CONTEXT ROMANTICISM

Dates

From 1798 (Publication of Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge) to

1832 (death of Walter Scott/Enactment by Parliament of the First Reform Bill)

Importance

The Romantic period was an era in which a literary revolution took place

alongside social and economical revolutions. It is also known as the “Age of

Revolutions”. It is a crucial time in history. It embodies many of the conflicts at

the heart of the modern world:

• Political freedom/repression,

• Individual and collective responsability

• Masculine/feminine roles

There are often contrasts between radicalism/tradition, change and stability,

the old and the new and these were just as vital as the traditional themes of

innocence/experience, youth/age, country/city, man/nature.

Economical and social changes

1. The nation was transformed from an agricultural country into an industrial

one

2. Economic ideology: free market: Adam Smith Wealth of Nations (1776)

3. A shift in the balance of power took place. Power and wealth were gradually

transformed from the landholding aristocracy to the large-scale employers of

modern industrial communities. An old population of rural farm labourers

became a new class of urban industrial labourers.

4. The industrial Revolution created social change and unrest. The landscape of

the country was altered: in the countryside the open fields and communally

worked farms were “enclosed”.

5. The country was divided into those who owned property or land -who were

rich-and those who did not.

Political changes

The Industrial Revolution paralleled revolutions in the political order. In fact,

Britain was at war during most of the Romantic period, with a resultant political

instability.

6. The American Declaration of independence struck an early blow for the

principle of democratic freedom and self-government, (1776)

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7. The French Revolution, with its slogans of “Equality, Liberty and

Fraternity”

influenced the intellectual climate in Britain. The storming of the Bastille in

1789 acted as a symbol which attracted the strong support of liberal opinion.

But the French

Revolution had a mixed and changing reception. Early enthusiasm among

British writers and intellectuals was modified by the Terror, when thousands of

people were killed.

8. Some influential intellectuals were:

Tom Paine, a hero of the American Revolution and radical author of Rights of

Man (1791) in

which he called for greater democracy in Britain, was welcome in France, but

he was later put in

prison and near the guillotine because his opposition to the death of Louis XVI.

Later in the 1790's, more measured ideas are contained in the writings of

William Godwin (the father of Mary Shelley), an important influence on

the poets Wordsworth and Shelley. Also important is Mary Wollstonecraft’s

Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), an adaptation of French

revolutionary theory to the universal needs of women. “While women are

encouraged to ornament their persons at the expense of their minds, while

indolence renders them helpless and lascivious (for what other name can be

given to the common intercourse between the sexes?) they will be, generally

speaking, only objects of desire” (Mary Wollestonecraft, 1798)

9. However, as the French Revolution developed, support for it in Britain

declined. There was violence, extremism, and much bloodshed as section of

the old aristocracy were massacred, as the members of the new French

Republic fought among themselves and with other countries, and as Napoleon

Bonaparte became emperor (1804), aiming to conquest all of Europe

(including Spain!), and then dictator in France.

10. In 1793 England joined The Wars of Coalition against France, which

was aiming forsupremacy throughout Europe, and after many years finally

defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo (1815)

11. The victory was followed by years of social unrest at home. These

culminated in “the Peterloo Massacre” of 1819, in which government troops

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charged a large group of workers who were meeting in Manchester to demand

social and political reform (the word Peterloo) ironically recalls the battle of

Waterloo. This event had an influence on Shelley’s poetry: it inspired his poems

“England in 1819” and “Ode to the West Wind.”

12. Under the economic philosophy of the “laissez-faire”, the wealth of the

country grew, but it was concentrated in the hands of the new manufacturing

and merchant classes. This new middle class wanted to see its increased

economic power reflected in greater

political power. A general alliance arose between working-class reformers,

liberal (called Whig) politicians and this new middle class, resulting in pressure

on the Tory

government for political reform. After many struggles the first Reform Act was

passed by Parliament in 1832. The bill extended voting rights to a more

representative proportion of the country.

Literary History

The publication of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798 is seen as a landmark. The

volume

contains some of the best known romantic poems.

The second edition in 1800 contained a preface in which Wordsworth discusses

the

theories of poetry which were to be so influential on many of his and

Coleridge’s

contemporaries.

The Preface represents a poetic manifesto which is very much in the spirit of

the age. The movement towards greater democracy in political and social

affairs is paralleled by poetry which sought to overturn the existing regime and

establish a new, more “democratic” poetic order. To do this, the writers used

“the real language of men” (Preface to Lyrical Ballads) and even, in the case of

Byron and Shelley, got involved in political activities themselves.

