AS Poetry Anthology
The Romantics
London William Blake
1.
Charter’d is a repeated and significant word in the first stanza.
Comment on its meanings and implications (its connotations).
Make sure you understand the contemporary commercial
connotations the word had when Blake wrote in the 1790s. What
other words in stanza 1 create a serious or sombre tone?
2.
What’s the mood of the second stanza and what for you creates that
mood? Comment on how the sentence works in this stanza. The
last line is a disturbing completion of the line. Why? What creates
the effect of build up and tension over the four lines?
3.
Do a quick cartoon sketch of mind-forg’d manacles. Suggest the
meaning(s) of ban in stanza 2.
4.
In stanza 3 what do church and palace seem to represent?
Comment on how Blake manages quickly and concisely to
associate them with distress and horror.
5.
In the last stanza Blasts and blights are the powerful verbs. How
does Blake ensure they stand out and have impact? Make sure you
have the meaning of these two words. Now analyse the words of
the four lines to explain how this closing verse describes and
condemns corruption in the city.
6.
Sum up in two or three sentences Blake's picture of London. Now
or later add two or three more sentences to sum up the contrast in
Wordsworth’s Composed Upon Westminster Bridge…
This free resource is available at www.teachit.co.uk
Copyright © 2001 Teachit
1
asanth2.doc
AS Poetry Anthology
The Romantics
Kubla Khan Coleridge
Pre –Reading
Discuss the subject matter of a poem containing these phrases:
Sunless sea
Alph the sacred river
A mighty fountain momently was forced
walls and towers
woman wiling for her
demon lover
lifeless ocean
the milk of Paradise
A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice
Study
1. A landscape is presented, perhaps a dream landscape. Sketch the
landscape described. Do it diagrammatically; no great art required.
2. Look at the positioning of the verb ‘Down’ in the first five lines.
Now explain how the pattern and sound of the sentence in these
five lines is almost descriptive – suggesting the progress and action
described by the words.
3. Look at the river in the poem – its origins, course and
disappearance: what could it symbolise? Explain.
4. Where exactly is the dome positioned in the landscape described
over the course of the poem? What is remarkable about it?
Suggest its possible symbolic meaning or meanings.
5. Consider the poem’s form and structure. It is divided into three.
What is different about the third section?
6. Ecstatic and visionary are words that have been used to describe
the poem or the experience suggested in the poem. What
references or actions in the poem fit with these words? Comment.
7. The ‘damsel with a dulcimer’ leads the poet to wish or aspire
to build that dome in air. In what sense can a poet build
something? Comment and confirm your idea of what the dome
might symbolise in the poem.
This free resource is available at www.teachit.co.uk
Copyright © 2001 Teachit
2
asanth2.doc
AS Poetry Anthology
The Romantics
A Red Red Rose Burns
1. It’s written in ballad form, so consider the form first: 4 line verses
with a repeated rhythm and rhyme scheme. The metre (or beat) of
the lines is 4/3. Experiment with the sound of the lines aloud to
find this pattern. Check the regular pattern of syllables in the
verses. What is this pattern? So what? Now comment on what
gives this writing its song like qualities.
2. The words are simple. The verses don’t just repeat one sentiment
or ideas, though. What is the slightly different focus of attention in
each verse? Comment. (Note: you should pick up a shift which
takes in time and distance amongst other things).
3. The opening verse sounds like a pair of clichés: sum up briefly, in
different words, the qualities or attributes of the loved one that are
being praised. Now select and comment on a simile in the poem
which is not a cliché. Explain its meaning and effect.
4. What’s the situation introduced by the last verse which both
completes and maybe adds ‘edge’ or poignancy to this simple
poem?
5. COMPARE: in layout this looks a lot like Byron’s So We’ll Go No
More A-Roving, which may also be about love. Any similarity in
mood between the two poems? Comment. The rhythm of Byron’s
lines is slightly different. Can you identify and explain the
difference?
This free resource is available at www.teachit.co.uk
Copyright © 2001 Teachit
3
asanth2.doc
AS Poetry Anthology
The Romantics
To A Skylark: Shelley
You need to know something about skylarks and their distinctive song. They are
birds of summer and are seldom visible as their song is heard. They sing while being
high above fields.
1. The language of the poem (like the birdsong it describes) is distinctive and
soaring. Look over the poem in its verse structure and layout. How do these
fit the subject of a bird which ‘soaring ever singest?’
2. Think about and then comment upon the phrase unpremeditated art at the end
of stanza 1. What quality of the bird’s song does this phrase seems to suggest?
3. The poem is full of SIMILES. Choose TWO similes which seem striking.
Comment on the effect of each simile: ie what qualities each simile attributes
to, or associates with, the skylark?
4. The sheer accumulation of similes creates an effect in the poem (increased
perhaps by the series of questions as the poem progresses). Comment on the
avalanche of similes to describe the bird. What does the need to resort to so
many images suggest about the poet’s experience of the skylark (What does he
feel about it? How readily or easily can he express those feelings in words)?
