Reading Great Books of HumanitiesWeek 10

• Romanticism Poetry

• William Blake

• Robert Burns

• William Wordsworth

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• George Golden Byron

• Percy Busshe Shelley

• John Keats

• William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker.

• Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake's work is today considered seminal and significant in the history of both poetry and the visual arts.

• He was voted 38th in a poll of the 100 Greatest Britons organized by the BBC in 2002.

• According to Northrop Frye, who undertook a study of Blake's entire poetic corpus, his prophetic poems form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language."

• Others have praised Blake's visual artistry, at least one modern critic proclaiming Blake "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced.“

• Once considered mad for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is highly regarded today for his expressiveness and creativity, and the philosophical vision that underlies his work.

• He himself once indicated, "The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself."

• While his visual art and written poetry are usually considered separately, Blake often employed them in concert to create a product that at once defied and superseded convention.

• Though he believed himself able to converse aloud with Old Testament prophets, and despite his work in illustrating the Book of Job, Blake's affection for the Bible was accompanied by hostility for the established Church, his beliefs modified by a fascination with Mysticism and the unfolding of the Romantic Movement around him.

• Ultimately, the difficulty of placing William Blake in any one chronological stage of art history is perhaps the distinction that best defines him.

• 〈秋之詠〉（ To Autumn）• 秋啊，你滿載果實，染著葡萄的血色，別走，請到我陰涼的屋頂下坐一坐；那裡你可以稍事休憩，將歡樂的聲調調進我清新的蘆笛，所有歲月的女兒會翩然起舞！那時，請你唱果實與花朵的歡歌。「細嫩的蓓蕾向太陽綻開嬌美，愛在她那顫動的血管裡蕩漾；鮮花環飾著黎明的眉宇，飄盪著垂掛到羞怯的黃昏那明亮的臉龐，於是稠密的夏迸發出歌聲，長翅的雲在她頭上灑滿花朵。大氣中的精靈靠果實的芬芳生存；而歡樂，則帶著有翼的光，繞花園遊蕩，或者棲息在樹叢中歌唱。」歡樂的秋坐著的時候，這樣唱歌。然後起身，整整衣服，就越過蒼山從視野中消失；但遺落了金色的擔子。

• 布雷克（William-Blake， 1757年－ 1827年）這首〈秋之詠〉寫出秋天這個豐收的季節，大自然萬物歡唱的喜悅。

• 看看：秋天金黃色的稻穗閃閃發亮，紫色的葡萄圓潤又多汁，鮮紅的柿子如夕陽那般耀眼。

• 這些都像是秋天的孩子，大家爭相出色，但是秋天這個母親珍愛每一個孩子，她說：「你們盡情表現吧！媽媽永遠以你們為榮。」孩子聽了，各個雀躍不已，稻穗更加飽滿，葡萄更加豐潤，柿子更加鮮豔。        

• 中段他描寫秋之歌的詩句，清新、輕快又充滿活力，詩句流動之美滲透出生命極致的鮮活。他的詩讚頌季節、讚頌大自然，也是讚頌生命。

• 『羔羊』 (“The Lamb”) 和『老虎』 (“The Tiger”)這一組最著名的對詩來說，截然不同的兩種生物帶給觀者 / 敘述者極為分歧的世界觀。

• 『羔羊』簡單直接的吟唱和自問自答的反詰問句訴說著基督教義裡造物主和被造物 ( 包括自然萬物和人類 ) 合而為一，自給自足的純真境界。

• Bryan Aubrey 在解析 『羔羊』一詩時，有下列的見解：「探討『羔羊』會遭遇的真正問題並不是它缺乏深度，而是讀者必須跳脫本身的眼界去理解它所擁有的那種深度，那個孩童視為理所當然，不過而對成人卻是不尋常的現實

• 對於布雷克而言，孩提時代並非完全依賴或者無知的狀態，反而是精神視野最清明的階段。

• 反觀在經驗之歌的『老虎』，幾乎每個詩節都是沒有明確答案的疑問句，透露出對老虎這個兇猛威武的受造物以及其背後造物主的懼怕和敬畏。

• 敘述者的口吻充滿不確定感，懸而未決卻又必須追問的張力反映在詩行的揚抑格 (trochaic meter) 以及不斷重複的頭韻 (alliteration) 上。

