Y E A R 1 1 A T A R L I T E R A T U R E
ROMANTIC VISIONS
An Introduction to the Poets of the Romantic Era
 
 
 
c. 1785 – 1832
 
 
 
 
 
YOUR ROUTE THROUGH THE UNIT
Four Moves, One Journey
 
CONTEXT
the world that made the poets
POETS
six sensibilities, one revolution
CRAFT
close reading, thesis, technique
CREATE
essays, orals, transformations
BY THE END YOU CAN…
◆ place any poem in its moment — and use it as evidence
◆ read an unseen poem closely and confidently
◆ name form and technique — then argue their EFFECT
◆ weigh rival readings instead of hunting one 'right' one
 
 
BIG IDEA Literature is not trivia — it is argument about meaning, built on evidence.
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I
THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM
Three revolutions remade the world — the poets answered
 
 
 
Timeline • Revolutions • Ideas
 
 
 
 
 
PART I · CONTEXT
A Decade That Changed Everything
 
memorise two anchors: 1798 and 1819
 
 
1757–95
the Big Six are born
 
1789
Revolution: 'very Heaven'
 
1793
Terror → disillusion
 
 
1798
Lyrical Ballads
 
1802
Wordsworth's Preface
 
 
1819
Peterloo · the great Odes
 
1821–24
Keats, Shelley, Byron die young
 
 
 
BIG IDEA First generation lived the Revolution; second inherited its broken promise.
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PART I · CONTEXT
Three Revolutions Behind the Poems
 
 
 
 
POLITICAL
Liberty → Terror → Peterloo.
Hope betrayed becomes poetry's fuel.
 
 
 
INDUSTRIAL
Mills, smoke, child labour, enclosure.
Nature turns refuge; city turns evidence.
 
 
 
INTELLECTUAL
Reason challenged by imagination.
Burke's Sublime rewrites beauty itself.
 
 
BIG IDEA Romantic nature poetry is political — escape was never the point.
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PART I · IDEAS
Two Worldviews Face Off
 
 
 
ENLIGHTENMENT c.1650–1790
ROMANTICISM c.1785–1832
Reason & measure
Imagination & feeling
Universal 'rational man'
The unique individual
Nature: a machine
Nature: alive, sacred, sublime
Art follows classical rules
Organic form; inspired speech
 
 
vs
 
 
BIG IDEA A spectrum, not a wall — strong essays complicate the binary.
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PART I · TOOLKIT
The Romantic DNA — Eight Tests
 
most Romantic poems tick several — argue where yours breaks pattern too
 
 
IMAGINATION
truth beyond reason
 
 
EMOTION
sincerity over polish
 
 
NATURE
a living presence
 
 
THE SUBLIME
awe that overwhelms
 
 
CHILDHOOD
vision before experience
 
 
EXILE
the noble outsider
 
 
REVOLUTION
liberty betrayed, deferred
 
 
SUPERNATURAL
dreams that unsettle
 
 
BIG IDEA Use these to SPOT Romanticism — then argue how your poem diverges.
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PART I · METALANGUAGE
Six Terms You Must Own
 
attribution errors cost credibility marks
TERM
OWN IT
Sublime
vastness fused with terror that overwhelms — Burke (1757)
Negative capability
resting in uncertainties without reaching for closure — Keats (1817)
Suspension of disbelief
poetic faith granted to the supernatural — Coleridge (1817)
Byronic hero
brooding magnetic outsider marked by a guilty past
Ekphrasis
a poem describing a visual artwork — 'Grecian Urn'
Apostrophe
direct address to an absent thing — Wind, Skylark, Urn, Star
 
 
BIG IDEA These are examinable tools — flashcard them this week.
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II
SIX POETS, SIX SENSIBILITIES
two generations shaped by one earthquake
 
 
 
Blake · Wordsworth · Coleridge • Byron · Shelley · Keats
 
 
 
 
 
PART II · THE POETS
Two Generations, One Earthquake
 
 
 
FIRST — lived the Revolution
 
 
WB
Blake
1757–1827
 
 
WW
Wordsworth
1770–1850
 
 
STC
Coleridge
1772–1834
Visionaries who believed art could remake the world.
 
