Romantic Poetry
John Keats and Percy Bysshe
Shelley
Outline
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
John Keats; the odes
Ode on a Grecian Urn
“Bright Star”
“La Belle Dame san merci”
“Ozymandias”
Notes
Lord Byron: “She Walks in Beauty” (for
reference)
Romantic Age
First Generation: The emphasis on
• Idealism & Quest
– Wordsworth: Nature and correspondence between
Nature and human nature (e.g. US – Whitman,
Dickinson)
– Wordsworth: Common people (“London”)
– “Natural Supernaturalism” –Coleridge and Blake: Art
(“Tiger”), Imagination & Vision (“Kubla Khan” “The
Rime of Ancient Mariner”)
• Feeling (“spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling”
“emotion recollected in tranquility”)
• Individualism vs. (e.g. “I Wandered Lonely as a
Cloud” and “Rose”)
Romantic Age
2nd Generation: The emphasis on
– Feeling
– Art & Imagination (e.g. “Ode on a Grecian
Urn”) & Vision
– Individualism & Quest for the remote (myth)
– Breaking down more boundaries (e.g. the
sensual, the moral);
– against authority (“Ozymandias”)
John Keats
• October 31, 1795-February 23, 1821;
died at the age of 25 of tuberculosis .
Published only 54 poems.
• Originally a surgeon (apothecarysurgeon) and changed his mind in
1813-1814.
• Literary Creation: 1816 – 1821 [love
with Fanny Browne 1818- the
odes 1819] poverty
• 1820 –symptoms of TB;
• 1821 -- "Here lies one whose name
was writ in water."
• Major Ideas: Life as “the Vale of
soul-making.” Shakespeare with
“negative capability” (like a
chameleon變色龍—imaginative
identification with the other).
Keats’ Great Odes
1. “Ode to Psyche”
--the goddess
Psyche in the
arms of Cupid
2. “Ode on a
Grecian Urn” –
art
3. “Ode to a
Nightingale” --art
5. “Ode on Indolence”
6. 'To Autumn‘ – a
finale
• 4. “Ode on Melancholy”
She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips
• Journey to (or Quest) artistic
eternity and transcendence and
return to the mortal world
Ode on a Grecian Urn
1. Pay attention to a) the form of address
(apostrophe) and the object of address in
different stanzas, which imply the speaker’s
different relations with the urn;
2. Pay attention to the use of metaphors in
calling/describing the urn;
3. The two sides of the urn: their differences and
similarities
4. The closing lines—how to interpret them.
Blue—metaphor;
red– sound
Underline-- rhetoric skills:
questions
STANZA I
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? (1)
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Blue—metaphor;
Red – sound
Underline-- rhetoric skills:
Imperative, concession,
repetition
STANZA II
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!
Blue—metaphor;
Orange – sound
Underline-- rhetoric skills:
Exclamation; repetition
STANZA III
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.
Blue—subjects;
Orange – sound
Underline-- rhetoric skills:
Exclamation; repetition
STANZA IV
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.
Blue—metaphor;
Orange – sound
Underline-- rhetoric skills:
Exclamation; repetition
STANZA V
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.
Ode on a Grecian Urn
1. Using apostrophe to speak to the Urn in
order to enter its realm (the realm of art
and permanence);
2. The process: question empathy 
confirmation  differentiation between
the human and the artistic.
Ode on a Grecian Urn
1. Using apostrophe to address and speak to the
Urn in order to “enter” its realm (the realm of
art and permanence);
•
The Emphathic（神入﹚/Ekphrastic (讀畫／藝術作
品) Process:
1) approach: question understanding  confirmation

2) differentiation between the human and the artistic
– A Creative Process:
* After all, the urn is just an ancient utensil; Keats
creates its “artistic” meanings by teasing out the
dualities between time and timelessness/frozen
moments, sound and silence, thinking and
thoughtlessness, the static and the eternal.
Note (1)
• Tempe and Arcady: considered as heavenly
paradise in Greece, frequently mentioned in
pastoral poems; symbol of artistic realm.
• Sylvan – of the forest; shady
Note (2)
• Ekphrasis: poetic writing concerning itself with
the visual arts, artistic objects, and/or highly
visual scenes (source)
• Examples: “Musee des beaux arts” “Ozymandias”
“My Last Duchess”
• Issues:
– art and life;
– different languages of art (an inter-art approach):
temporal/kinetic arts (verbal, filmic) art vs. static
(visual vs. plastic)
– Possibilities of re-creation with different messages.