• Trochee (n.) a measure of poetry consisting of one strong (or long) beat followed by one weak (or short) beat, as in “father” ( 術語 )( 詩律的 ) 抑揚格 , 長短格

• 最後的終極哉問既可以視為布雷克對於當時法國大革命所帶來的衝擊、暴動的省思，更可進一步與 『羔羊』互通有無，純真世界裡受限的視野，在經驗的累積下補足；而經驗所帶來的疑惑和不安只有回歸到純真的境界才能獲得平息。

• 評論家像是 Erica Smith 和 Harold C. Pagliaro 都不約而同提出，『羔羊』以至於『老虎』正反合的過程，不僅代表了布雷克感知外在世界、人事物關係視野上的轉變，也是對於存在於自己內裡不同的自我，「就像老虎一樣致命，像創造者一樣大膽，也像羔羊一般溫和」一次徹底的檢視與調和 。

• 18 世紀末的英國畫家與詩人 William Blake的「一個黑人小男孩」始終備受爭議因為涉及兩個最敏感的議題：種族和宗教光是白的，心是白的，安全的遮蔽卻是黑的愛的光，尤其當來自至高他者，總是傷及凡人。

• 掃煙囪的小孩 (The Chimney Sweeper) 白雪裏有個小小的黑東西， “掃煙！掃煙！”喊叫得慘悽！ “孩子！你爸爸媽媽在哪裡？” “他們都去教堂禱告上帝。  “只因我在家鄉跳來蹦去， 又在冬天雪地裏嬉笑， 他們便給我穿上這喪衣， 還教我唱這凄涼調。  “又因我唱歌跳舞挺歡暢， 他們認為對我沒有傷害， 便去讚美上帝、牧師和君王， 用我們的痛苦來造一個樂園。”

• William Blake wrote "The Chimney Sweeper" of "Songs of Innocence" in 1789.

• This poem shows that the children have a very positive outlook on life.

• They make the best of their lives and do not fear death. • This is quite the opposite in it's companion poem in

"Songs of Experience" which was written in 1794. • In this poem, the child blames his parents for putting him

in the position he was in. He is miserable in his situation and he also blames "God & his Priest & King".

• This point of view is different from that of its companion poem because the chimney sweeper has been influenced by society and has an "experienced" point of view.

• 神之肖像 (The Divine Image) 向著仁慈、悲憫、和平與愛 眾人在苦惱中獻上祈禱； 同樣地，對這些帶來喜悅的美德 人們報之以感謝。 因為仁慈、悲憫、和平與愛 便是天主，我們親愛的父， 同時仁慈、悲憫、和平與愛 也是人，祂的孩子，祂所關心的。 因仁慈有一顆血肉的心， 悲憫有人的面貌， 愛，是取了人形的神聖， 和平穿著人的衣裳。 於是，來自四面八方的每個人 在他的困苦中祈禱時， 便是向取了人形的神聖── 仁慈、悲憫、和平與愛祈求。 而眾人均須愛有形之人， 即使在外邦、猶太或土耳其； 凡有仁慈、悲憫、和平與愛居住之處 天主也居住在那裡。

• "The Divine Image" of "Songs of Innocence" attributes the virtues of Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love to the human form.

• It also gives God all of the glory for the creation of the human in his own form. This can be seen in the last two lines of the poem."

• The companion poem of "The Divine Image" in "Songs of Experience" had the same title, but it only appeared in one copy of "Songs of Innocence and Experience."

• Many believe that this is because Blake thought that a better companion poem for "The Divine Image" would be "The Human Abstract"

• "The Human Abstract" also attributes Pity and Mercy to the human form.

• However, it also implies that humans only have these characteristics through the poverty or unhappiness of others.

• It also says that humans have traits of Cruelty, Mystery, and Deceit.

• According to the poem, they also have Humility, but only because they have "holy fears."

• According to the poem, the characteristics of mankind are all there because of selfishness and self-absorption.

