7th Poetry Lesson, Continuing with Romanticism

So to continue where we left off with Wordsworth and Coleridge and their poetry revolution. We come to the late Romantics in Britain. These cats spend their entire childhood reading Lyrical Ballads and honestly becoming fanboys. Seriously. They wrote fanmail to Wordsworth. It was nuts. 

Also worth note, books back then cost about $100 in todays money. This meant you bought one book and read it over and over for months. You did not burn through books often. You meditated on the books you did have. 

So the impact these guys had on poetry was a revolution of new thinking. These guys wanted to explore what was considered the mundane at the time (nature and imagination) and write in far simpler texts. They began to mock the classics. Here is an example in "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Ozymandias

  by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krbX-9ugbI4

Also, let us introduce Lord Byron. Lord Byron becomes a player. One of the original celebrities (someone famous for being famous). He traveled the country having lots of sex, writing about it, and becoming famous. He began to breech what poetry talked about. He talked about sex. He talked about the seemingly small and the altogether revolutionary. This can be seen by his very seriously noble, "Epitaph to a Dog" 

Poem

Near this Spot

are deposited the Remains of one

who possessed Beauty without Vanity,

Strength without Insolence,

Courage without Ferocity,

and all the virtues of Man without his Vices.

This praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery

if inscribed over human Ashes,

is but a just tribute to the Memory of

BOATSWAIN, a DOG,

who was born in Newfoundland May 1803

and died at Newstead Nov. 18, 1808.

When some proud Son of Man returns to Earth,

Unknown by Glory, but upheld by Birth,

The sculptor’s art exhausts the pomp of woe,

And storied urns record who rests below.

When all is done, upon the Tomb is seen,

Not what he was, but what he should have been.

But the poor Dog, in life the firmest friend,

The first to welcome, foremost to defend,

Whose honest heart is still his Master’s own,

Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,

Unhonoured falls, unnoticed all his worth,

Denied in heaven the Soul he held on earth –

While man, vain insect! hopes to be forgiven,

And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.

Oh man! thou feeble tenant of an hour,

Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power –

Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust,

Degraded mass of animated dust!

Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,

Thy tongue hypocrisy, thy words deceit!

By nature vile, ennobled but by name,

Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame.

Ye, who perchance behold this simple urn,

Pass on – it honors none you wish to mourn.

To mark a friend’s remains these stones arise;

I never knew but one – and here he lies.

Beautiful poem, but very different from Milton writing Paradise Lost or Dante writing the Divine Comedy. Times were changing. At this time political revolution swept the western world and Romanticism swept Europe. It would hit America a few decades later, and poetry would never be the same. 

Until next time, 

Rory