Wordsworth's Poems example essay topic

Wordsworth's monumental poetic legacy rests on a large number of important poems, varying in length and weight from the short, simple lyrics of the 1790's to the vast expanses of The Prelude, thirteen books long in its 1808 edition. But the themes that run through Wordsworth's poetry, and the language and imagery he uses to embody those themes, remain remarkably consistent throughout the Wordsworth canon, adhering largely to the tenets Wordsworth set out for himself in the 1802 Prelude to Lyrical Ballads. Here, Wordsworth argues that poetry should be written in the natural language of common speech, rather than in the lofty and elaborate diction's that were then considered poetic. He argues that poetry should offer access to the emotions contained in memory. And he argues that the first principle of poetry should be pleasure, that the chief duty of poetry is to provide pleasure through a rhythmic and beautiful expression of feeling -- for all human sympathy, he claims, is based on a subtle pleasure principle that is "the naked and native dignity of man". (Anthology, p. 776) Wordsworth's poems initiated the Romantic era by emphasizing feeling, instinct, and pleasure above formality and mannerism.

More than any poet before him, Wordsworth gave expression to inchoate human emotion; his lyric "Strange fits of passion have I known", in which the speaker describes an inexplicable fantasy he once had that his lover was dead, could not have been written by any previous poet. Curiously for a poet whose work points so directly toward the future, many of Wordsworth's important works are preoccupied with the lost glory of the past -- not only of the lost dreams of childhood but also of the historical past, as in the powerful sonnet "London, 1802", in which the speaker exhorts the spirit of the centuries-dead poet John Milton to teach the modern world a better way to live. John Keats lived from 1795 to 1821. The poetry that we have from his brief, troubled life is filled with powerful imagery. Woodworths Prelude had a profound influence on Keats, which is evident throughout his works.

Keatss themes are those of the Romantic period: a worship of nature, senses, death, the individual, and a deep absorption with art, the imagination, and the realm created by the intersection of these things - fantasy and myth. The stress of most of his poems is on emotion, just like Wordsworth suggested in his Prelude. His poem, Le Belle Dame sans Merci was written in the last year of his life and describes the female temptress, and most importantly, the result of this temptation the consequences of love, is one of the best examples illustrating the influence of Woodworths Prelude. Keats poem is much simpler in structure and content than most of his other poems and yet it too portrays the same strength of imagery.

In fact, I find the imagery more effective in La Belle Dame sans Merci, as it is personal a character the knights feelings firsthand. Although Keats does echo the knights decay in the landscape, he has also interpreted a feeling of unrequited love, in his own, and equally successful way. The consequences of love for that beautiful lady are rather grave for the knight, however he still glorifies the feeling and the woman that has evoked that very feeling. The knight is certainly deceived by the woman he meets.

He falls in love with this woman instantly and is convinced that she too is in love with him. The woman makes the knight fall for her by making herself beautiful. The woman deceives the knight into trusting her and then when she takes him to her cave, she breaks his heart by leaving him after the knight wakes up from a nightmare. She uses her magical powers to make the knight fall for her then she breaks his heart. When the knight wakes up from his nightmare, he sees that she has left him.

Thus, the consequences of his sudden love are rather grave desperation and frustration because he has just lost what he thought was his true and only love. In Ode to Psyche there is a seemingly endless use of alliteration. The sibilance of how the secrets should be sung and the soft-handed slumber and the alliteration of t in these, though temple thou among with many more examples create an almost dreamlike and transient atmosphere within which to set the poem. This use of alliteration is also found in To Autumn where Keats uses the alliteration of m and's to open the poem with Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness. In Ode to a Nightingale the same technique is used to rather different effects. Here the alliterative d, p and m found throughout the first opening lines create a sluggish weightiness corresponding to Keatss dull ache.

(Anthology, p. 845-848).