• This is quite a change from the point of view of "The Lamb," which praises the human form. The "experienced" author of "The Human Abstract" has seen how people really are.

• Through experience of hard times and wrong-doings, his perspective of everything has changed to something very far from his once innocent point of view.

• "Holy Thursday" in "Songs of Innocence" was written in 1789. The poem describes the English church's celebration of Jesus's ascension which takes place on Thursday 39 days after Easter. On this day, children from the charity schools of London were marched to a service at St. Paul's Cathedral. The beadles of the church were lower officers who were in charge of keeping order. In the last stanza of the poem, the children are singing in the balcony and the "aged men" are seated below them. The last line, "Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door." is an allusion to Hebrews 13:2, "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." This poem gives the reader a portrayal of the children as angelic.

• "Holy Thursday" from "Songs of Experience" was written in 1794.

• This poem is also about the English church's ceremony on Holy Thursday, but the tone is a bit more depressing.

• The last line of the second stanza, "It is eternal winter there," is describing how they see the ceremony from their experienced point of view.

• This is very different from the image created in "Holy Thursday" of "Songs of Innocence."

• The last stanza of the poem adds to the analogy of the ceremony to winter by saying that when the sun shines and the rain falls, there can never be hunger or poverty.

• Obviously, the sun doesn't shine and the rain doesn't fall in winter, which means that, according to this poem, there is hunger and poverty among the children; a much different image from the one seen in its companion poem.

• 泥塊與卵石 (The Clod & The Peddle)• “愛情不求讓自己高興，從不把自己放在心上；它只為別人獻出安寧，任地獄絶望，它建造天堂。”

• 雖被一群牛的腳踩踏，小小泥塊依然這樣唱；但是溪水中一顆卵石，唱出這樣貼切的詩行：

• “愛情只求讓自己高興，為找樂趣把別人捆牢，歡樂時人家就沒安寧，它撇下天堂，把地獄建造。”

• Robert Burns (25 January 1759 - 21 July 1796) (also known as Rabbie Burns, Scotland's favorite son, the Ploughman Poet, the Bard of Ayrshire and in Scotland as simply The Bard)

• He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland.

• He is the best-known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is also in English and a 'light' Scots dialect.

• He also wrote in standard English, and in these pieces, his political or civil commentary is often at its most blunt.

• Robert Burns is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement.

• After his death he became an important source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism.

• A cultural icon in Scotland and among Scots who have relocated to other parts of the world, celebration of his life and work became almost a national charismatic cult during the 19th and 20th centuries, and his influence has long been strong on Scottish literature.

• As well as making original compositions, Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them.

• His poem Auld Lang Syne is often sung at Hogmanay (蘇格蘭的除夕聚會 ), and Scots Wha Hae served for a long time as an unofficial national anthem of the country.

• Other poems and songs of Burns that remain well-known across the world today, include A Red, Red Rose, A Man's A Man for A' That, To a Louse, To a Mouse, The Battle of Sherramuir, and A Fond Kiss.

• Burns Night, effectively a second national day, is celebrated on 25 January with Burns suppers around the world, and is still more widely observed than the official national day, Saint Andrew‘s Day, or the proposed North American celebration Tartan Day (蘇格蘭節 ).

• The format of Burns suppers has not changed since Robert's death in 1796.

• The basic format starts with a general welcome and announcements followed with the Selkirk Grace.

• Just post the grace comes the piping and cutting of the Haggis, where Robert‘s famous Address To a Haggis is read, and the haggis (肚包羊雜碎 ) is cut open.

• The event usually allows for people to start eating just after the haggis is presented.

• This is when the reading called the "immortal memory", an overview of Robert's life and work is given; the event usually concludes with the singing of Auld Lang Syne.

A Red, Red Rose • Burns had intended the work to be published as part of Thom

son's selection. • However, he wrote to a friend that Thomson and himself disa

greed on the merits of that type of song. "What to me appears to be the simple and the wild, to him, and I suspect to you likewise, will be looked on as the ludicrous and the absurd."

• Instead, Burns gave the song to Scots singer Pietro Urbani who published it in his Scots Songs.

