Romantic Poetry

William Blake - The sunflower

This is a short poem written about a sunflower who aspires after the sun. The sun flowers ambition is reflected by the poets own desire, showing a the romanticist theme of of escape from industrial society into nature and natural things. "Ah, Sunflower! weary of time,Who countest the steps of the sun, Seeking after that sweet golden clime Where the traveller's journey is done."

William Wordsworth - By the sea

Wordsworth describes a walk by the sea in the evening, in which he is made silent and "solemn" with awe. However a young child who is with him seems unchanged by the scene, as if it were their natural environment. He comments that they are "untouched by solemn thought" and writes "Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year, And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine." In other words this state seems natural to children who are less accustomed and influenced by the corruption of the industrialist society. This admiration and belief in this natural state, and the desire to return and stay in it, are romanticist ideas.

Lord Byron - She Walks in Beauty

In the poemt Byron compares the beauty of a woman to the beauty of the night.

"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."

The poem expresses a love of natural beauty in general. "And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent" The poet describes the feeling of beauty, using anologies to nature and natural things, prefering intuition over rational description, displaying romanticism.

Percy Bysshe Shelley - A New World

In the poem the empires and structures of the old world fall and a new world arises, beggining again. "Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream." The poet writes of the young Greek gods being reborn on the earth, this time fuller and brighter.

"A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies.
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore."

This displays the romanticist desire for a return to an earlier time and place, here time and place is reborn, a return to the youth of the world.

John Keats - Robin Hood

In his poem Keats writes about the shrinking and degradation of the world. He laments the taming of Sherwood forest and absence of adventure.

  "No! those days are gone away,
And their hours are old and gray,
And their minutes buried all
Under the down-trodden pall
Of the leaves of many years:
Many times have winter's shears,
Frozen North, and chilling East,
Sounded tempests to the feast
Of the forest's whispering fleeces,
Since men knew nor rent nor leases."

He is clearly against the rise of industrialization and privatization
of the world, which he has in common with Romanticist and also
the Luddites ( a group which destroyed factories and revolted against
 industrialist) writing:

  "She would weep, and he would craze:
He would swear, for all his oaks,
Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes,
Have rotted on the briny seas;
She would weep that her wild bees
Sang not to her--strange! that honey
Can't be got without hard money!"