Contrast between Romantic Age and the Augustan Age (previous

literary movement)

CLASSICAL/AUGUSTAN

(early and mid 18th c)

ROMANTIC

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• Importance of reason and order reason, intellect and the head

• Poetry is objective (poetry in early 18th c. was not regarded as an expression

of individual personal feelings)

• Poetry as an expression of feelings, intuition and the heart.

• Poetry looks outward to society

• Poets looks inward to their own soul and to the life of the imagination

• Poetry concentrates on what can be logically measured and rationally

understood

• Romantic poets are attracted to the irrational, mystical and supernatural

worlds

• Augustan poetry supports the social order

• It defends freedom of nature and individual human experience.

• Nature is of course a reaction to the forces of industrialization.

• They defend the dignity of man at a time when the machine is beginning to

control his life

• A poetry which is critical of society and its injustices

• It is a formal and ordered way of writing characterised by the heroic couplet

in poetry

• It tries to capture individual experience in forms and language which are

close to everyday speech.

No set forms.

Romanticism was not a sudden, radical transformation, but grew out of

Augustans.

Furthermore, English Romanticism is less philosophically radical than the

European.

The Chimney sweeper (Innocence), William Blake

In general the poem talks about small children being use as chimney sweepers

and the experiences that some of them suffer. The first stanza relates to the

previous story of a child that is now working as a chimney sweeper. His mother

died and his father sold him when he was very young. In this stanza we realize

that the young boy comes from a poor background and that he was sold to

save money. We can guess that he was sold because of line three “could

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scarcely cry “weep! weep! weep!”. The second stanza introduces another

character, Tom Dacre, who is a younger boy and is working also as a chimney

sweeper. This boy cries when they save his hair and the narrator tries to

console him by explaining why they have got his hair (so it doesn’t catch on

fire). Stanza three still focuses on Tom Dacre. In lines 8-9 the little boy has a

dream where he sees other children that work with him stack up in dark and

black chimney. In stanza four the dream continues and there is a change of the

topic. Another figure appears an angel that is like a savour that sets the

children free of their heavy work. He dreams of Paradise were all is good, there

is no evil and they do not have to work. On stanza five the angel tells Rom that

if he is good he can come to heaven but for that he is going not have to keep

on cleaning chimneys (basically he’s got to keep on being exploited).The last

stanza we are back to reality, routinely day of work. The child is happy even if

he is still forced to keep on working.

The poem is criticising the use of small children to clean chimneys. Most of

these kids were treated in dreadful conditions; many times they got injured by

getting stack up the chimneys. It also has a religious connotation. Religion is

not seen as salvation. The angel gives an empty promise to Tom Dacre. He

ends up living in ignorance and bless because he knows that if is good he will

go to Paradise. Blake represents children’s innocence (dream). He also uses the

figure of a children to show his dissatisfaction with society. Oppression is

represented with urban landscapes. He uses nature to symbolize paradise, so

we have a contrast between nice and worse. He imitates child’s vocabulary, the

language he uses is easy to understand, limited.

In 1788, the number of working hours were restricted for kids.

VOICE: the poet uses a fictional voice. He presents himself as a boy as the

main character, who works as a chimney sweeper. He uses this voice as a critic

to the society of the moment.

METRE: they are quatrains that rhyme a-a-b-b… It contains feminine or half-

rhyme. He sometimes uses anapaestic rhythm.

IMAGERY: semantic fields: religion: God, angel, joy; chimney: soot, dark,

brushes, sweep; feelings: happy, joy, fear, warm.

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Metaphor: line 12: coffins of black: vehicle- coffins of black, tenor- chimney,

ground- dark and narrow places, also unpleasant places.

Line 16: wash in a river and shine in the sun: vehicle- wash in a river an shine

in the sun, tenor- baptized and purified, ground- they are clean from shoot.

Lisping: line 3: weep! Weep! Weep! : Blake alters the word to make it similat

to what a child would say. Weep would mean sweep

Hyperbaton: line 1: the author changes the order of the words in the

sentence to make relevant in this case that his mother is death.

Enjambment: we find several enjambments in lines 2, 6, 7 and 9 : when the

line continues in the next one, there is not a pause between them.

Alliteration: In line 4 with the sound s (so, sweep, soot, sleep) to symbolize

the sound that you make when you are sweeping.

In this poem there seems to be movement. Tom Dacre goes from being

miserable to a happy little boy but there is not really a change because he is

still working in bad conditions. It is like a veil on his eyes that makes him

believes that everything is better now and he works because of a price in the

end.

