Last Blog about the Romantic Period

So of course, I've waited until one day before the deadline to write this blog. This blog is supposed to be on a subject from the Romantic period which is defined on the timeline between 1780-1830. We've read poems and essays from writers like Edmund Burke (Reflections on the Revolution in France), William Wordsworth (“Tintern Abbey”), Samuel Coleridge (“Frost at Midnight”), Percy Shelley, and John Keats (“Ode to a Nightingale”). Typically, I should be writing this blog on a poem that we just recently read. Unfortunately—because my blog wasn't due until this Sunday and I’m a professional procrastinator—we've moved on from Romanticism. Any poem I decided to look at is old news.

Because Pocahontas loves the wind, no matter what direction it comes from.

So let’s look at Percy Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind.” There were at least three questions on the exam about it, one of them being the passage identification. This poem is obviously an ode with a complex rhyme scheme known as terza rima. A little research further informs me that terza rima (Italian for “third rhyme”) is most familiar with Dante’s The Divine Comedy. This style defines the form of grouping the lines in three-line stanzas with a rhyme scheme of ABA BCB CDC etc. Shelly makes ending the poem easier by adding in a couplet after every four 3-line stanzas. Shelley also borrows from the book of Dante’s tricks in dividing the poem in Cantos which is equivalent to Italian chapters in poetry.

Selecting a passage from a ‘longer’ poem, I decided to use the passage we students were presented on the exam, which is the fifth and last Canto.

“Ode to the West Wind” –Percy Shelley

[ I, II, III, IV… ]

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own?

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,

Like wither’d leaves, to quicken a new birth;

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

I was able to identify the passage simply because of the mentioning of wind. I knew who the author was with the assistance of another question about the poem. Hopefully, Professor Hague doesn’t read this and decide to make it harder to identify passages in the future. ;-) On the test, I discussed the poem’s purpose as being about the loss of youth and the impact an individual can leave on Earth and while the wind may strip the leaves from trees and bring on winter and death, spring is sure to come again and rejuvenate nature. I kind of took a stab in the dark on the test, going off what was in the passage and what I could remember. Professor Hague commented that it was “more about Shelley asking the west—or autumn—wind to lift him up and make him forget earthly concerns.

I’ve reread the poem. Shelley addresses the West Wind as the force that brings Autumn to town, eventually followed by Winter. This poem is about the seasons; the death and resurrection of nature. The speaker wishes he were part of the cycle.

In Canto V, Shelley asks that the West Wind could turn him into an instrument that should be affected and played by the breeze. In asking that he be turned into an instrument, he compares the lyre to tree branches losing their leaves, indifferent to the loss and setting a tone of melancholy. Shelley wishes for the Wind to inhabit his spirit and spread his ideas. By the end,  the speaker is asking “O Wind,/If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” While simply questioning the sequence of events by which the seasons play out, the speaker contemplates whether after the death and decay, will something new be born in its wake. He hopes so.

Click to view full size

Animation credit: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/pocahontas?before=1344104121 
Photo Credit: http://rankerx.deviantart.com/art/From-Winter-to-Spring-318501517

Percy Shelley's "To Wordsworth"

So, up until two days before this blog was due, I had planned to write it on Percy Shelley’s sonnet “England in 1819.” It was practically finished. But then we were handed our Romanticism essay prompts. One of them, the easiest one I was likely to choose, was explicating one of three sonnets. Sure enough, one was Coleridge’s “To the River Otter,” Keats’ “On the Sonnet,” and Shelley’s “England in 1819.” If I chose to write this blog about Shelley’s sonnet, I would have to write my essay on Keats’. But “England in 1819” was so interesting.

The first time I read it, I wasn't really paying attention. It was late and I had other homework. I also knew that we'd talk about it in class the next day so I wasn't completely dedicated to analyzing every word. But then Professor Hague read the poem aloud and I realized the message, the anger. Wow! What a vocabulary. So I did some research, and was well on my way to being done. But at the last minute, I decided to change my mind and wait to write it for the essay. So what to write about this time…maybe Keats’ sonnet? Maybe next time; I read it. I liked it. So now I’ve wasted 200 words telling you what I was going to do…

In keeping with the Shelley vibe, I explicated the sonnet, “To Wordsworth”

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know

William Wordsworth

That things depart which never may return:

Childhood and youth, friendship, and love’s first glow,

Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.

These common woes I feel. One loss is mine

Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore.

Thou wert as a lone star whose light did shine

On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:

Thou hast like a rock-built refuge stood

Above the blind and battle multitude:

In honoured poverty thy voice did weave

Songs consecrate to truth and liberty.

Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,

Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

At first, I thought this was a poem to celebrate Wordsworth after he had died. But he wasn’t dead. His career was, sort of; he’d stopped writing poetry and taken a government job. He’d lost his touch, and might as well “cease to be.” Of course, it’s a sonnet with a regular rhyme scheme up until he says multitude. It doesn’t really rhyme with “stood” unless you’re forced to change your pronunciation of it like one sometimes does when trying to rhyme ‘again’ with ‘train’ or ‘gain’ or ‘rain.’

Percy Shelley

As a “Poet of Nature,” Wordsworth’s technique is used against him by Shelley. The poem is dedicated to praising what Wordsworth once was, only to strike it down—subtlety using words like “lone star,” “frail bark,” and “blind and battling” Shelley suggests weakness—and say “You’ve changed, Hollywood” (ßa reference no one is likely to get but still how I see it). He used to write about “childhood and youth, friendship, and love’s first glow,” and yeah, people liked it. But those are “common woes” and nothing special. In short, Shelley’s poem is a backhanded compliment to Wordsworth. When he was a struggling poet, living in poverty, Wordsworth had his dignity and his voice and work thrived on his telling of “truth and liberty” but he’s deserted these values. People like Shelley would grieve this loss but in writing this poem, Shelley shows the public that he’s there to fill the shoes left behind.

Photo Credits

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley

http://myopicpoets.blogspot.com/2011/04/william-wordsworth.html

To the River Otter - A Sonnet by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The last time I ever wrote a blog it was to answer discussion questions for a history class in my junior year of high school, and right now as I start to write this blog, I’m ambivalent about what is expected of me and which was easier: a history blog or one for English. Of course, because our grades in this class depend on it, I will give it my best shot. :-) Are smiley faces allowed??

I’ve decided to write the extra credit blog first. After reading several or Samuel Coleridge’s poems for class, which I will most likely write about later, I decided to look for another poem by Coleridge. Also, because it was the weekend, I looked for a short poem.

Another kind of otter...

Sonnet: To the River Otter

Dear native brook! Wild streamlet of the West!

How many various-fated years have passed,

What happy and what mournful hours, since last

I skimmed the smooth thin stone along thy breast,

Numbering its light leaps! Yet so deep impressed

Sink the sweet scenes of childhood, that mine eyes

I never shut amid the sunny ray,

But straight with all their tints thy waters rise,

Thy crossing plank, thy marge with willows grey,

And bedded sand that, veined with various dyes,

Gleamed through thy bright transparence! On my way,

Visions of childhood! Oft have ye beguiled

Lone manhood’s cares, yet waking fondest sighs:

Ah! That once more I were a careless child!

At first when you read the title, you assume it is a sonnet to river otters...wrong! Only after research did I realize it was actually a sonnet about a river named Otter in Blackdown Hills, Somerset, England. Written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1793, this poem is part of a pattern. Around the same time, other poets such as William Lisle Bowles and Thomas Warton wrote similar sonnets such as "To the River Wensbeck," "To the River Itchen" and Warton's "To the River London." As stated before, this is a 14-line sonnet with what, I think, (I may be wrong) is the rhyme scheme: ABBAACDCDCDECE. The theme of this poem is the yearning of lost innocence. That's one way I can think of phrasing it. However, that is not to say that something terrible has happened to the speaker's innocence, rather he has simply grown up. So really, the theme is probably the yearning for the innocence of childhood.

The River Otter - Blackdown Hills, Somerset, England

The sonnet's purpose overall is to observe the view of the river Otter--a brook presumably from Coleridge's childhood--from the perspective of a child. Like "Tintern Abbey," the speaker thinks of the river as a memory revisited after "many various-fasted years have passed." The speaker specifically misses skipping rocks across the water and though he'd never shut his eyes against the sun, he could perfectly imagine the scenes--the colors--that are abundant around the river: "all their tints thy waters rise," "bedded sand that, veined with various dyes." What's interesting is that the only actual color he says is "grey," which is the color one associates with old age and depression, which gives one the idea that to long for youth and innocence means to acknowledge you don't have it. The last four lines are where the speaker returns to the present perspective of an adult. Again, we have that theme of the memory of a beautiful nature scene being a distraction from a "Lone manhood's cares." At the end, the speaker confirms the theme in wishing he "were a careless child!"

I guess that's it. Hope I did alright.

Photo Credits-
http://themetapicture.com/youre-making-me-blush/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:River_Otter_Devon.jpg