Posts Tagged Romantics

The winter storm we had last weekend  was followed this weekend by a day of rain. The 10-plus inches of snow on the ground that began the week are now mostly gone. Out my window, south-facing hillocks are largely bare. The big banks of plowed snow that line the streets, greatly diminished.

Winter this year in the North Country has been a series of grey days… overcast skies and light fog that hangs over the cold earth like a bleak blanket. Not the winter of our mind and memory, but a Dickensian one.

Grey days make us long for sun. For those of us who spend our working days in un-natural places without natural light longing can easily turn to desperate daydreaming… a condition I know all too well.

Along with Thoreau this winter, I have been re-reading Shelley again. The kindle app lets me carry him, and a hundred poems, wherever my phone and I go. He is a perfect companion for such grey days.

Today’s poem, “The Question,” has long been one of my favorite Shelley poems. It embodies for me the very essence of the Romantic. Indeed, if I were to teach a class on the Romantic poets, I think I might begin with “The Question.” Simply for the fact that it so perfectly brings together all the elements of Romantic poetry together in such a pleasurable way.

On another bleak December day, I can think of no better poem.

Enjoy!

The Question

Listening with a pencil and my ear, these are the lines I marked:

 

   And nearer to the river’s trembling edge

         There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white,

And starry river buds among the sedge,

         And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,

Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge

         With moonlight beams of their own watery light;

 

I enjoy the luminosity of these lines: the way Shelley balances rhyme with “purple  pranked” alliteration. I cannot read these lines aloud without smiling.

Poetry is meant to provide pleasure, especially on “Bare Winter” days. And a Shelley poem never lets us down.

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Montana Generations (copyright © m.a.h. hinton)

April is officially National Poetry Month in the United States. Yet March has always seemed to me to be the most poetic of months… at least here in the North Country. Like October, it is a month of transition. While October is a transition from life to death, March is one from death to life. New life is by definition the truest subject for poetry.

During the month of March, MontanaWriter will be featuring poems about the month of March and about seasonal transitions, beginning with this familiar poem by Wordsworth.

A lyric response to nature is one of the hallmarks of the Romantic poetic movement. “Written in March” is pure Romantic poetry in its reaction against the ideals of Enlightenment poetry and classical detachment.

To contemporary ears, the radical nature of what Wordsworth (and Keats, and Shelley, and Byron) is trying to do in this poem can be easily lost. Centuries of bad lyric poetry has made us a more than a bit tone-deaf.  We read these lines as people whose ears have been corrupted by greeting cards and magazine drivel.

Reading a poem like this aloud helps. Especially if you step outside on a sunny day and feel the sun on your face when you are reading it. Then you can feel what Wordsworth is doing… and truly appreciate it.

Enjoy!

Written in March
The cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter
The green field sleeps in the sun;
The oldest and youngest
Are at work with the strongest;
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!

Like an army defeated
The snow hath retreated,
And now doth fare ill
On the top of the bare hill;
The plowboy is whooping—anon-anon:
There’s joy in the mountains;
There’s life in the fountains;
Small clouds are sailing,
Blue sky prevailing;
The rain is over and gone!

Listening with a pencil and my ear, these are the lines I marked:

There’s joy in the mountains;
There’s life in the fountains;
Small clouds are sailing,
Blue sky prevailing;
The rain is over and gone!

The word cock (in the very first line of the poem) is not used much these days. The University of South Carolina sports teams are still called the Gamecocks, “cocks” for short. When I first tried a Google search for the first line of this poem the internet filter at the school where I work blocked the search. Funny how language can change over time.

Poetry and poetic conventions have changed as well. These final lines though remain strong. I remember a June morning standing in the Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness 30 years ago and speaking these last lines over a mountain lake that reflected snow capped-peaks and knowing I was saying something close to perfection. That is the true power of Wordsworth and the Romantic movement

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A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.
~Wallace Stevens

I have been reminded of Stevens’ famous quote a number of times in the last few months as I have been working on my own poetry and as I have been reading the poetry of others.

In November at MontanaWriter, we have been focusing on poems about stars. Keats’ poem “Bright Star” seems like the perfect way to end the month. But for that, a Keat’s poem would be the perfect way to end any month.

To our modern ear, some of the flourishes of the Romantic style can seem overwrought. Our ears and hearts have been hardened from hearing too much bad poetry that has tried to copy the Romantic style. It is easy to forget what great poetry can sound like… feel like.

Enjoy!

Bright Star
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art–
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors–
No–yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever–or else swoon to death.

Listening with a pencil and my ear, these are the lines I marked:

Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever–or else swoon to death.

The feelings encompassed in these lines are universal, having been felt by countless lovers for countless generations. In Keats, we find the perfect expression of love. So perfect that it cannot be paraphrased or ignored… only read and felt and enjoyed.

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John Keats by William Hilton

Of the five major poets of the Romantic period (I am not counting Blake as a Romantic), Keats is the most beloved. His poems… and lines from his poems…  are also the most universally recognizable. This famous first stanza from “Endymion” is evidence of this. These lines of heroic couplets (paired rhymes of iambic pentameter) are as familiar to us as any lines of poetry ever written.

