Lyrical Ballads
1798; 1800; 1802
by William Wordsworth
and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The "preface" as an attempt to write a "defence
of poetry":
"a selection of the real language of men in a
state of vivid sensation"
"a class of poetry ... well adapted to interest
mankind permanently, and not unimportant in
the quality and in the multiplicity of its moral
relations".
"to prefix a systematic defence of the theory
upon which the poems were written".
The incompatibility of the Lyrical Ballads
with comtemporary taste:
poems are "so materially different from those
upon which general approbation is at present
bestowed".
"a full account of the present state of the public
taste in this country, and to determine how far
this taste is healthy or depraved".
He cannot determine this "without pointing out
in what manner language and the human
mind act and re-act on each other, and
without retracting the revolutions, not of
literature alone, but likewise of society itself."
A general definition of poetry as a historical art based on Hartley:
"the act of writing in verse"
Æ "certain classes of ideas and expressions"
"certain known habits of association."
Principal object and form of poetry:
"incidents and situations from common life"
"language really used by men".
"throw over them a certain coloring of imagination,
whereby ordinary things should be presented to the
mind in an unusual aspect„
"primary laws of nature"
Attack on poetic diction:
"humble and rustic life„
"repeated experience and regular feelings"
poets using poetic diction : "they are conferring
honour upon themselves and their art in
proportion as they separate themselves from
the sympathies of men, and indulge in
arbitrary and capricious manners of
expression."
The subjects and purpose of the Lyrical Ballads:
"all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings."
reader: "the reader must necessarily be in some degree
enlightened, and his affections strengthened and purified.„
"For the human mind is capable of being excited without the
application of gross and violent stimulants."
poet: "but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual
organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply. For our
continued influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our
thoughts, which are indeed the representatives of all our past
feelings.„
"that to endeavour to produce or enlarge this capability is one of
the best services in which, at any period a writer can be
engaged; but this service, excellent at all times, is especially so
at the present day."
The historical and cultural background:
"a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are
now acting with a combined force to blunt the
discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for
all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost
savage torpor."
"great national events." (1) frequency (2) "the increasing
accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of
their occupations produces a craving for
extraordinary incident which the rapid communication
of intelligence hourly gratifies." (3) "frantic novels,
sickly and stupid German tragedies, and ... idle and
extravagant stories in verse".
Æ"this degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation".
The style of the Lyrical Ballads:
Rare use of personifications of abstract ideas
Imitation and Adaption of "the very language of man„
Avoidance of poetic diction
Strife for a style of "good sense„
Being cut of oneself from traditional "phrases and
figures of speech", which have been abused and
repeated for too long a time "by bad poets"
Defence of prosaisms: "there neither is, nor can be, any
essential difference between the language of prose
and metrical composition„
Æ"a selection of the language really spoken by men"
makes the difference, not the distinction between
metrical language and prose.
What is a poet - What is poetry?
(1)
a man speaking to men (2) endowed with more lively
sensibility, more enthusiasm, and tenderness (3) who has a
greater knowledge of human nature (4) a more
comprehensive soul (5) a man pleased with his own passions
and volitions (6) who rejoices more than other men in the spirit
of life that is in him (7) disposition to be affected more than other
men by absent things as if they were present (8) impelled to
create volitions and passions as manifested in the on- goings of
the universe, when he does not find them (9) an ability of
conjuring up in himself passions, which are indeed far from
being the same as those produced by real events, yet pleasing
and delightful {i.e. supernatural, but not gothic } (10) acquires a
greater readiness and power in expressing what he thinks and
feels, (11) and especially those thoughts and feelings
which, by his own choice, or from the structure of his own
mind, arise in him without immediate external excitement.
What is a poet - What is poetry?
