Romanticism was an intellectual and artistic movement spanning the late

eighteenth century and early nineteenth centuries that emphasized the

individual mind, spirit, and body; the emotional, irrational, imaginative, and
spontaneous. Romantic movement began in western Europe, but eventually
spread throughout Europe and to different parts of the world as more people
heard the ideas of Romanticism and saw them represented in art.
Romantic Poetry in English Literature began as a movement against the Neo-
Classical Age Poetry. Poets such as William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe
Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Lord Byron and some others
introduced poetry that was different in Style, Subject and Sensibilities from
that of John Dryden and Alexandar Pope. The beginning of the romantic
poetry is marked by the publication of Lyrical Ballad’ by William Wordsworth in
1798. ‘Lyrical Ballads was a collection of the new style of poetry composed by
Wordsworth and Coleridge.
The Period of Romantic Poetry is also addressed as “the Return to Nature”
that lasted around 1800-1850. The romantic poets stressed on imagination,
passion, emotion, nature and lives of common men which became the
features of Romantic poetry.
The romantic poetry of this age also laid special emphasis on
humanitarianism, fraternity, equality, liberty and freedom of the individual.
Seeking relief from the uneasy restlessness of the 18th century into the life of
Middle Ages is another important feature of the romantic poetry.

Chief Feauters Of Romantic Poetry

Nature
Nature, in all its unbound glory, plays a huge role in Romantic literature.
Nature, sometimes seen as the opposite of the rational, is a powerful symbol
in work from this era.
The main aspect in the romantic view on the nature is its “subjectivity”, the
corresponding correlation of the poet’s mood with the natural world. It is a
subjective interpretation of nature that is widely used by Romantic poets, and
such features as variety of moral epithets, passion, and association of objects
with personal – these are the most obvious examples of this poetic
temperament. “Nature knows, loves, suffers and dreams, like a man, and
together with the man”. (Moore, 2010)
It is important to note that for romantic poets nature was an expression of
spiritual life, where they saw the mirror reflection of either their own soul, or
the ideal life that constituted the object of their dreams. Therefore, in their
works nature is endowed with more deep meaning, than the meaning of
words.

Emotions
Romantic poetry abounds in emotion. The romantic poets stressed on
expressing subjective emotions and it is usually the poets’ personal
experience and introspection that takes the form of poem. For instance,
Wordsworth’s description of a lonely, beautiful girl singing a folk song while
reaping in the fields becomes his famous poem ‘the Solitary Reaper”.
Similarly, “daffodils” is a poem by Wordsworth that describes the beauty of a
stretch beautiful flowers that the poet is reminded of while sitting in his room,
many days after he had visited this scenery. The romantic poets chose to
express emotions of a wide variety through their poems, something that was
completely absent during the Neo-Classical Poetry.

Imagination

In contrast to the previous generations’ focus on reason, writers of the

Romantic movement explored the importance of imagination and the creative
impulse. Romantic poets and prose writers celebrated the power of
imagination and the creative process, as well as the artistic viewpoint. They
believed that artists and writers looked at the world differently, and they
celebrated that vision in their work.

Spritual and Supernatural elements

The writers of the Romantic era did not turn away from the darker side of
emotion and the mysteries of the supernatural. They explored the contrast
between life and death. Many pieces have Gothic motifs, such as manor
houses in disrepair, dark and stormy nights, and more.

Some of the supernatural elements serve as symbols for emotions of guilt,

depression, and other darker feelings.

Diction

Romantic poetry is also distinguished with its diction. The poets wrote “in a
selection of language really used by men”. Written mostly in a melancholic
tone, Romantic Poetry is marked by “simplicity of diction”. The poets made
generous use of personification, imagery and comparison but the language
was one that could be understood by common men. The Romantic poets
argued that the diction of Neo-classical poetry was beyond comprehension for
the commoners and became prosaic to a great extent. Hence, The romantic
poets discarded the redundant language of Dryden and Pope and made
began straightforward use of language and meter. But the poets ensured that
the rustic language was not inferior or vulgar rather rhythmic expressive.

PB Shelly

Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822), a romantic English poet and critic,

considered by many to be among the greatest, and one of the most influential
leaders of the romantic movement. He was born on August 4, 1792, at Field
Place, near Horsham, Sussex.

SS from Phone

Shelley was a revolutionary poet and derives much influences from the French
Revolution. The French Revolution destroyed the old setup of order and
brought a new order to the society. “Ode to the West Wind” shows the
destruction of old ideas to emerge a seed of new ideas. He compares old
ideas to “leaves dead” and pleads the West Wind to drive away “like ghosts
from an enchanter fleeing”. He talks about the emergence of new ideas where
“the winged seeds” are preserved like a “corpse” until “the spring shall blow”
resulting of the harbingers of change.

The Romantic poets differed significantly from one another in their treatment
of nature. Despite their profound love of nature, they looked at her from their
own viewpoints. Like other Romantic poets, Shelley is also an ardent lover
and worshipper of nature. Almost all his poems abound in nature imagery and
some of his poems are poems purely of nature, such as “Ode to the West
Wind”, “The Cloud”, and “To a Skylark”. In “Ode to the West Wind”, Shelley
takes a powerful force from nature, the West Wind and renders it a mythical
stature. Despite his subjective treatment of the natural object, Shelley does
not attribute any human characteristics on it. To him, nature is a ceaseless
source of inspiration and power.
Shelley’s love for nature has got clear manifestation in the poem “Ode to the
West Wind”. His fascination for the mighty power of the West Wind is evident
throughout the poem. He gives graphic descriptions of the forceful aspects of
the wind. He brings out the duality in the wind — a ‘destroyer’ and a
‘preserver’ simultaneously. By means of images taken from nature, Shelley
graphically describes the changes that the West Wind brings on the earth, in
the sky and over the ocean. On the earth, it destroys the old leaves but carries
and scatters ‘winged-seeds’ to the wintry beds where they wait for their
germination in the spring. In the sky, it drives the clouds and causes storm
and rain which sings together the dirge of the dying year. It also puts the
waves of the sea in agitation. It arouses from its sleep the prodigious
Mediterranean. It cleaves its way through the level Atlantic so that the
vegetation at its bottom is disturbed. The sea flowers grow pale with fear and
drop their petals. The descriptions allude to Shelley’s fascination for forceful
aspects of nature.

