GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON
• Aristocratic family – father died when he
was three
•Inherited his great uncle’s noble title, baron
•At 17, attended trinity College at Cambridge
•College life – made friends, played sports,
spent money . . . . Pet bear?
•After graduating, Byron traveled to out-ofthe-way corners of Europe and the Middle
East. He returned home bearing two sections
of a book-length poem entitled Childe
Harold’s Pilgrimage, which depicted a young
hero not unlike himself—moody, sensitive,
and reckless.
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON
•The work was well received, and Byron
became an overnight sensation. “I awoke
one morning and found myself famous,” he
observed.
•For a time, Byron was the darling of
London society
•“Mad, bad, and dangerous to know” was
Lady Caroline Lamb’s famous description
of Lord Byron.
•Because of his dark, brooding persona, or
adopted personality, readers throughout
the nineteenth century saw Byron as the
quintessential Romantic poet.
•Byron continued his travels through
Europe, often accompanied by the poet
Percy Shelley.
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON
•While living in Italy, however, tragedy
struck: One of his daughters died, and
Shelley drowned in a sailing accident.
•In 1823, Byron, a champion of liberty,
joined a group of revolutionaries seeking to
free Greece from Turkish rule.
•Soon after, while training Greek rebel
troops, Byron died of a rheumatic fever.
Reports at the time tell of a late, poignant
gesture: Dazed with fever, Byron called out
in broken English and Italian, “Forward—
forward—courage! Follow my example—
don’t be afraid!”
•To this day he is revered in Greece as a
national hero.
“SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY”
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
•What is Byron’s poetic comparison her?
•Using a simile, he compares the woman to a
perfect cloudless, starry night.
“SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY”
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;
•What is Byron’s suggesting about her
beauty?
•It is exact . . . One slight deviation would
change everything.
“SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY”
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!
•What is Byron’s final characterization of her?
• softness, calmness, eloquence, goodness,
peaceful, innocent.
“SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY”
QUESTIONS, PAGE 763
1. Respond: Do you think the speaker
idealizes the subject of “She Walks in
Beauty”? Explain.
1. Somewhat – hyperbolic purity
“SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY”
QUESTIONS, PAGE 763
2. (a) Recall: To what does the speaker
compare the lady’s beauty?
•
cloudless, starry night
(b) Interpret: What might “that tender light”
in line 5 be?
•
moon and stars
“SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY”
QUESTIONS, PAGE 763
3. (a) Recall: What would have “half impaired”
the lady’s grace?
•
any slight addition of brightness or
darkness
(b) Interpret: What does this claim suggest
about the lady’s beauty?
• It is exact and perfect
“SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY”
QUESTIONS, PAGE 763
4. In lines 11–18, what is the woman’s
appearance said to reveal about her
character?
•
sweet thoughts, virtuous activity, and
innocence
• (b) How is the focus of the last six lines
different from the focus of the opening lines?
• Woman’s character – not physical
(c) Does Byron’s portrayal emphasize the
spiritual or the physical aspect of the lady?
• Both - equally
“SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY”
QUESTIONS, PAGE 763
5. (a) Do you agree that goodness is an inherent
part of beauty?
•
evil- immorality is hopefully unattractive
(b) Do you think people today put too much
emphasis on physical beauty?
• Probably – everywhere in media it’s all about
physical beauty
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Percy Bysshe Shelley died in a
boating accident at 29
•At once modest and intense, Shelley
was a passionate reformer who
believed that his time had betrayed
the ideal of a perfect society
•Born into the British upper classes,
Shelley attended the finest schools,
including the prestigious boarding
school Eton and Oxford University.
•Shelley’s rebellious nature produced
the radical tract The Necessity of
Atheism, and he was expelled from
the university.
•
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
•The expulsion estranged Shelley from his
father. Instead of going home, Shelley
headed for London.
•He met and married Harriet Westbrook.
