ROMANTIC POETS(SHORT NOTES)
‘Lyrical Ballads’(1798), the joint venture of William Wordsworth and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge initiated the Romantic Movement in England. This
movement maintained its tenor for about fifty years. A new creative spirit showed
itself in the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Shelley and others.
Their genius has caused the age to be known as the second creative period of our
literature.
Attention to the substantial spheres of natural beauty and personal feeling,
individualism, informality, inspiration, idealism, sincerity of thought and
spontaneity of expression were the dominant characteristics of the poetry of this
age. Wordsworth’s definition that good poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings” holds good for all the poetry of the age.
William Wordsworth
In the history of English poetry William Wordsworth occupies the position
of a conscious rebel. He is the leader of the Romantic Movement in English poetry.
He devoted himself entirely to the worship of nature and looked upon nature as
endowed with a divine spirit. A profound religious feeling pervades his poetry.
Of all the poets who have written of nature there is none that compares with him in
the truthfulness of his representation. Nature for him has an educative and
ennobling influence on man. He sought his subject in nature, rustic people and in
the humbler aspects of life. No other poet found such abundant beauty in the
common world. There is hardly a sight or a sound that is not reflected in some
beautiful way in his poetry. For these new subjects, he employed new style. He
wrote in the language of the common men. His remarkable poems are ‘The
Solitary Reaper’, ‘Ruth’, ‘Michael’, ‘Lucy Poems’, ‘Ode on Intimations of
Immortality’, ‘ Lines Written on Tintern Abbey’ , ‘The excursion’ etc.
In his poems one may find variety. His poems are characterized by extraordinary
clarity and craftsmanship. His poetry of nature and man gave a new direction to
poetry and started what may be called democratic trend in poetry.
S.T. Coleridge
Wordsworth and Coleridge approached poetry from different points of
view. Wordsworth would take humble topics and give them extraordinary beauty
and Coleridge would deal with the supernatural and make it seem real. ‘The
Ancient Mariner’, ‘Christabel’ and ‘Kubla Khan’ are supernatural poems. They are
remarkable for their intense imaginative power, witchery of language and melody
of versification. In his supernatural poems, Coleridge creates the supernatural
atmosphere by hints and suggestions. His perfection of style and rhythm and
refinement of sound and cadence have influenced the poets like Keats, Tennyson
and pre-Raphaelite poets. His poetry fulfils the definition of romanticism as the
‘renascence of wonder’.
Coleridge was a poet, critic and philosopher. In him we have a rare combination of
the dreamer and the profound scholar. He was a man of gigantic genius but his
slavery to opium paralysed his energies. Al his works are fragmentary, yet they
display originality. What is best in Coleridge’s poetry is very small in amount, but
that little is of rare excellence. His shorter and simpler poems have humanitarian
morality. Coleridge saved supernaturalism from the coarse sensationalism by
linking it with psychological truth.
P.B. Shelley
As a lyric poet, Shelley is one of the supreme geniuses of our literature.
Shelley is a revolutionary idealist and a poetic prophet of faith and hope. The
ideals of the French revolution fired his imagination. He rebelled against all
established institutions and dreamed of a new order based on liberty, love and
equality. His ‘Revolt of Islam’ is a transfigured picture of the French revolution. In
‘Prometheus Unbound’ he sings of freedom.
Shelley loved nature and human beings. Some of his best lyrics ‘Ode to the West
Wind’, ‘To a Skylark’ and ‘The Cloud’ testify to his emotional identification with
nature and his faith in mankind.
Shelley’s genius is essentially lyrical. His poetry is marked by spontaneous
utterance of passion, music and imagery. Lyrical intensity, audacious idealism, gift
of melody and rapid succession of images characterize his poetry.
John Keats
Keats was the last and the youngest of the later Romantic poets. The famous
opening line of one of his poems -‘A thing of beauty is a joy for ever’- strikes the
key-note of his works. His poetry is abundantly sensuous. In his treatment of
nature this same passion for sensuous beauty is still the dominant feature. He
enjoyed the beauty of the earth with all the senses wide awake. But he is also a
reflective poet.
The modern world seemed to him to be harsh, cold and full of suffering and he
habitually sought an imaginative escape from it. His deep fascination for medieval
world, supernaturalism and Greek mythology can be seen in poems like
‘Endymion’, ‘Lamia’, Isabella’. These poems show the growing power of Keats as
a poet. But his greatest works are his odes- ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, ‘Ode on a
Grecian Urn’, ‘Ode to Autumn’, ‘Ode to Psyche’. These are the most exquisite
expression of his poetic genius. His poetry also indicates a contrast between the
real world of suffering and the imaginative world of ideal beauty.
The influences of Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton can be felt in his poetry. He is
great as a word painter. His expressions are concrete, sensuous and vivid. His
influence upon the poets of the succeeding generations was very strong.