Ode on a Grecian Urn as an
Ekphrastic poem
• Keats first appreciates the values of plastic
art which eternalizes one (frozen) moment;
• With the reading of the funeral procession,
he places it back to the temporal flow.
• There is then a contrast between the urn’s
beauty and truth, and those of humans’
mortal world.
“Bright Star”
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
hermit
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, cleansing
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.
Cosmic,
religious
“Bright Star”
1. Paradoxes?
Between steadfastness and mortality
(unrest, fall and swell, death)
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.
2. Poetic Form?
abab, cdcd, efgfhh
Between Shakespearean (rhyme) and Italian
sonnet (form)
“Bright Star” In Context (1)
• The poem was written by Keats in 1819 and
revised it in 1820, perhaps on the (final) voyage
to Italy (a common treatment for tuberculosis, a
trip to Italy).
• Keats was aware that he was dying. Some
critics have theorized that this poem was
addressed to his fiance, Fanny Brawne, and
connect the poem to his May 3, 1818 letter to
her.
Ode on Melancholy (1819)
She [Melancholy] dwells with Beauty—
Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips
The Film Bright Star
Bright star 01:12, 1:52
La Belle Dame Sans Merci 01:22
01:40:22,216 --Let's pretend I will return in
spring.
La Belle Dame Sans Mercy 1819)
Sir Frank Dicksee's La Belle Dame Sans Merci, based upon John Keats’ poem (source
La Belle Dame Sans Mercy 1819)
1) How does the speaker present the knight? And
the knight, the lady?
2) Why are the last lines repetitions of the first
stanza? "though the sedge is wither'd from the
lake / And no birds sing." Note that they are
spoken first by the narrator, and at the end, by
the knight.
3) What role does “dream” play in this poem?
4) Pay attention to the effects of alliteration
5) In what ways is this poem (as a literary ballad)
different fold ballad?
1-3: Speaker to a pale knight
I
O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
II
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.
III
Lily = pale white
I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
narrator
4-9: The knight about
IV
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.
V.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
VI.
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.
The knight’s
narration
the beautiful
fairy-like Lady:
images of fairy,
flower, sweet
root, moan and
song, wildness
The knight left alone
VII.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said— “I love thee
true.”
精靈洞穴
VIII.
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
Dream 
cold hill
IX.
And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill’s side.
The knight alone
X
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!”
XI.
黃昏
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
XII.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
Dream  cold hill,
knights
Awake on the
cold hill’s side
cold hill bot h in
the dream and
awake/
Interpretations
1. The knight – ill, fatigued and/or diseased
-- The lady – in foreign tongue, beautiful but unreal (like
a fairy)
2. Image – late autumn, withered plants,
-- the
ambience of a dream: he wakes to find himself in
the dreamscape.
3. Sound and sense – sadness, obsession (e.g.
the use of alliteration and nasal sounds-woebegone, gloam.)
a. Unrequited love – 衣帶漸寬終不悔，為伊消得人憔悴
b. Impossible love – with Fanny Browne
c. Impossible quest for some ideal (in illness)
Percy Bysshe Shelley
• eloped with the 16-year old Harriet
Westbrook; disinherited because of this
marriage.
• In 1814, Shelley traveled abroad with Mary
Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of the
philosopher and anarchist William Godwin
(1756-1836). Harriet committed suicide,
and then Shelley married Mary.
• Shelley was Drowned in 1822.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
• eloped with the 16-year old Harriet
Westbrook; disinherited because of this
marriage.
• In 1814, Shelley traveled abroad with Mary
Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of the
philosopher and anarchist William Godwin
(1756-1836). Harriet committed suicide,
and then Shelley married Mary.
• Shelley was Drowned in 1822.
Ozymandias
• The use of frames: the traveler’s story
• Contradictions used to present the ironies
of human ambition:
– shatter visage frown and sneer;
– Passion on “these lifeless things” survives
“the hand” and “the heart” (whose heart?)
– “colossal” wreck –boundless sand.
The Romantics: The Big Six
• William Blake (17571827)
• Willliam Wordsworth
(1770-1850)
• Samuel Taylor
Coleridge (1772-1834)
• John Keats (17951821) -- died at the age
of 25
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792-1822) -- died at
the age of 29
• Lord Byron (1788-1824)
–age 36
Mary Shelley 30 August
1797 – 1 February 1851)
Art in the Romantic Age
The First Generation: The emphasis on
1. Inspired by French Revolution
2. Nature and the Natural:
1. correspondence between Nature and human nature (e.g.