5. There are a number of phases which mark the development of thought
and feeling in the poem
a)
Lines 1 to 30 introduce the subject: the experience of hearing the
skylark’s singing and the poet’s response to it.
b) Lines 31 to 60 are like a quest or search. Give a general explanation
and comment on what these lines are doing in the poem.
c) The last phase is about how the bird has something to teach or inspire
‘us’ (human beings) and a poet in particular. This phrase can be
subdivided though: lines 61 to75 are an enquiry into what could
prompt or stimulate the bird to such joyous, perfect song. Then, lines
76 to 85 indicate what can’t be associated with such joyous song.
Explain what the bird must not know to allow such joy.
6. The stanza on lines 86 to 90 is significant in the poem. It conveys Shelley’s
view of the poignancy of human existence. Explain the meaning of this stanza
in your own words.
7. Sum up in three sentences how this poem about a skylark is also about
inspiration and imagination as well as nature. Explain how the ending
expresses this.
This free resource is available at www.teachit.co.uk
Copyright © 2001 Teachit
4
asanth2.doc
AS Poetry Anthology
The Romantics
To A Skylark
Read the poem and then decide on the following statements:
AGREE, DISAGREE or PARTLY AGREE
Be prepared to explain your decisions.
ƒ Shelley gives a detailed description of the appearance of the
skylark.
ƒ The bird is made to seem more like a spirit than a living creature of
flesh and blood.
The bird is compared amongst other things to the following:
ƒ The moon
ƒ An opera singer
ƒ A rain shower in spring
ƒ A knight in armour
ƒ A maiden in a high tower.
ƒ A poet
ƒ A witch
ƒ Death
ƒ The bird’s song is an inspiration to the poet to create poetry.
This free resource is available at www.teachit.co.uk
Copyright © 2001 Teachit
5
asanth2.doc
AS Poetry Anthology
The Romantics
WHAT IS ROMANTICISM?
A RADIO DISCUSSION
This page gives you an outline of a discussion on the Romantic
movement, led by Melvyn Bragg. The starting point was this question:
Has Romanticism, as a movement emerging towards the end of the 18th
Century, a distinct philosophy: ie. an outlook that takes in distinctive
political, artistic and philosophical positions. The notes below are a
record of the discussion.
◊
Romanticism was: An association in 18th and early 19th C of Romanticism with
EMOTION (expression, not suppression of feeling) and REBELLION in the
moral, artistic and (with the French Revolution in 1789) in the political sphere.
◊ SOURCE of Romanticism can be found in the writings and philosophy of Jean
Jaques Rousseau: “Man is born free and is everywhere in chains”
Established the concept of “the noble savage”; the idea that human beings are
naturally virtuous, but the process of civilisation and society corrupts them with
rules: teaches selfishness (this idea is powerful in many Romantic poets,
especially Blake). Rousseau also initiates a new respect for childhood as a natural
unspoilt state: children innately good. (Strong idea in Wordsworth’s poetry).
◊
NATURE and feeling are decisive concepts in Romanticism. There is in
Wordsworth and Coleridge a focus on the natural world. Also, (and quite radical
at the time) the idea that the experience and language of ordinary, uneducated
people can be the proper subject of poetry: the idea that the peasant’s feelings are
as intense and worth recording or exploring as the educated man’s. Further than
this, the notion that all men have IMAGINATION and the capacity to see beyond
the natural world; hence the visionary poetry of Blake, Shelley and Coleridge
(Kubla Khan, and The Ancient Mariner eg.)
◊
BLAKE: a London poet, not one of the countryside like Wordsworth &
Coleridge. Fits in opposition to the prevailing 18th Century philosophy before
Romanticism: RATIONALISM. Attempt to explain all human and natural
phenomena by reason and empirical study. (British philosophers, Locke and
Hume). Empiricism starts with what the senses tell you. It led in Hume to
scepticism about the existence of God. English Romanticism is not religious in
any denominational sense; but it can be viewed as a reaction against the
empiricist’s downgrading of the spiritual aspects of life.
This free resource is available at www.teachit.co.uk
Copyright © 2001 Teachit
6
asanth2.doc
AS Poetry Anthology
The Romantics
◊ Key philosopher of Romanticism on the continent is the German, KANT. He
acknowledged the common sense realities of empirical philosophers, but he also
established that reality as it is perceived is subjective: ie. what we know can never
be objectively known because it is filtered through the perceiving mind of the
observer. God or spirit can therefore still exist as a presence that runs through
both the perceiving human mind and the world of Nature, which it perceives. It
unites the two. Wordsworth’s great poem Tintern Abbey reflects this outlook.
“ A poem in which the universe is centred on the self”
◊
Understand that Romanticism is a European-wide movement as well as a British
one. It affects the visual arts as well as Literature. It lasted into the mid 19th
Century in Europe and has influences well into the 20th century. Some even see
its dark side manifesting itself in primitivism and destructive nationalism – even
in the rise of Nazism in the 20th Century. In the early 1800s, however, it was
more a radical and liberating force. So, for example, Wordsworth and Coleridge
started off as social radicals as well as artistic innovators. Byron and Shelley were
always maverick, radical figures in the attitudes they espoused on moral and
political issues.
This free resource is available at www.teachit.co.uk
Copyright © 2001 Teachit
7
asanth2.doc