KEATS

John Keats is in many ways the most romantic of all romantic poets. Romantic
poetry aims at the complete expression of the individual as compared to
classical poetry, which aims at the expression of social experience. Other
romantic poets have some political or social comment in their poetry. But the
poetry of Keats is not a vehicle of any prophecy or any message. It is poetry
for its own sake. It has no moral, no political or social significance. It is
therefore the purest poetry.

Like all romantics, Keats has love for nature and its varied charms. He has a
vivid sense of colour, and he transfigures everything into beauty that he
touches with "the magic hand of chance".

In his Ode to Autumn, the treatment of the subject is objective as Keats

presents a rich and vivid picture of the season. The poem is a nature-lyric and
only the beauty and bounty of nature during the Autumn are described in a
vivid and realistic manner. He describes Autumn as the "season of mists and
mellow fruitfulness"-In the third he says,

"Where are the songs of spring Ay where are they?

 Think not of them, thou has! thy music too."

To the poet Autumn is complete in itself with its own beauty and luxurious
fruitfulness.

Sensuousness is the out-standing characteristic of Romantic poets. Keats is

pre-eminently a poet of sensuousness.
Love of the past is another character. Like all other romantic poets, Keats
seeks an escape in the past. His imagination is attracted by the ancient
Greeks as well as the glory and splendour of the Middle Ages. Most of his
poetry is inspired by the past.

The themes of Keats's poetry are romantic in their nature. Most of his poetry
is devoted to the quest of beauty, love, chivalry, adventure, pathos-these are
some of the themes of his poems, (disappointment in love).

Byron

Lord Byron was undoubtedly one of the most powerful and vigorous of
English Romantic poets. Born in the age of Romanticism and composing
poems in the style and manner of his contemporaries he had his sympathies
with the Augustans and adored Dryden and Pope more than Wordsworth,
Coleridge and Southey. Byron was interested more in himself than in the
social forces in which he sought to move. The Byronic Hero came to be
recognised as a special 'Tour-d-force' and Byron became the author of all his
masterly heroic creations.

Byron's interest was not in imagination, reflection or aerial flights to a dreamy

utopia of poetic creation. Byron was a realist in poetry and sought to present
the pictures of social and economic life as he viewed in his wide travels.His
"Don Juan" is another travel book in poetry recounting the adventurous and
picaresque adventures of the hero in Italy, Spain, Turkey, Russia and
England.

“When We Two Parted” is a bitter poem about the end of a relationship. The
speaker addresses the poem to an ex-lover, and so provides insight into the
ongoing—and shapeshifting—pain of a breakup. Breakups, the poem argues,
are not neat endings after which exes simply go their separate ways. Instead,
they're often characterized by lingering, complicated pain and anger. The
poem's main sentiments are disillusionment and frustration as the speaker
learns that his beloved has moved on, and even wonders how he ever cared
about her so much in the first place. The poem, then, speaks to the sheer
messiness of breakups, and also to how quickly lovers’ perceptions of each
other can change when they're no longer together.
The poem begins by describing the actual breakup. The “broken-hearted”
lovers “parted in silence and tears”—they were “sever[ed]” from one another,
indicating the almost physical pain of ending a relationship. But something
about the sudden distance between the two lovers—the physical and
emotional separation—seemed to predict the way that the speaker would
come to feel betrayed in later years. For the speaker, this sudden lack of
affection foreshadows the even worse pain the lover will cause him in the
future. The circumstances of this relationship and the subsequent fallout are
not made clear, but the feeling of being let down is definitely present.
The speaker then relates how hearing other people talk about the lover brings
him pain. But that's also because of the nature of this hearsay: it seems to be
gossip of some sort, and it's likely that this gossip relates to a new affair
conducted by the speaker's ex. The speaker then wonders, a little meanly
perhaps, how he ever held his lover “so dear.” That is, how could he care so
much about someone who seems to have forgotten him—and was their love
as real as he thought it was in the first place?
These thoughts lead him to declare that he'll “rue” the lover for a “long, long”
time, again depicting the lasting messiness of breakups. And, in a way, it’s
because the speaker perceives this change in the lover that his own attitude
changes. It's almost as though, despite the breakup, he wants the ex to
remain his (again speaking to the complicated feelings that come with the end
of a relationship). Hearing rumors about the lover indicates that she may have
moved on: the lover has given her heart to someone else, and in doing so
denigrated what she and the speaker had.
Which is why, even after years have passed, this relationship still brings the
speaker to “tears.” People move on with their lives, the poem seems to say,
but this doesn’t mean that they move on completely from past loves. Feelings
are messy and complicated, hanging around unwanted and unwarranted—
and in this case, remaining as painful as ever, even as they change in other
ways.
It’s also worth noting the poem’s specific context. The poem is thought to have
been written about Byron’s relationship with the aristocrat Lady Webster. After
their affair ended, Byron heard the rumor that she had also had an affair with
the Duke of Wellington, a British military leader who had just defeated
Napoleon. It’s thought that Byron felt embittered upon hearing of this other
affair, and was thus spurred to write the poem. This would explain some of the
references to the speaker hearing the lover’s name associated with “shame”
and “fame”—and why the affair was (and still i