Romantic Poetry & Literature

William Blake  -  Nebuchadnezzar  (1795 - 1805)

 
The "Sublime" in Romanticism


Belief in the importance of the imagination is a distinctive feature of romantic poets such as John Keats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and P. B. Shelley, unlike the neoclassical poets.

“I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination - What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.”  John Keats

For William Wordsworth and William Blake, as well as Victor Hugo and Alessandro Manzoni, the imagination is a spiritual force and is related to morality, and they believed that literature, especially poetry, could improve the world.


William Blake  (1757 - 1827)  "Auguries of Innocence"  1803  (full  poem) 

To see a World in a Grain of Sand 

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour

A Robin Red breast in a Cage 

Puts all Heaven in a Rage 

A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons 

Shudders Hell thr' all its regions 

A dog starvd at his Masters Gate 

Predicts the ruin of the State 

A Horse misusd upon the Road 

Calls to Heaven for Human blood 

Novalis  (1772 - 1801)  German  Hymns to the Night  (full poem)

Aside I turn to the holy, unspeakable, mysterious Night.  Afar lies the world -- sunk in a deep grave -- waste and lonely is its place.  In the chords of the bosom blows a deep sadness.  I am ready to sink away in drops of dew, and mingle with the ashes. -- The distances of memory, the wishes of youth, the dreams of childhood, the brief joys and vain hopes of a whole long life, arise in gray garments, like an evening vapor after the sunset.  In other regions the light has pitched its joyous tents.  What if it should never return to its children, who wait for it with the faith of innocence?


Lord Byron  (1788 - 1824)  "She Walks in Beauty"  1813  

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. 

One shade the more, one ray the less, 

Had half impaired the nameless grace 

Which waves in every raven tress, 

Or softly lightens o’er her face; 

Where thoughts serenely sweet express, 

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. 

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow, 

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, 

The smiles that win, the tints that glow, 

But tell of days in goodness spent, 

A mind at peace with all below, 

A heart whose love is innocent!

John Keats  (1795 - 1821)  "Ode to a Nightingale"  1819  (full poem)

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.

Mary Shelly  (1797 - 1851)  -  Quotes from Frankenstein  (1817)

“Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature.   The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth.  Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments; yet, when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.”

“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all.  I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe.  If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”


William Shakespeare  (1564 - 1616)  "Richard III"  (opening monologue)  (1593)  (full text)  (play)


I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling Nature,
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them--
Why I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to see my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determinèd to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.