The two traveled to Ireland, where Shelley
tried unsuccessfully to “deliver the Irish
people from tyranny.”
•In 1813, he had completed “Queen Mab,”
his first important poem.
•The work explored ideas of social justice
that Shelley had encountered in the
philosopher William Godwin’s Political
Justice - government and other institutions
should be reshaped to conform to the will
of the people.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
•Shelley’s marriage, meanwhile,
was in trouble. Harriet felt that she
could not keep up with her
husband, and she had come to
question his political ideals.
•Meanwhile, continuing his travels
in radical intellectual circles,
Shelley fell in love with Mary
Wollstonecraft Godwin, daughter
of William Godwin and the feminist
Mary Wollstonecraft.
•After Harriet’s tragic death in
1816, Shelley and his beloved Mary
Godwin married.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
•His radical politics, his tract about
atheism, his separation from his first
wife, his elopement—all helped make
Shelley an outcast from his
homeland.
•He and Mary eventually settled in
Italy, where Byron, another famous
exile, also lived. The friendship
nourished the literary ambitions of all
three.
•It was during a storytelling session
with Shelley, Byron, and another
friend that Mary Shelley was inspired
to begin work on her famous novel
Frankenstein.
•Shelley never lived to see whether
his dreams of social progress came
true. Today, he is often referred to as
the perfect poet of the Romantic Era.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
_____ is descriptive language that re-creates
sensory experience. It has these characteristics:
1. It appeals to any or all of the five senses.
2. It often creates patterns supporting a poem’s
theme.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
___Imagery__ is descriptive language that recreates sensory experience. It has these
characteristics:
1. It appeals to any or all of the five senses.
2. It often creates patterns supporting a poem’s
theme.
In “Ode to the West Wind,” for example, Shelley
uses wind images that appeal to sight, sound,
and touch.
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:
•How is nature personified?
•“breath of Autumn” and the leaves die and are driven
like ghosts
•What is the Imagery here?
• How the wind feels and the color of the dying leaves
O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark and wintry bed
The wingèd 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 loving hues and odors plain and hill:
•To what is winter compared?
• “a dark bed . . . . A grave”
•What is the personification of the Spring??
• The West Wind’s sister blows her trumpet to call Nature to
life again.
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
•What is the paradox here
• the “wild spirit” of the wind is both destroyer and
preserver.
•How is this a Romantic idea?
• The fusion of opposites (unity in polarity)
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.
•To what senses does the Imagery of this passage most appeal
to?
• The sight of the aery (airy/lofty) surge of the ocean
•The power sound of the ocean surging
Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulcher,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!
• The sound imagery here suggests that the west wind is a
metaphor for . . . .
• A funeral hymn marking the end/death of the “dying year”
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
• What is personified here?
• The wind and the Mediterranean as the wind wakes it from
its sleep.
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 gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!
• Within the imagery of the personified west wind, how does
the rest of nature react to the wind?
• Nature trembles in fear of the wind and its power.
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!
• What romantic notion does the poet suggest here?
• Oh – if he could be that wind blown leaf, or a swift cloud,
or a surging wave and feel nature’s power of the west wind
. . . . The Romantic ideal of being one with nature
If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed
Scarce seemed a vision;
• Again, what romantic notion does the poet suggest here?
• If I could return to my childhood and commune with you,
west wind, like I did as a boy . . . . A return to the more
simple days of the past.
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.
• How does the poet relate to the west wind??
• Like the wind, the Romantic Poet is tameless, and swift,
and proud
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.
• What does the poet wish to be in the imagery of these lines?
• He wishes to be like the wind blowing through the trees –
a song like that of a lyre (harp) singing nature’s praises.
Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thought over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
• What does the poet wish to be in the imagery of these lines?
• One with the wind
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?
• What does the poet wish his poem/verse to accomplish?
• To awaken mankind and bring rebirth to man’s
appreciation of Nature.
Review Questions
Page 780
1. (a) Recall: What season does the poet associate with
the West Wind?