The figure of innocence is very important in this poem.

The chimney sweeper (experience) William Blake

It is a dark and pessimistic poem. We have two people in it, one of them a child

(chimney sweeper) and the other an older man (an adult narrator). The

chimney sweeper in this poem does not free himself from his misery.

The first stanza: The two first lines describe and image of a child crying in the

snow and the narrator asks him where his parents are. The boy answer that

they have gone to church, to pray. We have a contrast between black (the kid)

and white (the snow).

The second stanza: In the second stanza we go from a happy mood to a sad

one. Because he was happy his parents ended up (cover him in clothes) of

death. With this a mean making him a chimney sweeper.

The third stanza: The child has been hurt by his parents, his feelings, but he

does not want to show them (happy and dancing and singing).

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The poem is criticising the Anglican Church and the behaviour of the parent to

their children. Criticising the church he is also criticising the king who is the

head of the Church of England. They become rich thanks to our misery.

STRUCTURE: Two couplets and two quatrains. There is half masculine rhyme.

AA,BB in the couplets. CD CD EF EF in the quatrains. There is iambic

pentameter.

VOICE: the voice would be William Blake who witnesses a poor child crying and

decides to ask what happens to him.

IMAGERY: semantic field: pessimism: woe, dark, death, black, misery, injury

Institutions: God, priest, king

Contrast: in line 1, the child is represented as an animal, dressed in black

surrounded by the purity and whiteness of the snow. Another contrast (lines 9,

10) the parents believe that even if they have hurt him he is still fine but really

the kid is hurt. There is another contrast between the wealth of the king and

the church compared to the rest of society.

Ellipsis: in line 6 (I), in line 11 (they).

William Blake, London

The speaker wanders through the streets of London and comments on his

observations. He sees despair in the faces of the people he meets and hears

fear and repression in their voices. The woeful cry of the chimney-sweeper

stands as a chastisement to the Church, and the blood of a soldier stains the

outer walls of the monarch’s residence. The nighttime holds nothing more

promising: the cursing of prostitutes corrupts the newborn infant and sullies

the “Marriage hearse.”

. Repetition is the most striking formal feature of the poem, and it serves to

emphasize the prevalence of the horrors the speaker describes.

Commentary

The opening image of wandering, the focus on sound, and the images of stains

in this poem’s first lines recall the Introduction to Songs of Innocence, but with

a twist; we are now quite far from the piping, pastoral bard of the earlier poem:

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we are in the city. The poem’s title denotes a specific geographic space, not

the archetypal locales in which many of the other Songs are set. Everything in

this urban space—even the natural River Thames—submits to being

“charter’d,” a term which combines mapping and legalism. Blake’s repetition of

this word (which he then tops with two repetitions of “mark” in the next two

lines) reinforces the sense of stricture the speaker feels upon entering the city.

It is as if language itself, the poet’s medium, experiences a hemming-in, a

restriction of resources. Blake’s repetition, thudding and oppressive, reflects

the suffocating atmosphere of the city. But words also undergo transformation

within this repetition: thus “mark,” between the third and fourth lines, changes

from a verb to a pair of nouns—from an act of observation which leaves some

room for imaginative elaboration, to an indelible imprint, branding the people’s

bodies regardless of the speaker’s actions.

Ironically, the speaker’s “meeting” with these marks represents the experience

closest to a human encounter that the poem will offer the speaker. All the

speaker’s subjects—men, infants, chimney-sweeper, soldier, harlot—are known

only through the traces they leave behind: the ubiquitous cries, the blood on

the palace walls. Signs of human suffering abound, but a complete human form

—the human form that Blake has used repeatedly in the Songs to personify and

render natural phenomena—is lacking. In the third stanza the cry of the

chimney-sweep and the sigh of the soldier metamorphose (almost mystically)

into soot on church walls and blood on palace walls—but we never see the

chimney-sweep or the soldier themselves. Likewise, institutions of power—the

clergy, the government—are rendered by synecdoche, by mention of the

places in which they reside. Indeed, it is crucial to Blake’s commentary that

neither the city’s victims nor their oppressors ever appear in body: Blake does

not simply blame a set of institutions or a system of enslavement for the city’s

woes; rather, the victims help to make their own “mind-forg’d manacles,” more

powerful than material chains could ever be.

The poem climaxes at the moment when the cycle of misery recommences, in

the form of a new human being starting life: a baby is born into poverty, to a

cursing, prostitute mother. Sexual and marital union—the place of possible

regeneration and rebirth—are tainted by the blight of venereal disease. Thus

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Blake’s final image is the “Marriage hearse,” a vehicle in which love and desire

combine with death and destruction.

