The Romantic Poets

1. The Romantic Poets

2. Romantic Poets • The romantic poets were trying to create a new kind of poetry that emphasised intuition over reason. • They also preferred to write about nature and the countryside to writing about the city.

3. Private Lives • People tend to be as interested in the private lives of the romantic poets as they are in their poetry. • This is probably because they were writing about personal matters in their poems.

4. SIX main Romantic Poets: • William Blake (1757-1827) • William Wordsworth (1770-1850) • Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) • Lord Byron (1788-1724) • Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) • John Keats (1795-1821)

5. Four Poems • Today we are going to look at four poems by fourpoets. • When studying poems, it is important to consider both the subject matter of the poem and HOW it is written – • Does it rhyme? • Are the lines short or long? • Is it written in simple or complicated language?

6. William Wordsworth • 1770-1850 • Wordsworth was one of the first and most well-known of the ROMANTIC POETS.

7. Lake District • Wordsworth lived in the Lake District which is a particularly beautiful part of England.

8. Daffodils • Daffodils is a typical romantic poem. • It describes how the natural world can have a calming, positive effect on the mood of people who take the time to appreciate it.

9. Stanzas • Daffodils has four STANZAS of six lines. • A stanza is like a paragraph of a poem. • Each stanza follows the A/B/A/B/C/C rhyming pattern.

10. Daffodils I WANDERED lonely as a cloud A That floats on high o'er vales and hills, B When all at once I saw a crowd, A A host, of golden daffodils; B Beside the lake, beneath the trees, C Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. C

11. John Keats • 1795-1821 • Keats was only 26 when he died but he still wrote many of the most famous poems in English.

12. Criticism • During his lifetime, he was never appreciated by literary critics. • Shelley claimed that a particularly uncomplimentary attack on one of his poems had in fact killed him. (He actually died of tuberculosis.)

13. To Autumn • To Autumn has three stanzas. • Like Daffodils, it is a celebration of the natural world. • But its rhymes are unusual….

14. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, A Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; BConspiring with him how to load and bless AWith fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; BTo bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees, C And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; DTo swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells EWith a sweet kernel; to set budding more, DAnd still more, later flowers for the bees, CUntil they think warm days will never cease, CFor Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells. E

15. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? ASometimes whoever seeks abroad may find BThee sitting careless on a granary floor, AThy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; B Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep, C Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook DSpares the next swath and all its twinéd flowers: E And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep CSteady thy laden head across a brook; DOr by a cider-press, with patient look, D Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. E

16. Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? A Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— BWhile barréd clouds bloom the soft-dying day, AAnd touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; BThen in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn CAmong the river sallows, borne aloft DOr sinking as the light wind lives or dies; EAnd full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; CHedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft D The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; DAnd gathering swallows twitter in the skies. E

17. Reading a Poem • When reading a poem, you should always follow the PUNCTUATION, not the break in the lines. • Sometimes this means it is more difficult to hear the rhymes, but the poet will have done this deliberately.

18. Lord Byron • 1788 - 1824 • Byron was famous for being extremely handsome as well as being a poet. • He was also famous for having lots of affairs.

19. We’ll go no more a-roving • We’ll go no more a-roving is quite a sad poem. • “a-roving” means chasing women. • But it is more generally understood as a poem about how old age will conquer youth. • (Byron wrote this poem when he was 29!!!)

20. We’ll go no more a-roving The rhyming structure of this poem is very straightforward: SO, we'll go no more a-roving, A So late into the night, B Though the heart be still as loving, A And the moon be still as bright. B

21. Set to Music • The simple structure of this poem, makes it ideal to set to music. • The sad, nostalgic subject matter makes it particularly powerful as a song.

22. Percy Bysshe Shelley • 1792-1822 • Like Byron, Shelley had an interesting personal life. • Byron and Shelley were good friends.

23. Marriage • Percy Shelley married for the first time when he was 19. • He often left his young wife alone for long periods of time, eventually he left her (while she was pregnant) for Mary Godwin. • They married after his first wife, Harriet, committed suicide. • Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818.

24. Sonnets • Ozymandias is a SONNET • Sonnets are poems of one 14 line stanza. • In a sonnet, each line usually has 10 SYLABLES.

25. Ozymandias 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 IMETa Travelerfromanantiqueland, Who said, "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,

26. Ozymandias • Ozymandias is a poem about trying to preserve a legacy after death. • In the poem the once powerful leader, Ozymandias, is reduced to a broken statue lying in the sand.

27. We’ll go no more a-roving and Ozymandias are not poems about nature, like Daffodils and To Autumn. • Instead they deal with issues of death and the passage of time. • They are both very SYMBOLIC, using night or a statue to represent certain ideas.

28. Politics • Both Shelley and Byron were politically radical. • Byron died of a fever in Greece when he went to fight against the Ottoman empire in the Greek Wars of Independence. • Shelley believed in reform and better conditions for the “lower classes.” He died when his boat sank. Some people believed he was murdered due to his extreme views.