• Autumn
(b) Interpret: What feelings does Shelley create around the
West Wind in sections II and III?
• Destruction - frenzy – decay - fear
Review Questions
Page 780
2. (a) Recall: What does the speaker ask of the wind in
section IV?
• To lift him up as a wave, leaf, or cloud and carry
him.
(b) Infer: What change in his life prompts this question?
•
He says he is oppressed by a “heavy weight of
hours.” (line 55)
Review Questions
Page 780
3. (a) Interpret: In section V, what is the “new birth” for
which the speaker asks?
• A new era of freedom and liberty sparked by his
words….possibly a politically and spiritual renewal
of humanity.
(b) Interpret: Why is the West Wind a suitable force to call
on for this “new birth”?
•
The wind marks a change of seasons in nature as
autumn turns to winter (and the old world dies), only
then to be replaced with the rebirth of spring (where a
new world emerges).
Review Questions
Page 780
4. (a) Interpret: What is the meaning of the famous final
line (70) of the poem?
• Even the bleakest situations are followed by times
of renewal and hope.
(b) Analyze: How does it tie together the poem?
•
It sums up the poems theme of hope for a new
beginning.
JOHN KEATS
Although he died at age
twenty-five, Keats left his
indelible mark on literature, and
this makes us wonder what
more he might have
accomplished had he lived
longer.
•Unlike his contemporaries
Byron and Shelley, John Keats
was not an aristocrat. Instead,
he was born to working-class
Londoners.
•
1795-1821
•In 1815, Keats began studying medicine at a London
hospital.
•In 1818, he published his first major work, Endymion, a long
poem that the critics panned.
•
JOHN KEATS
Despite the critical rejection, Keats
did not swerve from his new career.
Instead, he began writing the second
of his long poems, Hyperion, a work he
was never to complete.
•The year 1818 was significant for
Keats in other ways as well. He lost his
brother Tom to tuberculosis, but he
also met the light of his life, Fanny
Brawne, to whom he became
engaged.
1795-1821
•The next year, 1819, was a period of feverish creativity.
•In just nine months, fired by grief, new-found love, and his own
encroaching illness, Keats wrote the poems for which he is most
famous, including “The Eve of St. Agnes,” “La Belle Dame sans
Merci,” and his odes.
•Each is recognized as a masterpiece.
JOHN KEATS
•Recognizing that like his brother, he had
tuberculosis, Keats moved to Italy, hoping that
the warmer climate would reverse the disease.
•Sadly, that hope proved false, and, in 1821, his
battle with tuberculosis ended with his death.
•Keats wrote his own epitaph, which stresses
the brevity of his life: “Here lies one whose
name was writ in water.”
•Despite his early death and the fact that he
composed his most important works in the
space of just two years, John Keats remains
one of the major influences in English poetry.
1795-1821
•Although he knew Percy Bysshe Shelley, he did not share Shelley’s
rebellious spirit, nor did he believe in using poetry for political statements.
Keats worked as a pure artist who labored under the banner of beauty. He
found in beauty the highest value our imperfect world could offer, and he
put its pursuit at the center of his poetry. In masterful verse, he explored
the beauty he found in the most ordinary circumstances.
JOHN KEATS
• Although his best-remembered
line is “‘Beauty is truth, truth
beauty,’” the poem in which it
appears, “Ode on a Grecian
Urn,” implicitly contrasts the
frozen world of a painted scene
with the world of change and
decay in which we live.
•For Keats, striving after what
can never be attained was
perhaps the true poetic task.
1795-1821
THE ODE
• An ode is a lyric poem, characterized by
heightened emotion, that pays respect to a
person or thing, usually directly addressed by the
speaker.]
•The Pindaric ode (named for the ancient Greek
poet Pindar) falls in groups of three stanzas, one of
which differs in form from the other two. Pindar’s
odes celebrated victors at the Olympic Games.