VOICE: the own speaker is the person who tells the story

METRE: The poem has four quatrains, with alternate lines rhyming. It has

iambic pentameter. There is more masculine than feminine rhyme. There is a-

b-a-b, c-d-c-d-, e-f-e-f g-h-g-h.

We are seven, William Wordswoth

was written in 1798, when Wordsworth was only 18 years old. Wordsworth has

noted that he wrote the last line of this poem first, and that his good friend

Samuel Coleridge wrote the first few stanzas.

The poem is an interesting conversation between a man and a young girl. It is

especially intriguing because the conversation could have been less than five

lines, and yet it is 69 lines long. The reason for this is that the man cannot

accept that the young girl still feels she is one of seven siblings even after two

of her siblings have died, and even though she now lives at home alone with

her mother.

The speaker begins the poem with the question of what a child should know of

death. Near the beginning it seems as if the little girl understands very little.

She seems almost to be in denial about the deaths of her siblings, especially

because she continues to spend time with them and sing to them. By the end

of the poem, however, the reader is left with the feeling that perhaps the little

girl understands more about life and death than the man to whom she is

speaking. She refuses to become incapacitated by grief, or to cast the

deceased out of her life. Instead she accepts that things change, and continues

living as happily as she can.

VOICE: the voice is the old man, who tells the story. He met a young girl and

started to talk to her.

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METRE: The poem is composed of sixteen four-line stanzas, and ends with one

five-line stanza. A-b-a-b rhyming pattern. It also contains cross rhyme.

Masculine rhyme predominates than feminine rhyme.

IMAGERY: enjambments: Lines 7, 15,23, 67. The sentence continues in the

next line of the text.

Semantic field: family: sisters, brother, child, mother; parts of the body; limb,

head, eyes, hair; religion: God, heaven, pray; places: Cornway, church-yard,

Cottage, sea; nature: grass, sunset, sea, tree, woodland.

Bright Star, Would I were Steadfast As Thou Art, John Keats

The poem expresses the poet’s desire to be like a star because it’s the only

way that he can remain with his love. He talks shows us what type of love he

feels for her, he is madly, crazy in love with her, at the hight of his love for her.

Another possible interpretation is that the poet is trying to freeze the sweet

moment he is living by her side by wishing to die at the moment when he is

experimenting this ecstasy of love. This presents a paradox of having love and

immortality, an impossible combination for human beings. It symbolizes pure

and true love that will always survive (gallant idea) We have also got a couple

of religious connotations (line 4-6). In the first one, the author compares the

star with an eremite because the Eremite have a life of celibaty and seclusion.

In the second one the author talks about ablution, a religious cleaning, as in

saying that the star is pure.

STRUCTURE: This is a Shakespearean sonnet, 3 quatrains and a couplet. The

first quatrain talks about the characteristics of the star. It watches us up from

above, watching over earth. The second quatrain mentions what the star can

see from the sky (water, sea, shores, mountains, moors). The third quatrain

centers more in the feelings and emotions of the speaker, he wants to be with

his beloved one for ever and ever (for all eternity) The last couplet works as a

clousure, a conclusion of the whole poem.

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VOICE: the speaker in this poem is the actual poet, John Keats. He is expressing

the unconditional love he professed to Fanny Brawne, his fiancé. It’s an

autobiographical poem.

IMAGERY: Semantic fields: Nature is the main semantic field in this poem

(star, night, water, shore, earth, mountain, moors, snow) This semantic field

can be slip up in different groups according to specific lexic. Sky: star and

night. Sea: water and shore. Land (works like an opposite to sea) earth,

mountain, moors and snow. These last three semantic fields could also be

rounded up in a single semantic field, universe. Another semantic field would

be religion: (priestlike, eremite, eternal, pure, ablution). Lover´s vocabulary

(soft, tender, sweet, feel). Star: (splendor, eternal, sleepless, patient)

Simile: (line 1) he envies the star for being immortal, he wants to be like it in

this sense. (line 3-4) he compares the bright star’s situation with that of a

religious eremite, who lives in seclusion, and has a lot of patience to observe

the world that surround him, carefully.

Personification: of the star line 3 (eternal lids)

Oxymoron: line 12, “awake for ever in a sweet unrest”. A statement in which

two parts seem contradictory. He wants to take care of his beloved although

this task would be sour because he want be able to be with her. Keats knows

the impossibility oh his desire to live in an unchanging state (to be together for

ever without the passing of time)

Metaphor: line 3, the speakers names the the Eremite (vehicle) referring to

the star (tenor). Both share the quality of being patient, never asleep (ground).