(12) he will feel that there is no necessity to trick out or to elevate
nature (13) the more industriously he applies this principle, the
deeper will be his faith that no words which his fancy or
imagination can suggest, will be to be compared with those
which are the emanations of reality and truth . (14) the poet is in
the situation of a translator, "who does not scruple to substitute
excellences of another kind for those which are unattainable by
him; and endeavours occasionally to surpass his original, in
order to make some amends for the general inferiority to which
he feels that he must submit." "Poetry is the image of man and
nature" being according to Aristotle the most philosophic
of all writing: "its object is truth, not individual and local,
but general and operative". (15) "the poet writes under one
restriction only, namely, the necessity of giving immediate
pleasure to a human being". This "necessity of producing
immediate pleasure ... is an acknowledgement of the beauty of
the universe." (16) The poet "considers man and the objects that
surround him as acting and re-acting upon each other, so as to
produce an infinite complexity of pain and pleasure"
(17) The poet "considers man and nature as naturally the mirror of
the fairest and most interesting properties of nature." (18)
Scientist vs. poet: "The man of science seeks truth as a remote
and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in his
solitude: the poet, singing a song in which all human beings join
with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend
and hourly companion." (19) Quoting Shakespeare who said
that the poet "looks before and after", {Shakespeare, Hamlet,
IV,iv,37} the poet is regarded as "the rock of defence for
human nature; an upholder and preserver ..." (20) "the poet
binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire
of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth and over
all time". (21) Since "poetry is the first and last of all
knowledge," the poet "will be ready to follow the steps of
the man of science, ..., he will be at his side, carrying
sensation into the midst of the objects of the science itself. The
remotest discoveries of the chemist, the botanist, or
mineralogist, will be as proper objects of the poet's art as any
upon which it can be employed ..."
A general summary: [20-21:]
"poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings: it takes its origin from emotion
recollected in tranquility; the emotion is
contemplated till, by a species of re-action, the
tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion,
kindred to that which was before the subject of
contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself
actually exist in the mind. In this mood successfull
composition generally begins ... the mind will, upon
the whole, be in a state of enjoyment ... an indistinct
perception perpetually renewed of language closely
resembling that of real life, and yet, in the
circumstance of metre, differing from it so wildely ..."
The Eternal language of God
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
FROST AT MIDNIGHT
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.
William Wordsworth, “Daffodils” (1804)
I wander’d lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850): THE TABLES TURNED;
IN EVENING SCENE, ON THE SAME SUBJECT (1798).
Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks,
Why all this toil and trouble?
Up! up! my friend, and quit your books,
Or surely you'll grow double.
The sun above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow,
Through all the long green fields has
spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.
Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife,
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music; on my life
There's more of wisdom in it.
And hark! How blithe the throstle sings!
And he is no mean preacher;
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher. [language of nature]
She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless-Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by chearfulness.
One impulse from a vernal wood [spring-like]
May teach you more of man;
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
Sweet is the lore which nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mishapes the beauteous forms of things;
--We murder to dissect.
Enough of science and of art;
Close up these barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.
Annotations
In those wanderings deeply did I feel
How we mislead each other; above all,
How books mislead us, seeking their reward
From judgments of the wealthy Few, who see
By artificial lights.
(Prelude 13.206-10 = Wordsworth‘s )
Why all this toil and trouble? =>
Clifford Siskin. The Work of Writing : Literature and Social Change in Britain,
1700-1830. Johns Hopkins University Press, (1998), 1999.
The return to Xanadu: Memory and Origin
In Romantic theory, an origin, to be an origin, must be left behind in time
and returned to in memory. To know is to know what is gone.
from a 21st cent. (constructivist) perspective that means:
origins are constructed by returning to what never existed in the first
place. This absence is turned into (lost) presence.
many aspects of the Romantic fascination with the poet‘s language and
the dependence of language on the embodied and imaginative structure
of human conceptual systems (Locke) is reminiscent of the „linguistic
turn“. It would be wrong, however, to compare the two concepts of
language, because the Romantic poet believes in a lost language which
represents the pure mind (of God, of man in Paradise, creative
imagination etc.).
