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ROMANTIC POETRY.
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Examines Romantic elements of William Blake's "The Tyger," Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" & William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud."... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Examines Romantic elements of William Blake's "The Tyger," Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" & William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud."

Paper Introduction:
This study will examine three poems by English poets of the Romantic period: William Blake's "The Tyger," Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," and William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as A Cloud." The study will examine the basic principles of Romanticism and show how each poem upholds those principles. Although the three poets demonstrate different levels of intensity and different approaches to reality, all three fall within the Romantic mantle in their emphasis on nature and the imagination as expressions of a deeper reality. The Romantic poets, as Scholes et al. write, tended to be "transcendental in their philosophy, seeing nature as symbolic of the Creator's presence, and natural creation as analogous to the lesser creations of imaginative human beings" (Scholes et al. 606). Cuddon notes these features of Romantic poetry:

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Here the Romantic emphasis on the individual holds sway. New York: Penguin, 1979.Drabble, Margaret, ed. Blake is suggesting that it must have been aCreator of unimaginable power, imagination, and mystery which created twosuch opposite creatures. New York: Washington Square, 1968.25 .----------------------- 1 Thisfact certainly must shape any analysis of the poem. The poem is nothing butquestions about the Creator behind the tiger, rather than a dogmaticargument about what or who God is or is not. Blake's praise is finally for theimage-maker, not the image, for the Creator of Nature and not merely fornature itself. "I Wandered Lonely as A Cloud." Immortal Poems of theEnglish Language. Thepoet could be describing the subconscious, where life in its most wildforms thrives, as opposed to the "stately" and artificial grounds createdby Kubla Khan "with walls and towers . write, Blake here is "seeking a visionwhich would transfigure the natural, or fallen world, revealing itscorrespondence with an eternal form" (Scholes 6 6). After all, it is indeed an intuitional, irrational insightand not a reasoned intelligence which perceives the power of the memory ofthe daffodils to transform the poet's consciousness. Kubla Khan's "stately pleasure-dome" (2) is briefly described with acontinuing emphasis on the power and beauty of nature, which seems tooverwhelm any concern for the dome itself. This poem is an illustration ofwhat Preminger calls Wordsworth's emphasis on "the superiority of creativeimagination over intelligence in its spontaneous intuition of truth"(Preminger 72 ). Again, the Romantic poet stands in awe before nature notsimply for its own sake but for its transcendent power, its power to bringup exciting thoughts about the Creator behind nature. Ed. "Kubla Khan." Immortal Poems of the EnglishLanguage. New York: Washington Square, 1968. Where does this creator dwell andhow high can he or it fly, and "on what wings" (7)? The symbolism here can be fairly said tobe related to the subconscious itself, with the poet making clear that heis inspired not by stately pleasure-domes but by "that deep romantic chasmwhich slanted/ Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover" (12-13). The poet also did not hidethe fact that he was under the influence of a drug at the time he wrote thepoem, creating what Drabble calls an "opium-vision" (Drabble 211). The first fourlines of the poem introduce the image of the tiger in relation to the makerof the tiger, or God, the "immortal hand or eye" (3). Oscar Williams. Coleridge unleashes his imagination with a drug and withcourage discovers and/or creates an imaginative world like no other.Wordsworth, adhering to his credo of ordinary things in everyday language,sees a field of daffodils, enjoys it in the moment, and then "oft" reapsits blissful rewards as he recalls it suddenly in his imagination. They out-dazzle the waves of a bay they stretch beside (14), andremind the poet of the "Milky Way"(8). The final stanza duplicates the first, except that "Dare" replaces"Could," emphasizing once again the poet's awe before not only the tiger,but even moreso the Creator of the tiger. girded round" (7). 612). New York: Oxford UP, 1991.Wordsworth, William. The Romantic poets, as Scholes et al.write, tended to be "transcendental in their philosophy, seeing nature assymbolic of the Creator's presence, and natural creation as analogous tothe lesser creations of imaginative human beings" (Scholes et al. increasing importance attached to . . He acknowledges that theypleased him in the moment, but he did not realize the longer-term "wealth"(18) they had given him. Tellingly,the poem ends with reference to "Paradise," recalling Blake's emphasis onthe creator behind Nature and Scholes' argument that the Romantic poetsseek some "eternal form" behind the flux of nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1974.Scholes, Robert, Nancy Comley, Carl Klaus, and Michael Silverman, ed. The juxtaposition of the "sunny dome" and "those caves of ice" doesnot seem all that "savage," but the poet seems to see them as symbols ofthe threat his Romantic imagination holds for the conventional world (48-55). Blake's "The Tyger" clearly qualifies as Romantic poetry, relying onthe power and wonder of nature to carry his spiritual message. Did the Creator drawback a "dread hand" and flee on "dread feet"? Elements of Literature. New York: Oxford UP, 1991.6 8.Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. as holy and enchanted/ As e'er beneath awaning moon was haunted/ By woman wailing for her demon lover!" (14-16).The underworld of the vision, sparked by the drug, is full of "ceaselessturmoil seething" and marked by a volcano-like phenomenon (17-22). One finds, then, the same contrasts innature which marks Blake's poem. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985.Preminger, Alex, ed. To such an extremely passionate, Romantic poet as Coleridge, theimagination or subconscious offers not terrors at all, but rather sourcesof greater life: "A savage place! . After the controlled fire of Blake, and the raging near-anarchy ofColeridge in his opium vision, Wordsworth seems tame indeed, but henevertheless fits into the Romantic tradition, primarily because of theparamount position he grants to nature and its power to transform theconsciousness. . Ed. Oscar Williams. The subjectivity of theindividual in each poem is also stressed, which accounts for thedifferences in the way the poets see and express their vision of the world.All three poets see nature as a liberating force capable of carrying theindividual and his imagination beyond the limitations and cares of theordinary world. . . Wordsworth's poem is also far more simple and accessible thanBlake's, and far more than Coleridge's. Nature is not simply a way to distract oneself from theworld of the ordinary, but rather is a way to simultaneously delve beneaththe surface of both the world and the self. Thisdeeper river is a force for war, as opposed to the first, surface riverwhich was also "sacred" but which appears to be serene and peaceful. 267.Cuddon, J.A. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. That "wealth" refers to the many times ("oft")those daffodils later suddenly returned to him in his imagination,retrieving him from a melancholy place: "And then my heart with pleasurefills,/ And dances with the daffodils" (23-24). The war, however, is not to be, replaced by a rather tame contrastbetween the "sunny pleasure-dome" and the "caves of ice" (36). "And'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far/ Ancestral voices prophesying war!"(29-3 ). Blake usesthe great orange-and-black striped beast to stand for the mysterious andthreatening might of nature in the form of a wild animal. He walks through nature and sees "a crowd . Again,Coleridge is an extreme Romantic seeking excitement which a more sedateRomantic such as Wordsworth would likely draw back from in horror. As Scholes et al. Ed. He personifies nature in the Romantic way, seeing the flowers as"Tossing their heads in sprightly dance" (12). . Literary Terms. Thepoet is apparently out of the vision at this point, for he reflects that ifhe was able to bring back the damsel's song, "I would build that dome inair,/ That sunny dome! Coleridgesuggests with his symbolism that the conventional and conscious mind islike the palace, full of artificial devices to protect itself from theperceived terrors lurking in the subconscious. The fifth stanza uses the image of the stars (shooting stars as"spears"?) and rain to evoke the finished Creation, and asks if the Creatorwas pleased or "did smile." The last line of the fifth stanza is meant toshock, to contrast the tiger suddenly and unexpectedly with the Lamb, orJesus Christ, the Lamb of God. Suddenly thepoem is interrupted by the symbol of "A damsel with a dulcimer" (37). Robert Scholes,Nancy Comley, Carl Klaus, and Michael Silverman. Wordsworth alsodemonstrates in this poem his admonition that poetic subjects should be"incidents and situations from common life" and should be expressed inlanguage "really used by men" (Scholes et al. At the same time, as Premingernotes, the poem differs somewhat from some other Romantic works, such asthe Wordsworth poem, in that Coleridge relies more on "exoticism, magic[and] dream" (Preminger 72 ). One possibility is that Blake means to use thetiger and the lamb to symbolize the might of Jehovah and the meekness ofJesus. Nevertheless, this poem does yield a sort of transcendence, at leastfor the poet. Blake combines power andcontrol to evoke the magnificence and mystery of both the natural beast andits Creator. Down to a sunless sea" (3; 5). The third stanza shows the poet trying to bring this Creator into aclearer picture in his imagination, trying to relate the Creator to thethings familiar to the poet (shoulder and art) and also to imagine what theCreator must have felt when the tiger came to life. the power of the imagination; a tendency to exalt the individual (Cuddon 588). 6 6).Cuddon notes these features of Romantic poetry: an increasing interest in Nature, and in the natural, primitive and uncivilized way of life; a growing interest in scenery, especially its more untamed and disorderly manifestations; an association of human moods with the "moods" of Nature; . Nature resides at the heart of Wordsworth's poem, but it is a naturewhich brings "the bliss of solitude" to the poet when he is "In vacant orin pensive mood" (22; 2 ), rather than the state of dreadful awe of Blake'spoem or the "flashing eyes" and "floating hair" of Coleridge's dream world.Later Romantic poets such as Byron and Keats said that such a poem as "IWandered" was an example of Wordsworth's "simple" and "dull" verse (Drabble1 85), a sign that they felt he did not belong in the Romantic traditionwith its emphasis on the high-flying imagination and transcendent language. Works CitedBlake, William. "The Tyger." Elements of Literature. The poetsees the "Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail" as "dancing rocks"(21; 23), suggesting that even in what appears to be a symbolic hell thevision-hungry poet finds joy and pleasure, rather than terror. Then, the dark side of the poettakes over, suggesting that the secondary imagination is as "savage" as theplace it proceeds to describe. . The fourth stanza is more of the same as the poet extends themetaphor of the artisan at his bench creating the tiger with hammer, chain,furnace, anvil. Although the three poets demonstrate differentlevels of intensity and different approaches to reality, all three fallwithin the Romantic mantle in their emphasis on nature and the imaginationas expressions of a deeper reality. The tiger does notstand alone, representing nature, but rather is made to call to mind theCreator of the creation and all of nature. . As with Blake's tiger and the raging landscape of Coleridge'ssubconscious/opium vision, Wordsworth's simple field of daffodils providesthe poet with a transcendent experience via nature. Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" is thick with the nature-based flights ofimagination marking much Romantic poetry. of daffodils"(3-4). The "fearful symmetry" of thetiger's markings which are "burning bright" make the poet stand in awe ashis imagination conjures questions about the "hand" which made the beast.The poet asks in the second stanza what depths, heights and lengths ofdaring courage this Creator must possess. those caves of ice!" (46-47). This study will examine three poems by English poets of the Romanticperiod: William Blake's "The Tyger," Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "KublaKhan," and William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as A Cloud." The studywill examine the basic principles of Romanticism and show how each poemupholds those principles. . These emphases separatehim from the exalted religious imagery of Blake and the opium-inducedrantings of Coleridge. Continuing with his journey, a "sacred river" is "flung up" (24),recalling the river which "ran/ . .

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