This metaphor is emphasizing the loneliness of the star. Line 7, the mask is the

snow of the mountains. The “mask” is the covering of snow on the ground. This

snow has pleasing connotations, being “new” and “soft”.

Pun: line 13, the word still is used as an adj and an adverb.

Imagery: visual images during the whole poem of the landscape, the

mountains, the moors…

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Change: the poem suffers a turn when describing the star. At first it observes

nature and the landscape from the sky. But then it goes from merely describing

(superficial) to showing us the true feelings that take over him when he thinks

of his loved one (deeper and more profound meaning). He wishes to feel her

forever, to have her with him, listening to her sweet, tender awakenings. He

doesn’t want to die, in order to be with her for as long as he can and to take

care of her.

Importance of the end couplet: it gives the conclusion for his torment. He is

forced to choose and he’d choose to stay with her and die rather than being

steadfast and immortal, as a star in the sky. In the last stanza the repetition of

the sound f and h can be interpreted as a sigh, a final good bye because he

knows that he’s going to die leaving his beloved one alone. The real fact is that

in 1818 Keats was aware that he was dying due to tuberculosis. He was afraid

of leaving his fiancé Fanny Brawne. Consequently, he wants to be a star in

order to protect her despite his imminent death, he wants to be with her

forever (forces an unreal idea to stay with her)

The sonnet devotes most of its lines to syntactically negative clauses.

There is no movement in the poem.

I Wonder Lonely Like A Cloud, William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is a lyric poem focusing

on the poet's response to the beauty of nature. (A lyric poem presents the

deep feelings and emotions of the poet rather than telling a story or presenting

a witty observation.)

CONTEXT: The poem recaptures a moment on April 15, 1802, when

Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, were walking near a lake at Grasmere,

Cumbria County, England, and came upon a shore lined with daffodils.

Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, moved to a cottage at Grasmere in 1799.

After Wordsworth married in 1802, his wife resided there also. The family

continued to live there until 1813. The Lake District was the haunt of not only

Wordsworth but also poets Robert Southey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and

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Thomas De Quincey. Dorothy, who kept a diary, described what she and her

brother saw on that April day in 1802.

SUMMARY: Stanza 1 While wandering like a cloud, the speaker happens upon

daffodils fluttering in a breeze on the shore of a lake, beneath trees. Daffodils

are plants in the lily family with yellow flowers and a crown shaped like a

trumpet. Stanza 2 the daffodils stretch all along the shore. Because there are

so many of them, they remind the speaker of the Milky Way, the galaxy that

scientists say contains about one trillion stars, including the sun. The speaker

humanizes the daffodils when he says they are engaging in a dance. Stanza 3

In their gleeful fluttering and dancing, the daffodils outdo the rippling waves of

the lake. But the poet does not at this moment fully appreciate the happy sight

before him. Stanza 4 Not until the poet later muses about what he saw does

he fully appreciate the cheerful sight of the dancing daffodils.

VOICE: The author, William Coleridge.

METRE: .......The lines in the poem are in iambic tetrameter, as demonstrated in

the third stanza: 

..........1..............2..................3...................4

The WAVES.|.be SIDE.|.them DANCED;.|.but THEY

......1................2..................3................4

Out-DID.|.the SPARK.|.ling WAVES.|.in GLEE:—

....1.............2.............3.............4

A PO.|.et COULD.|.not BUT.|.be GAY

......1.............2...........3............4

In SUCH.|.a JOC.|.und COM.|.pa NY:

.......1................2..................3.................4 . . .

The poem contains four stanzas of six lines each. In each stanza, the first line

rhymes with the third and the second with the fourth. The stanza then ends

with a rhyming couplet. Wordsworth unifies the content of the poem by

focusing the first three stanzas on the experience at the lake and the last

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stanza on the memory of that experience. 

.....

IMAGERY: Semantic fields: nature: sky : cloud, milky way, stars; earth: vales,

hills, daffodils, trees water: lake, waves. Verbs of movement: wander, float,

flutter, dance, toss. Happiness: gay, jocund, bliss, pleasure

Alliteration: lonely as a cloud (line 1).

Simile: Comparison (using as) of the speaker's solitariness to that of a cloud

(line 1).

Personification: Comparison of the cloud to a lonely human. (line 1)

Alliteration: high o'er vales and Hills (line 2).

Alliteration: When all at once (line 3). (Note that the w and o have the same

consonant sound.)

