{"id":2546,"date":"2022-02-09T14:02:04","date_gmt":"2022-02-09T22:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/?p=2546"},"modified":"2023-07-11T17:01:16","modified_gmt":"2023-07-12T00:01:16","slug":"romanticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/2022\/romanticism\/","title":{"rendered":"Romance and Romanticism: 5 English Romantic poets to read on Valentine\u2019s Day!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Poetry has always been associated with love and courtship, and nothing is more romantic than sharing a poem with that special someone on the most romantic of days, which is only a few days away and is none other than Valentine\u2019s Day. If you\u2019re not much of a wordsmith or perhaps too embarrassed to pen your lovey-dovey thoughts, there is a plethora of love poems out there that one can use, from poets of antiquity (Sappho<\/a>) to those living today (Joy Harjo<\/a>). There are of course the go-to poets whose names have long been associated with romance, such as William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barret Browning, Pablo Neruda, to name a few. But their poems are so widely used that the very act of reading them to your love seems a tad sappy, trite, and even clich\u00e9. You can\u2019t go wrong with any of them, but if you want to try something that isn\u2019t too run-of-the-mill, why not try some of the Romantic poets. Isn\u2019t a Shakespearean sonnet romantic enough, you ask? Well, by \u201cRomantic,\u201d with a capital R<\/em>, I mean something more sublime in how it expresses love and excites our emotions in such a manner that transcends ordinary experience, or how it conflates the grandeur of nature and the awe it inspires with the ineffable feeling of being in love. The Romantics didn\u2019t necessarily write about love per se and many of their poems might not even be the perfect love poem in that they don\u2019t follow the conventions of traditional love poetry, but in many respects their poetry certainly speaks the language of love.<\/p>\n

So who are these Romantic poets, and what makes them so \u201cromantic,\u201d anyway? They were poets who were very much influenced by the Romantic movement, which greatly influenced art and literature in the 18th<\/sup> and 19th<\/sup> centuries. William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and William Blake are some of the more prominent poets who helped define and in many respects were influenced by Romanticism, which has a rather broad definition. But as it pertains to literature, it can be defined by the poetry of these Romantic poets whose writings emphasize individualism, spontaneity, and subjectivity as well as express a reverence for nature, devotion to beauty, a belief that imagination is superior to reason, and a fascination with the past and its myths and mysticism. They valued emotion as a source of inspiration and aesthetic experience, seeing it as more powerful than rational thought for the expression and explanation of the world around them. The German poet who first coined the term romantic<\/em>, Friedrich Schlegel, succinctly defines Romanticism as \u201cliterature depicting emotional matter in an imaginative form.\u201d And indeed one of the major themes in Romantic poetry is the relationship between humans and their emotions and the creative impulse they elicit. There\u2019s no denying that the Romantics were unapologetically a sentimental lot, but that\u2019s what makes their poetry so beautiful, passionate, and even sensual. Here are five Romantic poets to read for Valentine\u2019s Day!<\/p>\n

Lord Byron<\/a> (1788\u20131824)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Lord Byron by Richard Westall (1813)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

George Gordan Byron, better known as Lord Byron, was a key poet in the Romantic movement. Among his peers, he was the most flamboyant and had gained quite a reputation for his wild lifestyle and scandalous love life. He was the playboy of his time\u2014rich, famous, swashbuckling, adventurous, a womanizer and a heartbreaker. He had a sharp wit, which when paired with his mercurial temper made him dangerous should one ever cross him. But Byron was very much the sentimental poet who wrote some of the most beautiful poems in the English language. \u201cShe Walks in Beauty\u201d is one of his best-loved poems and one of the finest of Romantic poetry. Its lyrical qualities make setting it to music easy\u2014so if you really want to impress your love, why not sing it!<\/p>\n

She Walks in Beauty<\/em><\/strong>
\nShe walks in beauty, like the night
\nOf cloudless climes and starry skies;
\nAnd all that\u2019s best of dark and bright
\nMeet in her aspect and her eyes;
\nThus mellowed to that tender light
\nWhich heaven to gaudy day denies.<\/p>\n

One shade the more, one ray the less,
\nHad half impaired the nameless grace
\nWhich waves in every raven tress,
\nOr softly lightens o\u2019er her face;
\nWhere thoughts serenely sweet express,
\nHow pure, how dear their dwelling-place.<\/p>\n

And on that cheek, and o\u2019er that brow,
\nSo soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
\nThe smiles that win, the tints that glow,
\nBut tell of days in goodness spent,
\nA mind at peace with all below,
\nA heart whose love is innocent!<\/p>\n

Percy Bysshe Shelley<\/a> (1792\u20131822)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Percy Bysshe Shelley by Amelia Curran (1819)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the visionary poets who helped define Romanticism, but he was a rather obscure poet who wasn\u2019t widely read or celebrated while he was alive. Only after his untimely death did his poetry begin to receive recognition and be truly appreciated. This is not to say, however, he didn\u2019t have a huge influence on the literary community of his day. He was friends with Lord Byron and John Keats, both of whom inspired and in turn were inspired by Shelley. Like his peers, he was a free spirit and a free-thinker, a humanist, atheist, feminist, socialist, philosopher, and to top it off a wooer of women. \u201cLove\u2019s Philosophy\u201d combines his rhetorical skills and philosophical musings in an attempt to persuade the listener to kiss the poet using arguments that nothing in the world is single.<\/p>\n

