THE ROMANTIC ERA.

1. Historical Context
• Time period: Roughly late 18th century to mid-19th century (c. 1780–1830s)
• Developed partly in reaction to:
• The Industrial Revolution (which many Romantics saw as dehumanizing)
• The Age of Enlightenment (which emphasized reason, logic, and science)
• Political revolutions: American (1776) and French (1789) — inspiring ideals of
liberty and individualism

Romanticism emphasized the emotions, imagination, and individuality as central to human

experience, often turning away from the rationalism of the Enlightenment.

2. Core Characteristics of Romantic Poetry

Romantic poetry is not defined by strict forms or rules, but by its spirit and focus. Key
features include:

– Emotion over Reason

• Emphasis on intense feelings—joy, sorrow, awe, terror, and longing
• The “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” as Wordsworth famously put it

– Nature as Sacred
• Nature is seen as alive, spiritual, and a source of truth, not just a backdrop
• Nature often reflects the inner emotional state of the poet (pathetic fallacy)

– Imagination and Creativity

• Valued imagination over rationality as a source of knowledge
• Poetry became a vehicle for personal vision and spiritual insight

– Focus on the Individual

• Especially the outsider, the dreamer, or the rebellious spirit
• Emphasis on subjective experience, particularly the inner life of the poet

– Interest in the Supernatural and the Sublime

• Fascination with the mysterious, the gothic, and the otherworldly
• The sublime—awe mixed with fear—was a central aesthetic

– Idealization of the Past

• Medievalism, myths, and folklore were often revived
 • Often nostalgic for a simpler, purer world before industrialization

– 3. Major English Romantic Poets

– First Generation (late 18th century – early 19th century)

These poets emerged around the time of the French Revolution:

• William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
• Key work: Lyrical Ballads (1798, co-written with Coleridge)
• Celebrated common people, nature, and simple language
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
• Key works: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan
• Known for exploring the supernatural and imagination
• William Blake (1757–1827)
• Key works: Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Tyger, The Lamb
• Mystical, symbolic, deeply religious and revolutionary

– Second Generation (early 19th century – 1820s)

More radical and tragic figures, often died young:

• Lord Byron (1788–1824)
• Key works: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Don Juan
• Embodied the “Byronic hero”—a dark, brooding, rebellious outsider
• Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
• Key works: Ozymandias, To a Skylark, Prometheus Unbound
• Radical political and social thinker; celebrated idealism and revolution
• John Keats (1795–1821)
• Key works: Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, To Autumn
• Focused on beauty, transience, and emotional depth

. key themes and ideas:

Theme Description
Nature Nature as spiritual and
restorative; reflects inner life of
the poet
Emotion & Intuition Valued over logic; raw feelings
 are central
The Sublime Awe and terror in the face of
nature’s vastness or power
Individualism Celebration of the unique self;
the poet as a visionary
Imagination Viewed as divine,
transformative, and limitless
Childhood & Innocence Often idealized as pure and
closer to nature/truth
Alienation Feelings of isolation or exile in a
changing, industrial world
Critique of Industrialization Romantic poets often mourned
the loss of rural life and natural
beauty
Supernatural & Gothic Fascination with dreams, spirits,
and the uncanny

5. Legacy of the Romantic Movement

• Romanticism redefined poetry as deeply personal and emotionally resonant.
• Inspired later movements like Victorian poetry, Transcendentalism in America (e.g.,
Emerson and Thoreau), and even Modernism (as a reaction).
• Still influences art, literature, music, and popular culture today—especially in its
celebration of individual freedom, emotion, and mystery.

Romantic Poets and their poems.

. “Resolution and Independence” by William Wordsworth:

Resolution and Independence

By William Wordsworth
There was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising calm and bright;
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods;
The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters;
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.

All things that love the sun are out of doors;

The sky rejoices in the morning’s birth;
The grass is bright with rain-drops;—on the moors
The Hare is running races in her mirth;
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist; that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.