Personification/Metaphor: Comparison of daffodils to a crowd of people

(lines 3-4).

Alliteration: golden Daffodils (line 4).

Alliteration: Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,

Personification/Metaphor: Comparison of daffodils to dancing humans (lines

4, 6).

Metaphor: comparison of daffodils (vehicle) with an army (tenor). The ground

is that both (daffodils and army) are many and move all together.

Enjambment: In lines 1, 7, 9, 14, 17, 19, 21. it uses the enjambment to reflect

the movement of the daffodils.

This poem does have movement. The flowers move by the wind and also the

speaker attitude towards reflections also changes. He learns to appreciate

nature and that makes him happy.

TEACHERS INTERPRETARION: the content of the poem is a description of a field.

Daffodils are compared to a crowd.The poem could be interpreted as nostalgia

for better past.

The rhyme of the ancient mariner. Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

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The rime of the ancient mariner is a narrative poem in the form of a medieval

ballad. The poem was full of archaisms and in the 1815 was modernized and

the glossary was included.

Summary

Three young men are walking together to a wedding, when one of them is

detained by a grizzled old sailor. The young Wedding-Guest angrily demands

that the Mariner let go of him, and the Mariner obeys. But the young man is

transfixed by the ancient Mariner’s “glittering eye” and can do nothing but sit

on a stone and listen to his strange tale. The Mariner says that he sailed on a

ship out of his native harbor—”below the kirk, below the hill, / Below the

lighthouse top”—and into a sunny and cheerful sea. Hearing bassoon music

drifting from the direction of the wedding, the Wedding-Guest imagines that

the bride has entered the hall, but he is still helpless to tear himself from the

Mariner’s story. The Mariner recalls that the voyage quickly darkened, as a

giant storm rose up in the sea and chased the ship southward. Quickly, the ship

came to a frigid land “of mist and snow,” where “ice, mast-high, came floating

by”; the ship was hemmed inside this maze of ice. But then the sailors

encountered an Albatross, a great sea bird. As it flew around the ship, the ice

cracked and split, and a wind from the south propelled the ship out of the frigid

regions, into a foggy stretch of water. The Albatross followed behind it, a

symbol of good luck to the sailors. A pained look crosses the Mariner’s face,

and the Wedding-Guest asks him, “Why look’st thou so?” The Mariner

confesses that he shot and killed the Albatross with his crossbow.

At first, the other sailors were furious with the Mariner for having killed the bird

that made the breezes blow. But when the fog lifted soon afterward, the sailors

decided that the bird had actually brought not the breezes but the fog; they

now congratulated the Mariner on his deed. The wind pushed the ship into a

silent sea where the sailors were quickly stranded; the winds died down, and

the ship was “As idle as a painted ship / Upon a painted ocean.” The ocean

thickened, and the men had no water to drink; as if the sea were rotting, slimy

creatures crawled out of it and walked across the surface. At night, the water

burned green, blue, and white with death fire. Some of the sailors dreamed

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that a spirit, nine fathoms deep, followed them beneath the ship from the land

of mist and snow. The sailors blamed the Mariner for their plight and hung the

corpse of the Albatross around his neck like a cross.

A weary time passed; the sailors became so parched, their mouths so dry, that

they were unable to speak. But one day, gazing westward, the Mariner saw a

tiny speck on the horizon. It resolved into a ship, moving toward them. Too dry-

mouthed to speak out and inform the other sailors, the Mariner bit down on his

arm; sucking the blood, he was able to moisten his tongue enough to cry out,

“A sail! a sail!” The sailors smiled, believing they were saved. But as the ship

neared, they saw that it was a ghostly, skeletal hull of a ship and that its crew

included two figures: Death and the Night-mare Life-in-Death, who takes the

form of a pale woman with golden locks and red lips, and “thicks man’s blood

with cold.” Death and Life-in-Death began to throw dice, and the woman won,

whereupon she whistled three times, causing the sun to sink to the horizon, the

stars to instantly emerge. As the moon rose, chased by a single star, the sailors

dropped dead one by one—all except the Mariner, whom each sailor cursed

“with his eye” before dying. The souls of the dead men leapt from their bodies

and rushed by the Mariner.

The Wedding-Guest declares that he fears the Mariner, with his glittering eye

and his skinny hand. The Mariner reassures the Wedding-Guest that there is no

need for dread; he was not among the men who died, and he is a living man,

not a ghost. Alone on the ship, surrounded by two hundred corpses, the

Mariner was surrounded by the slimy sea and the slimy creatures that crawled

across its surface. He tried to pray but was deterred by a “wicked whisper” that

made his heart “as dry as dust.” He closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of

the dead men, each of who glared at him with the malice of their final curse.

