ROMANTIC POETRY
POET #1 William Blake (1757-1827)
The Lamb
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee,
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee:
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and he is mild;
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb.
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
TheSick Rose
O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
The Tyger
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright1
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies5
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart,10
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp15
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?20
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
8] seize the fire: a reference to the myth of Prometheus.
17] stars: i.e., angels, fighting in the original war in heaven.
London, 1802 by William Blake
Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
5Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
10Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life’s common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet the heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
The Chimney Sweeper (1789)
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry “ ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!‘weep!”1
So your chimneys I sweep, & in soot I sleep.
There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curl’d like a lamb’s back,was shav’d: so I said
“Hush, Tom! never mind it,for when your head’s bare
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.”
And so he was quiet, & that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight! ---
That thousand of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack,
Were all of them lock’d up in coffins of black.
And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he open’d the coffins & set them all free;
Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run,
And wash in a river, and shine in the Sun.
Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind;
And the Angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy,
He’d have God for his father, &never want joy.
And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark,
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Tho’ the morning was cold, Tom was happy &warm;
So if all do their duty they need not fear harm.
1The child’s lisping attempt at the chimney
sweep’s street cry, “Sweep! Sweep!”
The Chimney Sweeper (1794)
A little black thing among the snow,
Crying “weep! ‘weep!” in notes of woe!
“Where are thy father and mother? say?”
“They are both gone up to the church to pray.
Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smil’d among the winter’s snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.
And because I am happy and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King,
Who make up a heaven of our misery.”
Poet #2 Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Ozymandias
Percy B. Shelley
I met a traveler 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.
(1818)
Poet #3 John Keats (1795-1821)
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? what maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
When I Have Fears
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain;
5When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
10 That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love; - then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
To Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Poet #4, the Lake Poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
Poet #5, the other Lake Poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
Kubla Khan
1 In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
2 A stately pleasure-dome decree:
3 Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
4 Through caverns measureless to man
5Down to a sunless sea.
6 So twice five miles of fertile ground
7 With walls and towers were girdled round:
8 And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
9 Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
10 And here were forests ancient as the hills,
11 Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
12 But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
13 Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
14 A savage place! as holy and enchanted
15 As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
16 By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
17 And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
18 As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
19 A mighty fountain momently was forced:
20 Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
21 Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
22 Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
23 And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
24 It flung up momently the sacred river.
25 Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
26 Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
27 Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
28 And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
29 And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
30 Ancestral voices prophesying war!
31The shadow of the dome of pleasure
32Floated midway on the waves;
33Where was heard the mingled measure
34From the fountain and the caves.
35 It was a miracle of rare device,
36 A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
37A damsel with a dulcimer
38In a vision once I saw:
39It was an Abyssinian maid,
40And on her dulcimer she played,
41Singing of Mount Abora.
42Could I revive within me
43Her symphony and song,
44To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
45That with music loud and long,
46I would build that dome in air,
47That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
48And all who heard should see them there,
49And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
50His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
51Weave a circle round him thrice,
52And close your eyes with holy dread,
53For he on honey-dew hath fed,
54And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Poet #7 Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824)
She Walks in Beauty
1 She walks in beauty, like the night
2Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
3 And all that's best of dark and bright
4Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
5 Thus mellow'd to that tender light
6Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
7 One shade the more, one ray the less,
8Had half impair'd the nameless grace
9 Which waves in every raven tress,
10Or softly lightens o'er her face;
11 Where thoughts serenely sweet express
12How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
13 And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
14So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
15 The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
16But tell of days in goodness spent,
17 A mind at peace with all below,
18A heart whose love is innocent!