IN Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Kubla
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient-as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But O, that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Khan
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reach'd the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
***********
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she play'd,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me,
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
*********
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
In 'Purchas His Pilgrimage' (1613) SAMUEL PURCHAS reports: "In Xamdu did Cublai
Can build a stately Palace, encompassing sixteene miles of plaine ground with a
wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, pleasant springs, delightfull Streams, and all
sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous house
of pleasure..."
Kublai Khan (1215-1294) was "the fifth of the Mongol great khans and the founder of the Yüan Dynasty in China (1279-1368).
He is best known in the West as the Cublai Kaan of Marco Polo... Kublai founded what was intended to be his brother's
new capital but became in effect his own summer residence, the town of Kaiping. It later was named Shang-tu or 'Upper
Capital' and was immortalised as the Xanadu of Coleridge's poem."
COLERIDGE himself indicates that he was inspired by travel literature (s.b.). In 'Purchas His Pilgrimage' (1613) SAMUEL
PURCHAS reports: "In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace, encompassing sixteene miles of plaine ground with
a wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, pleasant springs, delightfull Streams, and all sorts of beasts of chase and game,
and in the middest thereof a sumptuous house of pleasure..."
KERMODE also refers to J.L. LOWES who "demonstrated that other borrowings from Purchas are important, particularly
from the account of Alvadine, the Old Man of the Mountain, who employed his earthly paradise or garden of delights to
train the assassins whom he sent against his enemies.“
BEER finds substantial parallels in J. RIDLEY'S Tales of the Genii in which the Merchant Abudah "was shown a vision of a
dome, made entirely of precious stones and metals, which seemed to cover a whole plain and reach to the clouds, and
who voyaged along a meandering river by woods of spices." BEER gives further examples taken from the Merchant's
adventures, in which he perceives "huge fragments ..., a dismal chasm ... [and] warlike music" and comes to the
conclusion "that the corresponding elements in Coleridge's poem are rooted deeply in recollected reading of Eastern
romance."
The subtitle of the poem is Or, a Vision in a dream. A Fragment. To the first publication of the poem, COLERIDGE adds the
following explanatory note (excerpts): "... In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed,
from the effects of which he [COLERIDGE] fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following
sentence, or words of the same substance, in Purchas's Pilgrimage: 'Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be
built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.'"
According to his own account, COLERIDGE had the feeling that during his sleep "he could not have composed less than
from two to three hundred lines..." and that "all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the
corresponding expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awakening he appeared to himself to
have a distinct recollection of the whole, and instantly wrote down the lines... At this moment he was unfortunately called
out by a person on business", which interrupted his recollection of ideas. In a note added to a manuscript copy
COLERIDGE himself added that the vision was "brought on by two grains of Opium..."
With regard to the Alph theme, Greek mythology may have inspired him: in one mythical account, Alpheus, the god who gave
his name to the river, fell in love with a nymph by the name of Arethusa who fled from him; he pursued her and, after
she has turned into a spring, "for love of her Alpheus mingled his waters with her."
In a different account, the earth opens up to prevent the latter, and the goddess Artemis guides her away "through
underground channels..."
Percy B. Shelley on how words debauch our
understanding and distort our moral feelings
„You say that words will neither debauch our understandings, nor distort our
moral feelings, [he says in a letter to Godwin] But words are the very things
that so eminently contribute to the growth & establishment of prejudice: the
learning of words before the mind is capable of attaching correspondent
ideas to them, is like possessing machinery with the use of which we are so
unacquainted as to be in danger of misusing it. But [although] words are
merely signs of ideas, how many evils, & how great spring from the
annexing inadequate & improper ideas to words.“ (Letters, l, 317)
P.B. Shelley: The Revolt of Islam. A Poem in Twelve Cantos. Canto
Seventh
'My mind became the book through which I grew
Wise in all human wisdom, and its cave,
Which like a mine I rifled through and through,
To me the keeping of its secrets gave–
One mind, the type of all, the moveless wave
Whose calm reflects all moving things that are,
Necessity, and love, and life, the grave,
And sympathy, fountains of hope and fear,
Justice, and truth, and time, and the world's natural sphere.