For seven days and seven nights the Mariner endured the sight, and yet he was

unable to die. At last the moon rose, casting the great shadow of the ship

across the waters; where the ship’s shadow touched the waters, they burned

red. The great water snakes moved through the silvery moonlight, glittering;

blue, green, and black, the snakes coiled and swam and became beautiful in

the Mariner’s eyes. He blessed the beautiful creatures in his heart; at that

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moment, he found himself able to pray, and the corpse of the Albatross fell

from his neck, sinking “like lead into the sea.”

The Mariner continues telling his story to the Wedding-Guest. Free of the curse

of the Albatross, the Mariner was able to sleep, and as he did so, the rains

came, drenching him. The moon broke through the clouds, and a host of spirits

entered the dead men’s bodies, which began to move about and perform their

old sailors’ tasks. The ship was propelled forward as the Mariner joined in the

work. The Wedding-Guest declares again that he is afraid of the Mariner, but

the Mariner tells him that the men’s bodies were inhabited by blessed spirits,

not cursed souls. At dawn, the bodies clustered around the mast, and sweet

sounds rose up from their mouths—the sounds of the spirits leaving their

bodies. The spirits flew around the ship, singing. The ship continued to surge

forward until noon, driven by the spirit from the land of mist and snow, nine

fathoms deep in the sea. At noon, however, the ship stopped, then began to

move backward and forward as if it were trapped in a tug of war. Finally, it

broke free, and the Mariner fell to the deck with the jolt of sudden acceleration.

He heard two disembodied voices in the air; one asked if he was the man who

had killed the Albatross, and the other declared softly that he had done

penance for his crime and would do more penance before all was rectified.

In dialogue, the two voices discussed the situation. The moon overpowered the

sea, they said, and enabled the ship to move; an angelic power moved the ship

northward at an astonishingly rapid pace. When the Mariner awoke from his

trance, he saw the dead men standing together, looking at him. But a breeze

rose up and propelled the ship back to its native country, back to the Mariner’s

home; he recognized the kirk, the hill, and the lighthouse. As they neared the

bay, seraphs—figures made of pure light—stepped out of the corpses of the

sailors, which fell to the deck. Each seraph waved at the Mariner, who was

powerfully moved. Soon, he heard the sound of oars; the Pilot, the Pilot’s son,

and the holy Hermit were rowing out toward him. The Mariner hoped that the

Hermit could shrive (absolve) him of his sin, washing the blood of the Albatross

off his soul.

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The Hermit, a holy man who lived in the woods and loved to talk to mariners

from strange lands, had encouraged the Pilot and his son not to be afraid and

to row out to the ship. But as they reached the Mariner’s ship, it sank in a

sudden whirlpool, leaving the Mariner afloat and the Pilot’s rowboat spinning in

the wake. The Mariner was loaded aboard the Pilot’s ship, and the Pilot’s boy,

mad with terror, laughed hysterically and declared that the devil knows how to

row. On land, the Mariner begged the Hermit to shrive him, and the Hermit

bade the Mariner tell his tale. Once it was told, the Mariner was free from the

agony of his guilt. However, the guilt returned over time and persisted until the

Mariner traveled to a new place and told his tale again. The moment he comes

upon the man to whom he is destined to tell his tale, he knows it, and he has

no choice but to relate the story then and there to his appointed audience; the

Wedding-Guest is one such person.

The church doors burst open, and the wedding party streams outside. The Mariner declares

to the Wedding-Guest that he who loves all God’s creatures leads a happier, better life; he

then takes his leave. The Wedding-Guest walks away from the party, stunned, and awakes

the next morning “a sadder and a wiser man.”

There are three plots that the rhyme of the ancient mariner is referred to: the

quest, voyage and return and tragedy.It tells a story.

Figurative language: use of symbolism. Lack of water means the dryness of the

spirit. Becalmed sea means the aimless soul who has sinned and wait for

redemption.

The figure of the ancient mariner is related to other characters who committed

a great sin and were condemned to wander around the world: Cain, the

wandering Jew…

The poem is about two voyages: one literal and one symbolic (a journey to the

inner self)

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VOICE: The ancient mariner tells his story to one of the wedding guest because

the action takes place during a wedding. There is a contrast between the

wedding (the real life) and the poem (the supernatural).

METRE: they are quatrains and there is an alternation of lines with three and

four stressed (iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter): In syntactical structure

it uses a lot of repetitions and parallelism. The rhyme is A B C B which makes

the poem easier to remember (dogge Besides end rhyme,

Coleridge also frequently uses internal rhyme. Following are examples.