• In his book, Urbani claimed the words of The Red Red Rose were obligingly given to him by a celebrated Scots poet, who was so struck by them when sung by a country girl that he wrote them down and, not being pleased with the air, begged the author to set them to music in the style of a Scots tune, which he has done accordingly.

• In other correspondence, Burns referred to it as a "simple old Scots song which I had picked up in the country."

Auld Lang Syne • It is often sung at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Da

y. • The song is commonly accompanied by a traditional dance.

• The group who is singing forms a ring, holding hands for th

e first verse. For the second verse, arms are crossed and again linked. For the third verse, everyone moves in to the centre of the ring and then out again.

• The song's title may be translated into English literally as 'old long since', or more idiomatically 'long ago', or 'days gone by'.

• In his retelling of fairy tales in the Scots language, Matthew Fitt uses the phrase “In the days of auld lang syne” as the equivalent of “Once upon a time”.

• In Scots Syne is pronounced like the English word sign — IPA: [sain]—not [zain] as many people pronounce it.

To A Mouse

• Surely one of the finest poems written by Burns, containing some of the most famous and memorable lines ever written by a poet, yet, to this day not really understood by the mass of English-speaking poetry lovers, for no other reason than that the dialect causes it to be read as though in a foreign language.

• All readers of Burns know of the "Wee sleekit cow'rin tim'rous beastie" but not many understand the sadness and despair contained within the lines of this poem. 

For a’ That and a’ That • Burns sent it to Thomson with the note, "I do not give

you the foregoing song for your book, but merely by way of vive la bagatelle; for the piece is not really poetry."

• The French use it to talk about a petty love affair when they disassociate the idea of love and sex.

• For A' That asserts the idea that basic human dignity was the heritage of any man and "liberty, equality, fraternity" should be the basis of economic as well as social intercourse.

• An outspoken champion Republican cause for social reform during The French Revolution, after Franco British relations deteriorated he curbed his radical sympathies and in the same year as this composition he joined the Dunfriesshire Volunteers.

Robert Burns

• He sent the piece to George Thomson in 1795 because he found a compatriot spirit in the similar poem Rights of Man by Thomas Paine.

• He added some comments with regard to his intense dislike bloated rank and privilege, `two or three pretty good prose thoughts, inverted into rhyme'; the same month in a letter to another friend, he referred to the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette as `the deserved fate of ... a perjured Blockhead and an unprincipled Prostitute.'

William Wordsworth

• William Wordsworth (April 7, 1770 – April 23, 1850) was a major English romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their 1798 joint publication, Lyrical Ballads.

• Wordsworth's masterpiece is generally considered to be The Prelude, an autobiographical poem of his early years that was revised and expanded a number of times.

• It was never published during his lifetime, and was only given the title after his death.

• Up until this time it was generally known as the poem "to Coleridge".

William Wordsworth

Simon lee• "Simon Lee" is a direct attempt to put into action many of

the ideas expressed in his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads.  • The poem itself, being based on an actual person, is a

manifestation of Wordsworth's assertion that poetry is a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" that "takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility" . 

• Wordsworth's fascination with the social implications of the old huntsman's situation led him to draw certain conclusions, and society is indicted here for its lack of compassion for and involvement with those people living on the fringes of society. 

• He states in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads that "Simon Lee" is designed to "illustrate the manner in which our feelings and ideas are associated in a state of excitement [. . .] by placing the reader in the way of receiving from ordinary moral sensations another and more salutary impression" . 

William Wordsworth

• Wordsworth invites his readers to think about his experience--and his reaction to it--in the same way he has, and challenges them to find in it a higher, more relevant truth than pity. 

• Simon's meager existence is juxtaposed against the reader's; the sharp contrasts illustrate Wordsworth's view of this poverty-stricken and forgotten old man as exemplifying the failure of human kindness toward the unfortunate and marginalized. 

• The poem moves the reader to feel pity, and then empathy, and finally to a state of social awareness. 

• Wordsworth's ultimate message, however, is that the reader should move beyond a mere contemplation of these emotions and realities and actually become involved.  The poem is a call to action.

