thou know'st not: all that the wide world contains
Are but thy passive instruments, and thou
Regard'st them all with an impartial eye,
Whose joy or pain
thy
nature cannot feel,
Because thou hast not human sense,
Because thou art not human mind.
"Yes! when the sweeping
storm of
time
220
Has sung its death-dirge o'er the ruin'd fanes
And broken altars of the almighty Fiend
Whose name usurps thy honours, and the blood
Through centuries clotted there has floated down
The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live
Unchangeable! A shrine is rais'd to thee,
Which, nor the tempest-breath of time,
Nor the interminable flood
Over earth's slight pageant rolling,
Availeth to destroy--
230
The sensitive extension of the world.
That wondrous and eternal fane,
Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join,
To do the will of strong necessity,
And life, in multitudinous shapes,
Still pressing forward where no term can be,
Like hungry and unresting flame
Curls round the eternal columns of its strength."
(http://www.bartleby.com/139/shel111.html)
(By Inma)
BYRON
Among these romantic
poets, it‘s
important to highlight Lord Byron who was an elegant, exciting figure.
A man of
monstrous appetites and ambitions, his insouciance and supreme
self-confidence
are reflected in his agile turns of phrase and his audacious, almost
cheeky
rhymes.
But there is another
side to Byron,
pessimistic and solitary, and that is his tender, generous, and stoic
side.
This is the man who would write to his sister, in the evening of his
shortened
life:
“Though
the day of my destiny’s over,
And the star
of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft
heart refused to discover
The faults
that so many could find”
He obtained a
reputation as being
unconventional, eccentric, flamboyant and contentious. Byron had a
great
fondness for animals, it is known that he had lots of dogs, the most
famous
Boatswain; it has a inscription that has become one of his best-known
works,
Epitaph to a dog.
“Near this Spot
are deposited the
Remains of one
who possessed Beauty
without Vanity,
Strength without
Insolence,
Courage without
Ferosity,
and all the Virtues
of Man without
his Vices.
This praise, which
would be unmeaning
Flattery
if inscribed over
human Ashes,
is but a just
tribute to the Memory
of
BOATSWAIN, a DOG,
who was born in
Newfoundland May
1803,
and died at Newstead
Nov.r 18th,
1808”
He also kept a bear,
a fox, monkeys,
a parrot, cats an eagle, a crow, a falcon, peacocks, guinea hens, an
Egyptian
crane, a badger, geese, and a heron.
Byron as a romantic
reflects the
nature and love in his works. We can see this reflection in English
Bards and
Scotch Reviewers
“Oh! Nature's
noblest gift --- my grey goose-quill!
Slave of my
thoughts, obedient to my will,
Torn from thy
parent bird to form a pen,
That mighty
instrument of little men! ”
It is a very long
satire on the
reviewers of the Edinburgh Review and others in his era, or in the
past, that
had ever written poetry, prose, plays, etc.
In She
Walks in Beauty we can also observe
the romantic part of Byron.
“She walks in
beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all
that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed
to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies”
(By Bárbara)
KEATS
Keats is an author
that belongs to
the same poetic group as P. Shelley. He wrote his first book in 1817, a
group
of poems; the second one is an adaptation of a Greek myth and the Moon
God, to
express the search of the ideal love. In 1820 published his third book,
about
some mythical topics in Old Age, Medieval time and Renaissance. In this
book
appears the poem with the title “The Autumn”, a fantastic lyric work.
Also this
poem, there are some Odes about nature, a typical theme in Romantic
time.
“The subject of the
relationship of
Romanticism to nature is a vast one which can only be touched on here”.
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/romanticism.html
Created by Paul
Brians
March 11, 1998.
Section:
Romanticism
http://www.wsu.edu/
“'To Autumn' is
perhaps Keats's most famous and beloved
work. It is considered the perfect embodiment of poetic form,
intent, and
effect. It was written in Winchester on 19 September 1819 and
first
published in 1820 Keats described the feeling behind its composition in
a
letter to his friend Reynolds, 'Somehow a stubble plain looks”.
http://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/toautumn.html
Section: Life
and works of John Keats
http://englishhistory.net
Such poems as “Ode
to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a
Grecian Urn,” “To Autumn,” and “Ode on Melancholy” are unequalled for
dignity,
melody, and richness of sensuous imagery. All of his poetry is filled
with a
mysterious and elevating sense of beauty and joy.
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0827261.html
The Columbia
Electronic Encyclopedia,
6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia
University Press
Section:
Enciclopedia: John Kyats
http://www.infoplease.com/
A fragment of “Ode
to a Nightingale”:
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,
And haply the
Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by
all her starry Fays;
But here there is no
light,
Save what from
heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous
glooms and winding mossy ways.
(4th
stanza from http://www.john-keats.com/
28/10/2006)
A fragment of “To
Autumn”:
SEASON of
mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
(1st
stanza from http://www.john-keats.com/ 28/10/2006)
As we can observe,
“To Autumn” shows the enormous
importance that have the contact with the nature. Keats defines autumn
as the
opportunity to be happy, that is, that any contact with nature defines
the
happiness thought the nature itself and not by concrete situations or
the
feelings that this season would provoke.
In the second book
we can find this Ode that we have
above, but this are inside one of the better works that have his
author,
Hyperion; also this contain works as the lyric poem “To Autumn” and the
three
Odes, Ode to a Nightingale is one of these. In these three the author
is
compared the eternal and transcendental nature with the physical world.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- http://www.epdlp.com/escritor.php?id=1883
Section: John Keats
http://www.epdlp.com/
- http://www.john-keats.com/
Section:
Poems
http://www.john-keats.com/
- http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0827261.html
The Columbia
Electronic Encyclopedia,
6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia
University Press
Section:
Enciclopedia: John Kyats
http://www.infoplease.com/
- http://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/toautumn.html
Section: Life
and works of John Keats
http://englishhistory.net
- http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/romanticism.html
Created by Paul
Brians
March 11, 1998.
Section:
Romanticism
http://www.wsu.edu/
(By Maica)
CONCLUSION
Imagination,
emotion, and freedom are certainly the main
points of romanticism. The main characteristics of the poetry of
romanticism
includes subjectivity and an emphasis on individualism; spontaneity;
freedom;
solitude; the beliefs that imagination is superior to reason and
devotion to
beauty; love and worship of nature; and fascination with the past,
especially
the myths and mysticism of the middle ages.
We have focused our
attention on the love and worship of
nature because it is a topic which is inseparable from Romantic poetry
and one
of the most important ones.
As we have said at
the beginning of our work, the main
poets of this movement were William
Blake,
William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord
Byron,
and John Keats and we have given a general view of the nature on his
poetry. I
have to say
that the life of imagination was more real to them than the material
world.
Although these authors didn’t have the same views on nature, they had
in common
their fear towards the powers of nature and the earth, no matter if
these
powers create or destroy life.
In order to
sum up, I would like to mention that the romantic poetry means for the
people
at that time a definite shift in sensibility and feeling, particularly
in
relation to the natural order and Nature.
(By Sara)