US – Whitman, Dickinson)
2. Democracy: Common and Rustic (鄉下的) people
3. Feelings (“spontaneous overflow of powerful
feeling”)
4. Imagination and Vision (e.g. “I Wandered Lonely as
a Cloud”) & Vision
– Individualism & Quest –so called “Natural
Supernaturalism”
Art in the Romantic Age
The 2nd Generation: The emphasis on
1. Feelings – Free Love
2. Art & Imagination (e.g. “Ode on a Grecian Urn”) &
Vision
–
Individualism & Quest for the remote (myth)
3. More Radical
–
–
–
Breaking down more boundaries (e.g. the sensual, the
moral);
against authority (“Ozymandias”)
Romantic or Satanic Hero ( Frankenstein)
4. (Lyrics) narrative poems
Victorian Poetry
More dramatic, less visionary—sometimes sadder
• Influenced by the Romantics, but there is usually a
conflict between their need for conveying personal
emotions and their sense of social responsibility
(educational) —esp in Tennyson.
• Influenced by the popularity of novels at the time
dramatic monologue and narrative poems (e.g. Idylls
of the Kings—Arthurian legends)
• Late Victorians – the Pre-Raphaelites, Thomas
Hardy and Matthew Arnold
Ozymandias –Starting
Questions
• Main Idea and Ironies?
– How is Ozymandias described?
• The poem’s form?
– an Italian sonnet (octave + sestet).
– Narrative frame: the use of the narrator
Ozymandias
(Rhyme: ABAB ACDC EDEFEF).
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."
image
The narrative framesthe effect of
distantiation
• “Survival” and death:
Lives: the other kings
Ozymandias
his heart and
the sculptor’s hand
passions on the sculpture
+ lifeless sculpture
sand
traveler
I  the Poem –the one that survives
Ozymandias: Historical Context
(1)
• Its title: Ramesses the Great (i.e.,
Ramesses II), Pharaoh of the
Nineteenth dynasty of ancient
Egypt. Ozymandias –the Greek
version of his throne name.
• The inscription on the pedestal of
his statue: "King of Kings am I,
Osymandias. If anyone would
know how great I am and where I
lie, let him surpass one of my
works." (image and info source)
• Shelley’s reading: wrinkled lip …
Ramesses II
Front view of the temple of Ramesses II in Abu Simbel, Egypt
Ozymandias: Historical Context
(2)
• The poem: Written in 1817, three
years after the Waterloo in 1815
(which brought Napoleon's
conquest to a stop). (source)
• Shelley’s other poem: “Ode to the
West Wind”
• What inspired the poem: The
'Younger Memnon' statue of
Ramesses II in the British
Museum  an example of British
colonialism
Percy Bysshe
Shelley
• A radical thinker and pronounced
•
•
•
•
•
•
atheist
Supporter of free love
Eloped first with Harriet, and then with
Mary Godwin Shelley (as well as her
step-sister, when both were 16).
Set up a “radical community of
friends” who shared everything with
one another.
Two family suicides (one of Harriet,
the other Mary’s half sister)
1816-- the completion of
Frankenstein.
1821-- Percy Bysshe Shelley
drowned at sea, aged 29.
Lord Byron
• See the video
• Born with a clubfoot
• Child Harold – the
disparity between
Romantic ideals and
reality
• Involved in affairs with
a married woman and
his half sister.
portrait of Lord Byron in Albanian dress by Thomas Phillips, c1835 (source)
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
1. How is “she” described? With what
images (of contradictions)? What does
beauty means? And “walk”?
2. How do the sound effects help convey
the meanings of the poem?
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
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 mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
Song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxZvgp14MFc
(Vanity Fair: opening )
Reading:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8kwvhsT850
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd 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 dwellingplace.
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 at all below,
A heart whose love is innocent !
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
she
– sheds ‘tender’ light (combines darkness and
light//aspect and eyes//appearance, heart and
thought.)
-- grace in motion on her dress and her face, and
expressive of her pure mind and thought.
-- cheeks and smile glow to reveal her goodness,
mind and heart.
rhythm: iambs with one trochee
Sounds: [m] [s] [o] [e]