I was a Traveller then upon the moor;

I saw the Hare that raced about with joy;
I heard the woods, and distant waters, roar;
Or heard them not, as happy as a boy:
The pleasant season did my heart employ:
My old remembrances went from me wholly;
And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.

But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might

Of joy in minds that can no further go,
As high as we have mounted in delight
In our dejection do we sink as low;
To me that morning did it happen so;
And fears and fancies thick upon me came;
Dim sadness—and blind thoughts, I knew not, nor could name.

I heard the sky-lark warbling in the sky;

And I bethought me of the playful Hare:
Even such a happy Child of earth am I;
Even as these blissful creatures do I fare;
Far from the world I walk, and from all care;
But there may come another day to me—
Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty.
My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought,
As if life’s business were a summer mood;
As if all needful things would come unsought
To genial faith, still rich in genial good;
But how can He expect that others should
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call
Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,

The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride;—
Of Him who walked in glory and in joy
Following his plough, along the mountain-side:
By our own spirits are we deified:
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.

Now, whether it were by peculiar grace,

A leading from above, a something given,
Yet it befel, that, in this lonely place,
When I with these untoward thoughts had striven,
Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven
I saw a man before me unawares:
The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.

As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie

Couched on the bald top of an eminence;
Wonder to all who do the same espy,
By what means it could thither come, and whence;
So that it seems a thing endued with sense:
Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf
Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself;

Such seemed this Man, not all alive nor dead,

Nor all asleep—in his extreme old age:
His body was bent double, feet and head
Coming together in life’s pilgrimage;
As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage
Of sickness felt by him in times long past,
A more than human weight upon his frame had cast.

Himself he propped, limbs, body, and pale face,

Upon a long grey staff of shaven wood:
And, still as I drew near with gentle pace,
Upon the margin of that moorish flood
Motionless as a cloud the old Man stood,
That heareth not the loud winds when they call;
And moveth all together, if it move at all.

At length him thus I spoke, “What kind of man

Are you, who from the sunny plot of grass
These morning, with so many thousand grands
Look’st on, and yet canst neither sing nor pass?
It seems, by thee the very birds are dumb:
They fear thy mien and aspect of despair,
And all the air is sick with thy morose care.”

The old Man still stood talking to himself,

But all I could distinguish was a sigh
And that he said, “Some mighty woe like stealth
Has taken me in this wilderness: and why?
I cannot tell:—the truth is hard to try—
Hard is the fortune of all Wretched Men—
Hard is their fate, when they are full of years.”

I struck my hand against my forehead then,

And laughed aloud, and leapt, and sang a tune—
Proud of my strength, I gave a vigorous bound,
As if a star had fallen:—till soon
Struggles of joy gave way to joy subdued,
And in my breast I felt again
The sombre weight of mortal pain.

I turned to speak to the old Man, but he was gone.

Whether he had fainted on the ground,
Or sank into the swamp I could not know.
But never since, in field or grove,
Have I seen a face so full of woe.
And though the day is bright above,
I wander on, and muse on human love.

Brief analyses:
The poem begins with the speaker enjoying a beautiful morning in nature after a night of
stormy weather. He’s filled with joy and peace, but his mood suddenly shifts to melancholy
as he begins reflecting on the fragility of human life, the suffering of poets, and his own
vulnerability to despair and hardship.

As he wrestles with these thoughts, he encounters an old man—an agent , solitary leech-
gatherer—who lives a hard but resolute life, enduring poverty and physical hardship without
complaint. The old man’s quiet strength and perseverance inspire the speaker, teaching him
a lesson in endurance and mental fortitude. By the end, the speaker finds new strength in the
old man’s example.

Key themes:
• The contrast between joy and despair
• The emotional struggles of poets and creative minds
• Endurance, humility, and the dignity of labor
• Nature as a source of inspiration and reflection

. The Tyger
by William Blake:

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,

In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,

In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Brief summary:

The poem is a meditation on the nature of creation, inspired by the image of a powerful and
fearsome tiger. The speaker marvels at the tiger’s beauty and terrifying strength, asking
what kind of divine being could have created such a creature. He uses vivid imagery—fire,
forging, and celestial references—to describe the tiger as both magnificent and dangerous.