 
SECOND — inherited its failure
 
 
B.
Byron
1788–1824
 
 
PBS
Shelley
1792–1822
 
 
K.
Keats
1795–1821
Brilliant, ironic, doomed — all dead before 37.
 
 
BIG IDEA 'Big Six' is a canon label — we will interrogate it on slide 17.
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PART II · FIRST GENERATION
William Blake
 
 
 
 
 
WB
1757–1827
◆ London engraver, self-taught visionary
◆ invented illuminated printing
◆ 'Without Contraries is no progression'
“Tyger Tyger, burning bright”
READ FIRST ➟
 
“London”
Whose manacles? Who forged them?
 
“The Tyger” & “The Lamb”
Could one hand have made both?
 
Songs pairings
What does innocence cost?
 
 
 
 
 
 
BIG IDEA Every Blake poem has a shadow-text — read Innocence and Experience together.
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PART II · FIRST GENERATION
William Wordsworth
 
 
 
 
 
WW
1770–1850
◆ Lake District pedestrian-poet — walking was his muse
◆ revolutionary turned Laureate
◆ memory is his creative engine
“emotion recollected in tranquillity”
READ FIRST ➟
 
“Tintern Abbey”
Three stages of loving nature
 
“Westminster Bridge”
Can a city wear morning like a gown?
 
“Daffodils”
Why does remembering beat seeing?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
BIG IDEA For Wordsworth the poem happens twice: once outdoors, once in memory.
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PART II · FIRST GENERATION
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
 
 
 
 
 
STC
1772–1834
◆ Dreamer; opium shadows his myth
◆ supernatural half of Lyrical Ballads
◆ later England's great critic-sage
“A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!”
READ FIRST ➟
 
Ancient Mariner
What is the albatross guilt FOR?
 
“Kubla Khan”
Is a fragment failure — or the point?
 
“Frost at Midnight”
What should a father wish his son?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
BIG IDEA Coleridge makes the impossible credible — that IS poetic faith.
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PART II · SECOND GENERATION
Lord Byron
 
 
 
 
 
B.
1788–1824
◆ overnight celebrity at 24
◆ scandal → self-exile → Greece
◆ invented the Byronic hero
“Mad, bad and dangerous to know.”
READ FIRST ➟
 
“She Walks in Beauty”
Why praise her by NIGHT-light?
 
Childe Harold
Meet the original brooding outsider
 
Don Juan
Why mock the hero he invented?
 
 
 
 
BIG IDEA Byron plays the show and heckles it — irony is his signature.
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PART II · SECOND GENERATION
Percy Bysshe Shelley
 
 
 
 
 
PBS
1792–1822
◆ expelled from Oxford for atheism
◆ radical prophet in Italian exile
◆ drowned at 29; ashes near Keats
“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators…”
READ FIRST ➟
 
“Ozymandias”
Who wins: king or sand?
 
“West Wind”
Can a poet be the wind's instrument?
 
Mask of Anarchy
What does protest sound like in verse?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
BIG IDEA Shelley converts private despair into public prophecy.
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PART II · SECOND GENERATION
John Keats
 
 
 
 
 
K.
1795–1821
◆ apothecary-trained, no university
◆ the great odes written at 24
◆ died at 25 — 'writ in water'
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty…”
READ FIRST ➟
 
“Nightingale”
Map each escape — and each collapse
 
“Grecian Urn”
Does eternity bless or tease?
 
La Belle Dame
Enchantment, or illness allegory?
 
 
 
 
BIG IDEA Keats holds uncertainty beautifully — negative capability in action.
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PART II · BEYOND THE CANON
Six Voices History Shelved
 
canon interrogation is an ATAR skill — ask why
 
 
Charlotte Smith
revived the sonnet (1784); paved Wordsworth's way
 
 
Anna Barbauld
'The Rights of Woman' — proto-feminist wit
 
 
Mary Robinson
'January, 1795': luxury beside hunger
 
 
Felicia Hemans
outsold every man on this slide
 
 
Dorothy Wordsworth
her journal seeded the daffodils poem
 
 
John Clare
sang enclosure's lost commons into asylum
 
 
BIG IDEA Shelved for gender, class or fashion? That question IS literary criticism.
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III
READING LIKE A CRITIC
from appreciation to argument — the moves that earn marks
 