Keats, of course, only lived to the age of 26. Though age, like everything else, is relative, 26 seems younger and younger to me with each passing year. And with each passing year his poetic accomplishments seem more and more staggering.

It is said that true prodigies only exists in three areas… math, music, and chess. In all other disciplines and endeavors, what we call genius comes from the perfect and serendipitous marriage of intellect, ability, effort, and experience: Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Picasso…. That all those things could come together so quickly in Keats is more than serendipitious.

I am thinking now of other short lived artists who had their stars burn brightly but quickly… most are musicians, prodigies: Mozart (dead at 35), Schubert (dead at 30), Hank Williams, Sr. (dead at 29), Jimi Hendrix (dead at 28).

Beauty is Keat’s theme. And what better day to think about beauty than a bright spring day in May.

Enjoy!

Endymion (Stanza 1)

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing

A flowery band to bind us to the earth,

Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth

Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,

Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways::

Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,

Some shape of beauty moves away the pall

From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,

Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon

For simple sheep; and such are daffodils

With the green world they live in; and clear rills

That for themselves a cooling covert make

‘Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,

Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:

And such too is the grandeur of the dooms

We have imagined for the mighty dead;

All lovely tales that we have heard or read:

An endless fountain of immortal drink,

Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.

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Lord Byron

Wynton Marsalis has said of Louis Armstrong that “he was so great that you could lie about how great he was and you would still not be saying enough.” The same could be said of Lord Byron’s life: you could lie about how big it was and you still would not be saying enough.

A man of public affairs and public scandals, Byron, once dubbed famously as “mad, bad and dangerous to know,” was larger than life. He was the kind of man you imagine dominating any room he entered And yet it is not his life that is important. For a poet, it never is.

Poetically and rhetorically “Solitude” is not a complicated poem… any complexity lies wholly within the man who wrote it, … and in the way of great poetry… wholly within our own selves who today read it.

What matters about Byron, ultimately, – exciting life aside – is his poetry . How did such an outwardly worldly man create such fine art? In today’s poem “Solitude,” he points to that essential quality that made him one of the greatest poets of the English language.

Enjoy!

Solitude

To sit on rocks, to muse o’er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene,
Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne’er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o’er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude, ’tis but to hold
Converse with Nature’s charms, and view her stores unrolled.

But midst the crowd, the hurry, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel and to possess,
And roam alone, the world’s tired denizen,
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
None that, with kindred consciousness endued,
If we were not, would seem to smile the less
Of all the flattered, followed, sought and sued;
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!

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Greek Stamp of Lord Byron

Lord Byron’s poetry is usually taught and read alongside the work of Keats and Shelley. This is, of course, a natural way to look at poets and poetry, within the context of their time and in comparison to their contemporaries. Generally this is a good way to be introduced to new writers and new works. But in the case of Byron, this is the worst possible way to introduce his work.

When held up alongside his two brilliant contemporaries, Byron becomes diffused into something other than, and less than, he is… he becomes misunderstood in every sense of that word. In the case of Lord Byron, literary context does not sharpen, but rather dulls true understanding and appreciation.

The best way to read Byron is to read him alongside another literary giant from another literary age altogether, Milton. While no two individuals could be more different than Milton (the puritan) and Byron (the hedonist) they share in common the truly unique ability to create in English an epic poem of immortal significance.

Only when read alongside Paradise Lost, can Don Juan be fully appreciated and fully understood. And only when Don Juan is fully appreciated and fully understood as the masterpiece that it is, can Lord Byron its creator receive the credit and acclaim he so richly deserves.

The small poem “She Walks in Beauty” is neither epic nor difficult to appreciate. A staple in introductory poetry classes, it is pure Byron.

Enjoy!

She Walks in Beauty

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.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

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While today Percy Bysshe Shelley is generally recognized as one of the shining lights of English poetry, during his own lifetime and for a generation after his death he was not so widely regarded. Most of this lack of appreciation was due to critics disliking his political and philosophical writings.

For early critics, his less “complicated” poems like “Ozymadias” alone were acknowledged and praised. His “rediscovery” at the end of the 19th Century and the end of the Victorian Period  by the Pre-Raphaelites reinvigorated poetry. His influence on Yeats is, of course, significant.

“Ozymandias” is a staple of English 101 classes. In form and content, it is a perfect poem – one easily memorized and gratefully recited. Its many ironic levels are easy to see, and strike a familiar and modern chord.

Enjoy!

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

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William Wordsworth

There are poems that are familiar to us even the very first time we formally read them. William Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much With Us” is one of those poems.

The sense of poetic deja vu we get from reading this poem is the same we get reading Shakespeare, the King James Bible, Keats, and Whitman. It is the merging of language, thought, and idea so complete that one can no longer separate the English language from Shakespeare, and Shakespeare from the English language.

With the coming of Christmas Season and all the commercialization that goes along with it, Wordsworth’s famous poem seems timely.

Enjoy again… even for the first time!

The World Is Too Much with us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

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