Love\u2019s Philosophy<\/em><\/strong>
\nThe fountains mingle with the river
\nAnd the rivers with the ocean,<\/span>
\nThe winds of heaven mix for ever
\nWith a sweet emotion;<\/span>
\nNothing in the world is single;
\nAll things by a law divine<\/span>
\nIn one spirit meet and mingle.
\nWhy not I with thine?\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

See the mountains kiss high heaven
\nAnd the waves clasp one another;<\/span>
\nNo sister-flower would be forgiven
\nIf it disdained its brother;<\/span>
\nAnd the sunlight clasps the earth
\nAnd the moonbeams kiss the sea:<\/span>
\nWhat is all this sweet work worth
\nIf thou kiss not me?<\/span><\/p>\n

William Wordsworth<\/a> (1770\u20131850)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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William Wordsworth by Samuel Crosthwaite (c. 1844)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One can\u2019t talk about Romanticism without mentioning William Wordsworth, one of England\u2019s most influential Romantic poets and very much nature\u2019s poet. Many of his poems express a reverence for nature, for central to his poetry is this pantheistic idea that love of nature leads to love of humankind. He was friends with Samuel T. Coleridge, and both believed that the role of nature in poetry should help to espouse a unifying pantheism that brings people together for a common good and that an imaginative engagement with the natural world could lead to compassion for all living things. The hippies of the 1960s and \u201870s were a little late in the game on this idea. He wrote using the vocabulary of ordinary people rather than the formal stylized language of poets before him. It was all about communicating feelings honestly without embellishment, and it was a more effective way to write about nature. His poems have a certain elegance in their simplicity, and \u201cTravelling\u201d is a good example of his poetic style.<\/p>\n

Travelling<\/em><\/strong>
\nThis is the spot:\u2014how mildly does the sun
\nShine in between the fading leaves! the air
\nIn the habitual silence of this wood
\nIs more than silent: and this bed of heath,
\nWhere shall we find so sweet a resting-place?
\nCome!\u2014let me see thee sink into a dream
\nOf quiet thoughts,\u2014protracted till thine eye
\nBe calm as water when the winds are gone
\nAnd no one can tell whither.\u2014my sweet friend!
\nWe two have had such happy hours together
\nThat my heart melts in me to think of it.<\/p>\n

Samuel Taylor Coleridge<\/a> (1772\u20131834)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge by Peter Vandyke (1795)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A poet, critic, philosopher, and a drug addict\u2014Samuel Taylor Coleridge was all these and much more. He\u2019s probably best known for Rime of the Ancient Mariner<\/em>, a poem of great imagination and creativity. Of all the Romantic poets, he was probably the most imaginative and some might say most out there in his thoughts (maybe it was all that opium!). Imagination is the poetic principle that has defined Coleridge\u2019s poetry and indeed what makes his poems great. His poems, notably the ones about love, have a sensuous lyricism, which is one of the defining aspects of Romantic poetry and which many later poets tried to emulate. \u201cPresence of Love\u201d isn\u2019t as well-known as his other poems, but perhaps that makes it all the better on Valentine\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n

Presence of Love<\/em><\/strong>
\nAnd in Life\u2019s noisiest hour,
\nThere whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
\nThe heart\u2019s Self-solace and soliloquy.<\/p>\n

You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within;
\nAnd to the leading Love-throb in the Heart
\nThro\u2019 all my Being, thro\u2019 my pulse\u2019s beat;
\nYou lie in all my many Thoughts, like Light,
\nLike the fair light of Dawn, or summer Eve
\nOn rippling Stream, or cloud-reflecting Lake.<\/p>\n

And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you,
\nHow oft! I bless the Lot that made me love you.<\/p>\n

John Keats<\/a> (1795\u20131821)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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John Keats by William Hilton (c. 1822)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

John Keats died of tuberculosis at the tragic young age of 25, yet in his short life he left behind a substantial body of work and made a lasting impact on English literature. His friend Joseph Severn painted a portrait of him in 1819 before his death. It was reproduced by William Hilton around 1822 and immortalizes Keats as the young, hopeful yet doomed poet who is aware of his mortality. He is perhaps best known for \u201cLa Belle Dame sans Merci\u201d and his odes such as \u201cOde on a Grecian Urn\u201d and \u201cOde to a Nightingale\u201d\u2014all dealing with death in some form or another. However, beautiful and moving as they are, they\u2019re not exactly Valentine-grade love poetry, unless your boo is a goth. For something truly romantic, his sonnet \u201cBright Star\u201d is a lovely poem to share with that special someone.<\/p>\n

Bright Star<\/strong><\/em>
\nBright star, would I were steadfast as thou art\u2014
\nNot in lone splendour hung aloft the night<\/span>
\nAnd watching, with eternal lids apart,
\nLike nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,<\/span>
\nThe moving waters at their priestlike task
\nOf pure ablution round earth’s human shores,<\/span>
\nOr gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
\nOf snow upon the mountains and the moors\u2014<\/span>
\nNo\u2014yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
\nPillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,<\/span>
\nTo feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
\nAwake for ever in a sweet unrest,<\/span>
\nStill, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
\nAnd so live ever\u2014or else swoon to death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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