 
 
Toolkits • Method • Essay craft
 
 
 
 
 
PART III · FORM
Six Shapes a Poem Can Take
 
form is never decoration — connect it to meaning
 
LYRIC
single voice, musical
She Walks in Beauty
 
ODE
elevated address; turn
Nightingale · West Wind
 
BALLAD
story quatrains ABCB
Mariner · La Belle Dame
 
SONNET
14 lines + a volta
Ozymandias · Bright Star
 
BLANK VERSE
unrhymed iambic flow
Tintern Abbey
 
CONVERSATION
scene → meditation → blessing
Frost at Midnight
 
 
BIG IDEA 60-second drill: any poem — name form, meter, rhyme aloud.
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PART III · TECHNIQUE
Three Families of Devices
 
 
 
SOUND & RHYTHM
◆ alliteration · sibilance
◆ caesura — what does it cut?
◆ enjambment vs end-stop
 
 
IMAGE & FIGURE
◆ metaphor patterns — track them
◆ personification · apostrophe
◆ paradox: 'fearful symmetry'
 
 
STRUCTURE & VOICE
◆ frame narratives
◆ find the volta — argue its effect
◆ irony: verbal · structural
 
 
BIG IDEA Effect first: 'the sibilance makes the whisper feel…' or don't name it.
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PART III · METHOD
The Five-Step Close Read
 
slow reading is a trainable discipline
 
 
 
1
SURVEY
title, date, shape
 
 
 
 
2
RESPOND
gut mood — it counts
 
 
 
 
3
MAP
where thought turns
 
 
 
 
4
ZOOM
language patterns
 
 
 
 
5
THESIS
contestable claim
 
 
BIG IDEA Practise on one unseen poem per fortnight until fluent.
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PART III · WORKED EXAMPLE
Ozymandias, Annotated
 
the same poem you'll meet in the appendix
 
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…
 …
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains.
 … boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
 
FRAME DISTANCE
two removes from the statue — power arrives already dissolving.
 
SCULPTOR'S IRONY
art records the tyrant's cruelty better than his boast.
 
SYNTAX COLLAPSE
'despair!' answered within one line by 'Nothing beside remains'.
 
DESERT SUBLIME
'lone and level sands' — nature's blank erasure out-writes empire.
 
BROKEN SONNET
irregular rhyme enacts the shattered colossus.
 
 
BIG IDEA Thesis: THROUGH fractured form + frame, art — not empire — commands permanence.
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PART III · SYNTHESIS
Seven Themes, One Matrix
 
each row can anchor a week of discussion
THEME
GUIDING QUESTION
ANCHORS
Nature
refuge, teacher, or terror?
Tintern Abbey · To Autumn
Imagination
what can mind make true?
Kubla Khan · Nightingale
Childhood
can innocence survive?
Songs pairings
Liberty
hope, betrayal, deferred spring?
London · Mask of Anarchy
Mortality
what endures — and should it?
Ozymandias · Grecian Urn
Exile
curse, choice, credential?
Childe Harold · Mariner
Supernatural
why does haunting thrill?
Mariner · La Belle Dame
 
 
BIG IDEA Leave able to argue ANY theme through ANY two set poems.
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PART III · COMPARISON
Four Matchups Worth Rehearsing
 
 
 
“The Lamb” × “The Tyger”
contraries within one vision
 
 
“London” × “Westminster Bridge”
same city, opposite verdicts
 
 
“Nightingale” × “Skylark”
two bird-escapes, one mortal ground
 
 
“Ozymandias” × “Grecian Urn”
ironic ruin vs teasing permanence
 
 
BIG IDEA Weave inside paragraphs — never write two mini-essays side by side.
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PART III · ESSAY CRAFT
The PETAL Paragraph Engine
 
 
 
 
P
Point — one claim
 
 
 
E
Evidence embedded (≤8 words)
 
 
 
T
Technique named precisely
 
 
 
A
Analysis of EFFECT — where marks live
 
 
 
L
Link back to thesis
 
 
MARK-EATING ERRORS
 
◆ retelling the poem
◆ feature-spotting without effect
◆ context dumped, not woven
◆ one reading claimed as 'obvious'
◆ ignoring form entirely
 
 
BIG IDEA Weak: 'Shelley uses irony.' Strong: irony that topples the boast mid-line.
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SEMINAR
Five Questions Worth Arguing
 
 
 
Q1
Rebellion or inheritance — were the Romantics completing the Enlightenment?
 
