Chapter Nine
Early nineteenth century Poets
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The main stream of poetry in the eighteenth century had been orderly and polished without much feeling for nature heroic cuplets were used for this verse but various writers had broken away from the form and the thought in spite of this the publication of the first edition of the (lyrical ballads ) came as a shock the critics considered the language too simple and the change too violent this important book the signal of the beginning of the romantic age was the joint work of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Goleridge often known with Southey as the Lake Poets because they liked the lake district in the north west of England and lived in it
WORDSWORTH was a poet of nature and had the special ability to throw a charm over ordinary things Coleridge on the other hand could make mysterious events acceptable to a reader s mind Neither of them used the old language of poetry much
Wordsworth was so filled with the love of nature that in later editions of the Lyrical Ballads he said that the language of poetry ought to be the same as the language of a simple farmworker yet he could not keep to this idea himself his imagination led him far beyond the life and thoughts of a countryman
Coleridge s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner appead in the first edition of the LYRICAL Ballads an old sailor describes some strange misfortunes that happened to his ship it was in the ice of the south pole when he shot a great bird for this crime a curse fell on the ship
The mysterious surroundings of the silent ship are described in Coleridge s magic words at last the mariner seeing God s creatures in the moonlight blesses them this breaks the curse and he is able to return home
Two other important poems by Coleridge (not in the Lyrical Ballads) are Christabel and Kubla Khan Neither was finished but there is again magic in each
Once when Coleridge was staying in Devon he fell asleep while reading in Purchas his Pilgrims about Kubla Khan s great building in Xanadu on waking he knew that he had dreamed several hundred poetic lines on the subject and he began at once to write them down unluckily he was interrupted and was never again able to remember the rest
The buildings were set among gardens rivers and forests and caves of ice all this is described in words which produce a strange and magic picture
Wordsworth s part in the Lyrical Ballads was more difficult to perform successfully than Coleridge s for he had to make ordinary things seem wonderful he wrote more than half the book and his love of nature is immediately clear
Among his best sonnets are Westminster Bridge an emotional view of London asleep and London the latter is a cry for help in the troubles of the world
Well known among other short poems are The Daffodils The Solitary Reaper and Lucy
The Prelude a record in fourteen books of verse of Wordsworth s own progress in poetry and thought was written during the years in it he remembers his schooldays his time at Cambridge his visits to London and France and his life in France during the Revolution
George Gordon Lord Byron was a romantic figure but his poetry was much influenced by the classical form of Pope Byron dressed splendidly went to fight for the freedom of Greece satirized many sides of English life and hated all false and insincere talk he died of fever
Byron s poetry though powerful lacks the finest poetic imagination his words mean only what they say and have no further magic
His verse possesses neither Wordsworth s power of suggestion nor Coleridge s mystery but except when he wrote carelessly it is often strong and beautiful
Childe Harold written in the Spenserian stanza tells the story of a man who goes off to travel far and wide because he is disgusted with life s foolish pleasures (The man is in fact Lord Byron)
The different places that he visits give the poet an opportunity to describe what once happened in them
Don Juan a long poem of astonishing adventure is also a satire which attacks some of Byron s enemies
Byron wrote a number of short poems which are popular
His plays are not very good but his poetry was popular because he attacked false ideas and because the eastern scene was unusual in his time
Percy Bysshe ****************ley was a greater poet of good family restless and rich he struggled against the causes of human misery and against accepted religions he saw goodness in the whole of nature and he wanted all men to be free his first important poem Alastor or The Spirit of Solitude
Adonais one of his best poems is an elegy on the death of Keats
His lyrics are among the best in the language and include The Cloud The Indian Serenade
****************ley loved the wild wind but John Keats Loved beauty and rest awoke his poetic powers he studied the poets and he studied nature
His early poem Endymion in four books is based on old ideas
It was violently criticized but he did not lose faith in himself he published Lamia (in which a snake is changed into a beautiful girl )
He wrote more than twenty sonnets one of the best is On First Looking into Chapman s Homer
Keats wrote poetry of rich detail and accused ****************ley of using language which was too thin Keats also wrote a good ballad La Belle Dame Sans Merci in which a knight dreams of his lady but wakes alone on a cold hillside where no birds sing La Belle Dame is supposed by some to be tuberculosis
A disease which killed Keats at the early age of twenty six ****************ley too died young he was drowned near Lerici Italy at the age of twenty nine Byron also died (of fever ) before he was forty
Robert Southey his poems often told a story
His prose Life of Nelson is well known
Thomas Campbell produced some battle poems which are full of spirit such as The Battle of the Baltic
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Chapter nine finished
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