Throughout the poem, Blake questions whether the same creator who made the gentle lamb
(a symbol of innocence, referencing another of his poems, The Lamb) could also have made
the tiger, a symbol of awe, power, and possibly destruction. The poem ends without
answering this question, leaving the reader to contemplate the dual nature of creation—its
beauty and its terror.

Key themes:
• The duality of creation (innocence vs. experience)
• The mystery and power of divine creation
• Awe and fear in the face of nature’s complexity.

. Ode to a Nightingale
by John Keats:

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been

Cool’d a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

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,
Clustered 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.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tramp thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

Brief summary:
The speaker begins the poem in a state of emotional pain and lethargy but is captivated by
the beautiful, carefree song of a nightingale. He wishes he could escape the harshness of
human life—sickness, aging, sorrow—by joining the bird in its seemingly eternal, blissful
world.

He imagines doing this through wine, then through poetry (“the viewless wings of Poesy”),
and longs to fade away into the night with the bird, avoiding all earthly suffering. At one
point, he even romanticizes death, thinking it would be sweet to die while listening to the
nightingale’s enchanting song.

However, he realizes that unlike humans, the nightingale’s song is eternal—it has been heard
for generations, by both commoners and royalty, even by mythical or biblical figures. This
contrast reminds him of his own mortality and brings him back to reality.

In the final stanza, the nightingale flies away, its song fading. The speaker is left uncertain
whether the experience was real or a dream, ending the poem with the haunting question:
“Was it a vision, or a waking dream? / Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?”

Key themes:
• The contrast between the permanence of art/nature and human mortality
• Escapism through imagination, poetry, and nature
• The beauty and transience of life
• The tension between idealism and reality

THE VICTORIAN ERA.

1. Historical Context
• Time Period: 1837–1901 (reign of Queen Victoria)
• Follows the Romantic period and precedes the Modernist period
• A time of rapid industrialization, scientific progress, empire expansion, and social
reform in Britain
• Marked by moral earnestness, tension between faith and doubt, and a focus on
order and propriety

Victorian poets grappled with the complex changes of the age: a booming British Empire,
technological progress (like railways), and the destabilizing effects of science (e.g., Darwin’s
Origin of Species).

– 2. Key Characteristics of Victorian Poetry

Feature Description
Moral seriousness Poets often addressed deep
ethical and philosophical
questions
Social critique Concerned with poverty,
injustice, class, gender roles
Faith vs. doubt Religion questioned in light of
science and modernity
Realism and detail Focused on everyday life,
character psychology, and social
settings
Experimentation with form Dramatic monologue flourished;
narrative and classical forms
revived
Continuation of Romanticism Some poets retained Romantic
ideals—nature, imagination—but
with more irony and complexity
Interest in the medieval past Aesthetic fascination with
chivalry, legend, and mythology

3. Major Victorian Poets and Their Contributions

– Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)

• Poet Laureate of the era
• Famous for rich imagery, musical language, and themes of loss, memory, and faith
• Key Works:
• In Memoriam A.H.H. (elegy for a lost friend, exploring grief and doubt)
• The Charge of the Light Brigade (heroism and duty)
 • Ulysses (the restless human spirit)
• The Lady of Shalott (Arthurian legend, isolation, art)

– Robert Browning (1812–1889)

• Master of the dramatic monologue (a character speaks to an implied listener)
• Explored the psychology of complex personalities
• Key Works:
• My Last Duchess (power and control)
• Porphyria’s Lover (love, madness, murder)
• Fra Lippo Lippi (art and religion)

– Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

• One of the most famous female poets of the century
• Blended social concern with lyric beauty and personal emotion
• Key Works:
• Sonnets from the Portuguese (including “How do I love thee?”)
• Aurora Leigh (novel in verse; feminist themes)

– Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)