'And on the sand would I make signs to range
These woofs, as they were woven, of my thought;
Clear elemental shapes, whose smallest change
A subtler language within language wrought–
The key of truths which once were dimly taught
In old Crotona; and sweet melodies
Of love in that lorn solitude I caught
From mine own voice in dream, when thy dear eyes
Shone through my sleep, and did that utterance harmonize.
XXXII
XXXI
Two Generations of Romantic
Poets
Second Generation:
• John Keats (1795-1821)
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792-1822)
• George Gordon Noel Lord Byron
(1788-1824)
Two Generations of Romantic
Poets
- first attracted by
French Revolution;
later: growing
skepticism
- revolutionary
- return to neo-classical
models
- search for more
complex forms of
poetic diction
Critique of Wordsworth
• Keats: didactic tone and quasi-religious analysis
of the poetic self are superseded by projections
of sensual images
• Byron: jettisons the cult of nature; praises the
self; cynic posing
• Byron and Shelley: critique of established
religion; radical democratic positions (against
Wordsworth's growing distance from the French
Revolution)
John Keats
•
•
•
typifies the 'romantic genius'
widely influential, despite his short life
tension between aesthetic retreat and suffering from the world's
conflicts and fragility
• sonnets and odes Æ consciousness of the self, wavering
between an escape into the magnificence of the world or into
fantasy, and the cognizance of mortality
• longing for continuity in art (cf. "Ode on a Grecian Urn")
• aim: truth of imagination, which cannot be retrieved by reason
• "frozen moment" Æ poet 'feels himself into the scene' and thus
can express the tension between warm, vivid action and cold,
permanent art
• gothic elements, esp. with respect to sexuality: poetic lover
dying for desire for a femme fatale (cf. "La Belle Dame sans
Merci")
• "beauty is truth, truth beauty" Æ the ingenious artist's sensibility
and imagination create a piece of art, which is whole, sensual
and intense
e.g.: "Ode to a Grecian Urn", "La Belle Dame sans Merci", "The
Eve of St. Agnes", "Endymion", "Lamia"
ODE ON A GRECIAN URN (1820)
By John Keats
Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit dities of no tone.
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal---yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unweari-ed,
Forever piping songs forever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting, and forever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity. Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty"---that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
•
•
•
•
rebelled against religion, institutions, monarchy
sees himself as a radical reformer as well as a poet
return to allegorical and satirical devices
interpreting and transforming classical myths, e.g. Prometheus
Unbound: use of a classical myth to present psychological
problems and political concepts
• passionate, ecstatic poetry (e.g. "Ode to the West Wind")
• spiritual reality is decisive Æ idealism
• poetry of movement and transformation, e.g. representing the
wind or the heart
e.g. Prometheus Unbound, Queen Mab, Adonais, "Ode to the
West Wind", "Ozymandias"
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind
I.
WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's
being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves
dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odors plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
II.
Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's
commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are
shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and
Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: oh hear!
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind
III.
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!
IV.
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind
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 withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an extinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unwakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron
•
driven to half-exile in Europe (mostly Italy) after an incestuous scandal and a
divorce; favours nationalistic liberation movements in the wake of the French
Revolution (e.g. in Italy and Greece)
• plays the role of the romantic hero Æ "Byronic hero"
• declares Pope his model Æ unites Romanticism with Neo-classicism
(emphasis on satire; heroic couplet)
• Byronic hero: displaced subject; dark, mysterious outsider of society;
violation of social norms; follows his inner law without compromise Æ
excessive individualism
• Weltschmerz
Æ public success (also: attraction of exoticism, eroticism and other taboos)
• long verse epics (e.g. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, The Corsair)
• satires (English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, A Vision of Judgment, Don
Juan)
• criticism of hypocrisy (aristocratic view against a bourgeois society)
• scepticism; critique of excessive sentimentalism
• Æ "enlightened Romanticism"
Byron, "On this Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year" (1824)
'Tis time the heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!