The guests are met, the feast is set (line 7)

The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast  (line 49)

And through the drifts the snowy clifts (line 54)

The ice did split with a thunder-fit (line 69)

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud (line 75)

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew (line 103)

red).

The poem has been interpreted as the suffering of a person.

IMAGERY:

Enjambment

.......Coleridge occasionally uses enjambment, the practice of carrying the

sense of one line of verse over to the next line without a pause. Here are

examples:

And now the storm-blast came, and he

Was tyrannous and strong (lines 41-42) 

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We could not speak, no more than if

We had been choked with soot. (lines 137-138)

Instead of the cross, the Albatross

About my neck was hung. (lines 141-142)

'There passed a weary time. Each throat 

Was parch'd, and glazed each eye. (lines 143-144)

Figures of Speech

.

The poem is rich in figures of speech. Here are examples:

Alliteration

By thy long grey beard and glittering eye (line 3)

He holds him with his skinny hand (line 9)

The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,

For he heard the loud bassoon. (lines 31-32)

The merry minstrelsy (line 36)

The furrow followed free (line 104) 

Anaphora

The ice was here, the ice was there,

The ice was all around. (line 59-60)

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked (line 157) 

Without a breeze, without a tide (line 169) 

Her lips were red, her looks were free,

Her locks were yellow as gold:

Her skin was as white as leprosy (lines 190-192)

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They groan'd, they stirr'd, they all uprose, 

Irony

Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink ;

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink. (lines 119-122)

Water is everywhere, but there is none to drink.

Metaphor

Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,

And cursed me with his eye. (lines 215-216)

Comparison of the appearance of the eye to a curse

They coil'd and swam; and every track

Was a flash of golden fire. (lines 281-282)

Comparison of the wake left by the sea snakes to fire

Onomatopoeia

It crack'd and growl'd, and roar'd and howl'd (line 61)

Personification

The Sun came up upon the left,

Out of the sea came he !

And he shone bright, and on the right

Went down into the sea. (lines 25-28)

Comparison of the sun to a person

Simile

    [E]very soul, it passed me by,

Like the whizz of my crossbow! (lines 223-224)

Comparison of the passing of a soul to the sound of a shot arrow

    [T]he sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky

Lay like a load on my weary eye (lines 251-252)

Comparison of the sky and sea to a weight on the eye

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Her beams bemocked the sultry main,

Like April hoar-frost spread (lines 268-269)

Comparison of reflected sunbeams to frost

The bride hath paced into the hall,.................

Red as a rose is she (lines 33-34)

Comparison of the bride to a rose

The water, like a witch's oils,

Burnt green, and blue and white. (lines 129-130)

Comparison of water to witch's oils

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean. (lines 115-118)

Comparison of the motionless ship and ocean to paintings

Synecdoche

The western wave was all a-flame (line 171)

Wave refers to the ocean.

Lord Byron, Don Juan

Don Jua n was Byron’s last work. It is a long poem left unfinished at the poet’s

death. It includes sixteen complete cantos, each of them containing over a

hundred stanzas. Its publication caused great scandal in England because it

was considered immoral. The story deals with the adventures of Juan, a young

Spaniard brought up by a rigid mother to become a man of strict morals.

Instead he turns to a life of sexual adventure and travel. The figure of Juan and

his mother are partly based on autobiographical experience.

The figure of Don Juan is originated in a Spanish play by Tirso de Molina. This

character was represented as a libertine, a kind of devil, which in the end is

punished by his crimes. Byron’s Don Juan it’s different in this aspect. He is the

one being seduced, not the one who seduces. He is also passive. In this case,

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the narrator is the one who has an evil and diabolical tone. Byron uses a

narrator to express his own ideas on a wide range of subjects.

VOICE: in the dedication, the speaker is Byron who criticizes Robert Southy

(first romantic generation) who no longer believes in the true romantic spirit.

He has become comfortable man, poet laureate. Then in the cantos, we only

know that the speaker is a man. The protagonist is the first Byronic Hero.

METRE: There are eight line stanzas with six lines rhyming and a final couplet.

It possesses full rhyme (feminine). The first six lines are used to explain

something and the last two are used to make fun of what has just being said.

Don Juan ends his lines with / X , which is very difficult. Byron uses it to create

a special effect on the rhyme. It’s iambic pentameter. A-b-a-b-a-b-c-c… (pattern

for the hole poem)

IMAGERY:

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