• Poet and cultural critic
• Known for melancholic tone and focus on loss of faith, isolation, and moral purpose
• Key Works:
• Dover Beach (faith and uncertainty)
• The Scholar-Gipsy (yearning for idealism)
• Thyrsis (elegy for a friend)

– Christina Rossetti (1830–1894)

• Deeply spiritual and emotionally intense
• Associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement
• Key Works:
• Goblin Market (temptation, sisterhood, and redemption)
• Remember, In the Bleak Midwinter

⸻
 – Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) (published posthumously)
• Innovator of “sprung rhythm” and intense imagery
• Blended deep religious faith with highly original poetic language
• Key Works:
• God’s Grandeur
• The Windhover
• Pied Beauty

– 4. Common Forms and Styles

• Dramatic Monologue: A character speaks directly to the reader or another
character, revealing inner thoughts (e.g., My Last Duchess)
• Narrative Poetry: Poems told in story form with strong characters and plot (e.g.,
The Lady of Shalott)
• Lyric Poetry: Deeply personal, emotional poetry (e.g., In Memoriam)
• Sonnet sequences: Especially for love or spiritual themes (e.g., Sonnets from the
Portuguese)

– 5. Key Themes in Victorian Poetry

Theme Explanation
Faith vs. Doubt Religious belief challenged by
science (esp. Darwinian
evolution) and industrial
progress
Love and Loss Romantic, spiritual, or tragic
love; many elegiac poems
Social justice Concern for the poor, women’s
rights, and social inequality
Imperialism and nationalism Sometimes glorified, sometimes
critiqued
The role of art and the artist Debated between art for art’s
 sake vs. moral instruction
Isolation and alienation A response to modernity and the
loss of certainties
Nature Still admired, but often
contrasted with the industrial
world

Victorian Peots and their poems.

. My Last Duchess
by Robert Browning:

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat.” Such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse—
E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

Brief summary:

The poem is a dramatic monologue in which a Duke speaks to a representative (envoy) of a

nobleman whose daughter he hopes to marry. As they walk through the Duke’s palace, he
draws back a curtain to reveal a portrait of his last Duchess, painted by Fra Pandolf.

The Duke describes the Duchess as beautiful, kind, and easily pleased—but he criticizes her
for being too friendly and for treating everyone with the same warmth, whether they gave her
a simple compliment or a prestigious gift. He resents that she didn’t appreciate his “nine-
hundred-years-old name” more than anything else.

He reveals chillingly that “I gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together,” implying
that he had her killed (or sent away to die) because of her behavior. He now controls who
sees her portrait, unlike when she was alive and beyond his total control.

At the end, the Duke shifts the conversation back to arranging his new marriage,
emphasizing dowry negotiations, but also clearly interested in possessing his next wife. He
shows off another artwork—a statue of Neptune taming a sea-horse—as a final symbol of
control.

Key themes:
• Power and control in relationships
• Jealousy and pride
• Art as a symbol of possession
• Objectification of women
• Dramatic irony (the Duke reveals more about himself than he intends)

. Dover Beach
by Matthew Arnold:

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Brief summary:

The speaker begins by describing a peaceful night scene on the coast of Dover, looking
across the English Channel to France. The sea is calm and the moon is shining, but the sound
of the waves dragging pebbles back and forth evokes a deep, eternal sadness.

He reflects on how even the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles once heard a similar sound
and thought of human suffering. This connects to the speaker’s own feelings as he listens to
the sea’s “melancholy” sound.

The speaker then introduces the idea of the “Sea of Faith”—a metaphor for the comforting
belief in religion and certainty that once surrounded the world. But now, that sea is in retreat,
leaving the world feeling bare and exposed.

In the final stanza, the speaker turns to his beloved, urging that in a world full of illusion,
confusion, and conflict, the only real thing they can cling to is love and mutual truthfulness.
The poem ends on a somber note, comparing life to a dark, chaotic battlefield where people
fight blindly and without understanding.

Key themes:
• The loss of religious faith and certainty
• The conflict between appearance and reality
• The enduring need for love and human connection in a confusing world
• The melancholy tone of modern existence.