My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!
The fire that on my bosom preys
Is lone as some volcanic isle;
No torch is kindled at its blaze–
A funeral pile.
The hope, the fear, the jealous care,
The exalted portion of the pain
And power of love, I cannot share,
But wear the chain.
But 'tis not thus--and 'tis not here–
Such thoughts should shake my soul nor now,
Where glory decks the hero's bier,
Or binds his brow.
The sword, the banner, and the field,
Glory and Greece, around me see!
The Spartan, borne upon his shield,
Was not more free.
Awake! (not Greece--she is awake!)
Awake, my spirit! Think through whom
Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake,
And then strike home!
Tread those reviving passions down,
Unworthy manhood!--unto thee
Indifferent should the smile or frown
Of beauty be.
If thou regrett'st thy youth, why live?
The land of honourable death
Is here:--up to the field, and give
Away thy breath!
Seek out--less often sought than found–
A soldier's grave, for thee the best;
Then look around, and choose thy ground,
And take thy rest.
Remember Thee! Remember Thee!
Remember thee! remember thee!
Till Lethe quench life's burning stream
Remorse and shame shall cling to
thee,
And haunt thee like a feverish dream!
Remember thee! Aye, doubt it not.
Thy husband too shall think of thee:
By neither shalt thou be forgot,
Thou false to him, thou fiend to me!
Fare Thee Well
"Alas! they had been friends in youth:
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain;
________
But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining They stood aloof, the scars remaining.
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
A dreary sea now flows between,
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been."
Coleridge, Christabel
Fare thee well! and if for ever,
Still for ever, fare thee well:
Even though unforgiving, never
'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.
Would that breast were bared before thee
Where thy head so oft hath lain,
While that placid sleep came o'er thee
Which thou ne'er canst know again:
Would that breast, by thee glanced over,
Every inmost thought could show!
Then thou wouldst at last discover
'Twas not well to spurn it so.
Though the world for this commend thee Though it smile upon the blow,
Even its praise must offend thee,
Founded on another's woe:
Though my many faults defaced me,
Could no other arm be found,
Than the one which once embraced me,
To inflict a cureless wound?
Yet, oh yet, thyself deceive not;
Love may sink by slow decay,
But by sudden wrench, believe not
Hearts can thus be torn away:
Still thine own its life retaineth,
Still must mine, though bleeding, beat;
And the undying thought which paineth
Is - that we no more may meet.
These are words of deeper sorrow
Than the wail above the dead;
Both shall live, but every morrow
Wake us from a widowed bed.
And when thou wouldst solace gather,
When our child's first accents flow,
Wilt thou teach her to say "Father!"
Though his care she must forego?
When her little hands shall press thee,
When her lip to thine is pressed,
Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee,
Think of him thy love had blessed!
Should her lineaments resemble
Those thou never more may'st see,
Then thy heart will softly tremble
With a pulse yet true to me.
All my faults perchance thou knowest,
All my madness none can know;
All my hopes, where'er thou goest,
Wither, yet with thee they go.
Every feeling hath been shaken;
Pride, which not a world could bow,
Bows to thee - by thee forsaken,
Even my soul forsakes me now:
But 'tis done - all words are idle Words from me are vainer still;
But the thoughts we cannot bridle
Force their way without the will.
Fare thee well! thus disunited,
Torn from every nearer tie.
Seared in heart, and lone, and
blighted,
More than this I scarce can die.
Prometheus
Titan! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods
despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the
chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.
.
Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot
kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refus'd thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift Eternity
Was thine--and thou hast borne it
well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from
thee
Was but the menace which flung
back
On him the torments of thy rack
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his
Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings
trembled
Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself--and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.