 
Q2
“Nature is Romanticism's church.” Defend, challenge, complicate.
 
 
Q3
Why did history shelve Hemans and Smith while elevating Byron?
 
 
Q4
Is Wordsworth's 'spontaneous overflow' actually engineered — and does it matter?
 
 
Q5
What would a Romantic poem about 2026 sound like?
 
 
BIG IDEA Multiple readings are the point — evaluation beats assertion.
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ASSESSMENT
Three Tasks, Three Skill Sets
 
 
 
ANALYTICAL ESSAY
◆ comparative pairing argument
◆ thesis + PETAL + rival readings
 
 
CLOSE-READING ORAL
◆ recorded annotation walkthrough
◆ think aloud in five steps
 
 
CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION
◆ modernise 'London' or extend Blake
◆ + reflective commentary justifies choices
 
 
BIG IDEA In creating tasks, commentary on YOUR choices carries the marks.
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GOING FURTHER
Where to Wander Next
 
 
 
British Library
Discovering Literature: Romantics
 
 
Blake Archive
every illuminated plate, free
 
 
Poetry Foundation
poems + crisp bios
 
 
BBC In Our Time
one episode per poet
 
 
Bright Star (2009)
Keats & Fanny Brawne
 
 
Pandaemonium (2000)
W & C dramatised — liberties included
 
 
BIG IDEA Handbook PDF holds the full toolkit — keep it beside every lesson.
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“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very Heaven!”
— Wordsworth, The Prelude
 
 
 
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” — that is all
— Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A
THE POEMS ON THE PAGE
full texts for annotation — bring them to every lesson
 
 
 
Blake · Wordsworth · Coleridge • Byron · Shelley · Keats
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
APPENDIX · THE POEMS ON THE PAGE
“London” — William Blake
 
Songs of Experience (1794) · quatrains ABAB, iambic tetrameter · prophetic walking poem
LISTEN FOR ➟ relentless repetition (“in every”) and the sound of restraint — bans, cries, manacles
I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.
How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every black’ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.
But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new-born Infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
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APPENDIX · THE POEMS ON THE PAGE
“The Tyger” — William Blake
 
Songs of Experience (1794) · trochaic tetrameter (catalectic) · hymn of creation
LISTEN FOR ➟ hammering trochees, metallurgy imagery, questions that never get answered
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies,
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
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?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
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APPENDIX · THE POEMS ON THE PAGE
“The Lamb” — William Blake
 
Songs of Innocence (1789) · trochaic couplets · child-speaker catechism
LISTEN FOR ➟ gentle repetitions, the doubling structure (question → answer), pastoral softness
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly 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 & he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
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APPENDIX · THE POEMS ON THE PAGE
“Composed upon Westminster Bridge” — William Wordsworth
 
Sonnet (1802) · Petrarchan · London at dawn, wearing morning like a garment
LISTEN FOR ➟ personification of city, sky, and river; the hush before industry wakes
Earth has not any thing 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!
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APPENDIX · THE POEMS ON THE PAGE
“The World Is Too Much with Us” — William Wordsworth
 
Sonnet (1802) · Italian form, sestet turns to myth · protest against materialism
LISTEN FOR ➟ the sea as woman, winds as sleeping flowers — nature personified and ignored; the angry volta
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!
This 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 every thing, 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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APPENDIX · THE POEMS ON THE PAGE
“I wandered lonely as a Cloud” — William Wordsworth
 
Lyric (1802/1815) · four quatrains ABABCC · memory’s wealth
LISTEN FOR ➟ dance imagery, the simile that opens it, and the famous inward-eye couplet
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
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APPENDIX · THE POEMS ON THE PAGE
“Kubla Khan” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
 
