Victorian Poets

Victorian Poetry

The Victorian Period literally describes the events in the age of Queen Victoria’s reign

of 1837-1901. The term Victorian has connotations of repression and social conformity,

 however in the realm of poetry these labels are somewhat misplaced. The Victorian

age provided a significant development of poetic ideals such as the increased use of the

 Sonnet as a poetic form, which was to influence later modern poets.  Poets in the

Victorian period were to some extent influenced by the Romantic Poets such as Keats,

William Blake, Shelley and W.Wordsworth. Wordsworth was Poet Laureate until 1850

so can be viewed as a bridge between the Romantic period and the Victorian period.

 Wordsworth was succeeded by Lord Tennyson, Queen Victoria's favourite poet.

Victorian Poetry was an important period in the history of poetry, providing the link

between the Romantic movement and the modernist movement of the 20th Century. It is

 not always possible to neatly categorise poets in these broad movements. For example

 Gerard Manley Hopkins is often cited as an example of a poet who maintained much of

the Romantics sensibility in his writings.

(cf< http://www.poetseers.org/the_great_poets/victorian_poets >)

      Matthew Arnold Poems                               

                     " Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me! "

From: Longing by Matthew Arnold

(cf< http://www.poetseers.org/the_romantics/matthew_arnold/library/ >)

Quotes from Poetry of Keats

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever 
 Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; ”  

~ 

 "In spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. "

(cf < http://www.poetseers.org/the_romantics/john_keats >)–    

Keats’s significance  is obvious in the work of  Arnold’s own poetry. Speaking

“qualitatively rather than quantitatively,” Ford insists that in Arnold’s finest poems the

stamp of Keats is mostly marked. The influence of Keats in Arnold’s case is entirely

beneficial. Yet until 1863 especially in his letters and in the preface to poems, a New

Edition (1853), Arnold disparaged  Keats’ work and influence or at least qualified his

admiration for Keats.

Although by 1863 Arnold’s attitude towards Keats is far more positive than previously,

  such as qualifications surface even in his two essays of that year which discuss Keats

in largely   terms. (cf.http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0813913640&id=bZM_VozctI0C&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&ots=iQcvhrpfGd&dq=the+influence+of+the+victorian+poetry+to+the+romanticism&sig=EIcm7_liWjC1v-v5dWUicnyWTkc#PPA17,M1)

As Ford acknowledges, that however  Arnold  quarrelled with  Keatsian  existing in

Victorian poetry, he himself wasn’t outside it.

In the essay  written to preface  his selections from Keats’s poetry  (1880) ,Arnold tells

about his  relationship  with Keats  .

(cf. Victorian poets and romantic poems : Intertextuality and Ideology)