Romantic “Manifestos”

Simo Räsänen

Preface to the Lyrical BalladsWilliam Wordsworth

What is a Poet?...He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.

I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.

Examples: “Tintern Abbey,” “Nutting,” “We Are Seven,” etc.

A Defence of PoetryPercy Shelley

Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be “the expression of the imagination: And poetry is connate with the origin of man.

The whole objection, however, of the immorality of poetry rests upon a misconception.... [Poetry] awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar;...

Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.

Shelley’s Poetry

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique landWho said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desart. 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 readWhich 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 decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away.

Mujtaba Chohan

Shelley’s PoetryOde to the West Wind – Stanza V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: AWhat if my leaves are falling like its own! BThe tumult of thy mighty harmonies A

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, BSweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, CMy spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! B

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe CLike withered leaves to quicken a new birth! DAnd, by the incantation of this verse, C

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth DAshes and sparks, my words among mankind! EBe through my lips to unawakened earth D

The trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind, EIf Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? E

From the Letters ofJohn Keats

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination — what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.... (to Benjamin Bailey, Nov. 22, 1817)

[N]egative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. (to George & Thomas Keats, Dec. 21, 1817)

I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity — it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance — Its touches of Beauty should never be halfway thereby making the reader breathless instead of content.... [Yet] if Poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all. (to John Taylor, Feb. 27, 1818)

Keats’s Poetry

Ode to a Nightingale – Stanza 2

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 Provencal 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:

J. Dietrich

Keats’s Poetry

Ode to a Nightingale – Stanza 8

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 fam’d 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?

“Romantic” Ironies

“The Irish Incognito”Maria Edgeworth

It was true that Phelim did not speak with any Irish brogue: his mother was an English woman, and he had lived much with English officers in Cork, and he had studied and imitated their manner of speaking so successfully, that no one, merely by his accent, could have guessed that he was an Irishman.

"Hey! brother, I say!" continued Phelim, in a triumphant English tone; "I never was taken for an Irishman in my life. Colonel Broadman told me the other day, I spoke English better than the English themselves; that he should take me for an Englishman, in any part of the known world, the moment I opened my lips. You must allow that not the smallest particle of brogue is discernible on my tongue."

“Love and Friendship”Jane Austen

Letter the Fifth:

Mary, without waiting for any further commands immediately left the room and quickly returned introducing the most beauteous and amiable Youth, I had ever beheld. The servant, she kept to herself.

My natural sensibility had already been greatly affected by the sufferings of the unfortunate stranger and no sooner did I first behold him, than I felt that on him the happiness or Misery of my future Life must depend.

“Love and Friendship”Jane Austen

Letter the Ninth:

By our arrival their Expenses were considerably encreased tho' their means for supplying them were then nearly exhausted. But they, Exalted Creatures! scorned to reflect a moment on their pecuniary Distresses and would have blushed at the idea of paying their Debts.—Alas! what was their Reward for such disinterested Behaviour! The beautiful Augustus was arrested and we were all undone. Such perfidious Treachery in the merciless perpetrators of the Deed will shock your gentle nature Dearest Marianne as much as it then affected the Delicate sensibility of Edward, Sophia, your Laura, and of Augustus himself. To compleat such unparalelled Barbarity we were informed that an Execution in the House would shortly take place. Ah! what could we do but what we did! We sighed and fainted on the sofa.