•Roman poets later developed the Horatian ode
(also called homostrophic), which contains only one
type of stanza.
•The irregular ode has no set pattern.
THE “KEATS ODE”
•Keats created his own form of the ode,
using ten-line stanzas of iambic
pentameter (lines containing ten beats
with a repeated pattern of weak-strong).
•Often those stanzas begin with a heroic
quatrain (four lines rhymed abab)
followed by a sestet (six lines rhymed in
various ways).
Thou still unravished 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:
 As the speaker stands before an ancient
Grecian urn and addresses it, what is he
preoccupied with ?
 How its picture can capture moments frozen in time.
 It is the “still unravish’d bride of quietness,” the “foster-child of
silence and slow time.” He also describes the urn as a
“historian” that can tell a story.
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 loath?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
 What is he wondering as he looks at the pictures
on the urn?
 What legend they depict and from where they come. . . .
These men pursuing a group of women and wonders what
their story could be: “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 endeared,
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;
 As he looks at another picture on the urn, he sees a
young man playing a pipe, lying with his lover
beneath a glade of trees. How are the piper’s
“unheard” melodies sweeter than mortal melodies?
 Because they are unaffected by time as
immortalized art.
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,
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
 He tells the youth that, although he can never kiss
his lover because he is frozen in time, he should not
grieve, because . . .
 Because her beauty will never fade..
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
Forever piping songs forever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting, and forever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
 For what things is the poet happy for here?
 Trees will never shed their leaves…Piper
because his songs will be “for ever new,” ….love
of the boy and the girl will last forever.
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 dressed?
 What are the group of villagers doing here?
 Leading a heifer to be sacrificed at an altar.
What little town by river or seashore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets forevermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.
 What does the poet imagine and what does he tell
its citizens?
 It will “for evermore” be silent, for those who have
left it, frozen on the urn, will never 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
 At a final gaze at the urn, what does the poet reflect
upon?
 The urn, like Eternity, “doth tease us out of
thought.” . . . It makes us think/reflect about time
and art.
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
 At a final gaze at the urn, what does the poet reflect
upon?
 The urn, like Eternity, “doth tease us out of
thought.” . . . It makes us think/reflect about time
and art.
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
 At a final gaze at the urn, what does the poet reflect
upon?
 The urn, like Eternity, “doth tease us out of
thought.” . . . It makes us think/reflect about time
and art.
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.
 What is the poet’s final thought??
 He thinks that when his generation is long dead,
the urn will remain, telling future generations its
enigmatic lesson: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”
The speaker says that that is the only thing the
urn knows and the only thing it needs to know.
Questions
Page 800
2. (a) Describe the scenes in stanzas I and II.

youth pursuing his love, and a sacrificing of an
animal to the gods
(b) Why might the lover in stanza II grieve?
 He can never kiss his love .
(c) Why does the speaker advise him not to
grieve?
 She will never grow old and always love him
Questions
Page 800
3. (a) Which items are called “happy” in stanza III?

Trees will never shed their leaves…Piper
because his songs will be “for ever new,” ….love
of the boy and the girl will last forever.
(b) What is the reason for their happiness?
 Because of Art’s ability to immortalize something or
someone.
Questions
Page 800
4. Draw Conclusions: What do the speaker’s
comments on these painted scenes indirectly
suggest about real life?
 Life is temporal and fleeting . . . But Art lives forever
Questions
Page 800
5. (a) In line 49, what is the “‘truth’” represented by the
scenes on the urn?
 Truth and beauty as imperishable and eternal as
Art lives forever
 (b) How is this truth connected to the fact that the urn
will remain after “old age shall this generation waste”?
 The Urn’s beauty is unending / immortal which isn’t true of the real
world
 (c) Make a Judgment: Is the truth of the urn the
“whole truth”? Explain.
 Possibly only partly true as it doesn’t reflect issues of mortality like
aging, suffering, and death – which are all a part of the full spectrum
of life.