Fragment (written 1797; pub. 1816) · “A Vision in a Dream” · desire, creation, the poet-figure
LISTEN FOR ➟ the shift from ordered dome to savage chasm; incanted rhymes; the sorcerer-poet finale
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And ’mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
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APPENDIX · THE POEMS ON THE PAGE
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
 
Literary ballad (1798) · PART I, OPENING EXCERPT · frame narrative begins
LISTEN FOR ➟ ballad ABCB quatrains, archaisms (stoppeth, quoth, eftsoons), the hypnotic eye
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
‘By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?
The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May’st hear the merry din.’
He holds him with his skinny hand,
‘There was a ship,’ quoth he.
‘Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!’
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.
He holds him with his glittering eye—
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years’ child:
The Mariner hath his will.
The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
‘The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.
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.
Higher and higher every day,
Till over the mast at noon—’
The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,
For he heard the loud bassoon.
The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;
Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.
The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
And now the STORM-blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o’ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.
With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward aye we fled.
And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken—
The ice was all between.
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!
  … … …
At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God’s name.
  … … …
‘God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—
Why look’st thou so?’—With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS.
YEAR 11 ATAR LITERATURE · ROMANTIC VISIONS
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APPENDIX · THE POEMS ON THE PAGE
“She Walks in Beauty” — Lord Byron
 
Hebrew Melodies (1815) · short iambic tetrameter, ABABAB · idealised feminine virtue
LISTEN FOR ➟ light/dark balancing act — night imagery for DAYTIME beauty; the serene final couplet
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!
YEAR 11 ATAR LITERATURE · ROMANTIC VISIONS
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APPENDIX · THE POEMS ON THE PAGE
“Ozymandias” — Percy Bysshe Shelley
 
Sonnet (1817) · irregular Petrarchan-Shakespearean hybrid · power vs time
LISTEN FOR ➟ the traveller’s distancing frame; imperious syntax collapsing into “nothing beside remains”
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.”
YEAR 11 ATAR LITERATURE · ROMANTIC VISIONS
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APPENDIX · THE POEMS ON THE PAGE
“Ode to the West Wind” — Percy Bysshe Shelley
 
Five terza-rima sections (1819) · autumn wind as destroyer AND preserver
LISTEN FOR ➟ apostrophe throughout; the plea sequence (leaf → cloud → lyre); the spring prophecy
I
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
II
Thou on whose stream, ’mid the steep sky’s commotion,
Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aery surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear!
IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
YEAR 11 ATAR LITERATURE · ROMANTIC VISIONS
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APPENDIX · THE POEMS ON THE PAGE
“La Belle Dame sans Merci” — John Keats
 
Ballad (1819) · quatrains ABCB with shortened fourth line · enchantment and desolation
LISTEN FOR ➟ the question-frame (unknown voice → knight’s reply); seasonal decay; “wild wild eyes”
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
‘I love thee true’.
She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!’
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
YEAR 11 ATAR LITERATURE · ROMANTIC VISIONS
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APPENDIX · THE POEMS ON THE PAGE
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” — John Keats
 
Ode (1819) · five 10-line stanzas · ekphrasis — art’s frozen forever
LISTEN FOR ➟ the tease of arrested motion; “for ever warm and still to be enjoy’d”; the disputed closing couplet
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-fring’d 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.
YEAR 11 ATAR LITERATURE · ROMANTIC VISIONS
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APPENDIX · THE POEMS ON THE PAGE
“Ode to a Nightingale” — John Keats
 
Ode (1819) · eight 10-line stanzas · escape attempted, then relinquished
LISTEN FOR ➟ synaesthesia (“beaker full of the warm South”); the death-wish stanza; “forlorn” tolling him home
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beeches green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies,
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet,
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
YEAR 11 ATAR LITERATURE · ROMANTIC VISIONS
38
 
 
 
 
 
APPENDIX · THE POEMS ON THE PAGE
Two Sonnets: Fame, Love, Mortality
 
 
 
“When I have fears that I may cease to be” — 1818
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;
When 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,
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.
 
 
“Bright star! would I were stedfast as thou art” — 1819
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.
COMPARE ➟ both want permanence; both dissolve into human intimacy or nothingness.