A slumber did my spirit seal

• 我的心灵一度出尘；不知人世的恐惧：她宛如仙子不食人间的烟火。

如今伊人不再；音容消逝；伴着山林，与大地同行

• It consists of two stanzas rhyming abab. • As soon as the reader recognizes that he is dealing with

a poem certain expectations arise. • He anticipates to be confronted with a special poetical la

nguage corresponding to the conventions of poetry. • The reader is alert; he is now looking eagerly for those p

oetical devices. • Fortunately his expectations are already confirmed in the

first line of the poem. “Slumber” is not used in everyday language and in the dictionary it is acknowledged as an old fashioned literary term.

• The syntax deviates from the standard as well; the poet uses “did seal” instead of “sealed” which would be the grammatical correct past tense used nowadays.

• The reader feels at ease because his expectations have been confirmed. But the reading experience has only just begun

The Tables Turned • 书桌，走开！

快起！快起！我的朋友，丢开你的书本； 否则我干确定你将变成驼背； 快起！快起！我的朋友，清晰你的面容； 为何满是辛劳和困惑？

太阳，落在山岗上， 清新的光泽催熟了 整片长长翠绿的稻田 散播 在他第一缕甜蜜晚霞的金灿灿下

书！是愚蠢而又无止尽的争吵； 快来，听林地红雀， 多甜美的歌声！以我的生命 起誓：有多少智慧在其中啊！

• 听！ 多么轻快，画眉的歌唱！ 他，同样地，是一种召唤： 快来吧，进入阳光地带， 让大自然充当你们的老师。

他用所拥有整个世界预备的财富， 我们的思想和心灵来 祈祷—— 智慧的启迪孕育于健康， 真理的领悟迸发于欢悦。

一种激情，勃发于春天的林木 能教会你更多关于人类， 关于道德的罪恶和友善， 较之于所有智人的教诲。

甜美是大自然带来的熏陶； 我们爱干涉的才智 总错误地扭曲事物美丽的形式，—— 谋杀似地分辨一切。

够了，那些科学和艺术； 盖上那空洞乏味的书页； 来吧，带上你的心灵 一颗愿观察愿接纳的心灵。

I Traveled Among Unknown Men

• 我旅行在陌生人间 ----

• 我旅行在陌生人间 那离海较远的陆地上； 并不知道是英格兰啊！直到 我发现自己有多么爱你。

过去了，那忧伤的梦！ 难道，我将离开你的海岸 又一次；却时常发现 我对你的爱越来越深。

在山岚间，我清晰地 感觉到渴望的喜悦； 而我珍视地她，掉转船桅 靠向一处，英格兰的烽火。

清晨你展露，夜晚你遮掩 那些露茜曾玩耍地村落； 你的，也就是那最后的绿野 也曾被露茜的眼睛丈量过。

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge (October 21, 1772 – July 25, 1834) was an English poet, critic, and philosopher, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets.

• He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as his major prose work Biographia Literaria.

• Coleridge is probably best known for his long poems, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel.

• Christabel is known for its musical rhythm, language, and its Gothic tale.

• Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream, A Fragment, although shorter, is also widely known and loved.

• It has strange, dreamy imagery and can be read on many levels.

• Both Kubla Khan and Christabel have an additional "romantic" aura because they were never finished.

• Stopford Brooke characterised both poems as having no rival due to their "exquisite metrical movement" and "imaginative phrasing." It is one of history's tragedies that Coleridge was interrupted while writing Kubla Khan by a visitor and could not recall any more of the poem afterwards.

• However, it is now acknowledged that Coleridge had composed previous drafts of Kubla Khan, perhaps a reflection of his desire to flag the 'power' of imagination.

• Coleridge's shorter, meditative "conversation poems," however, proved to be the most influential of his work. These include both quiet poems like This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison and Frost at Midnight and also strongly emotional poems like Dejection and The Pains of Sleep.

• Wordsworth immediately adopted the model of these poems, and used it to compose several of his major poems.

• Via Wordsworth, the conversation poem became a standard vehicle for English poetic expression, and perhaps the most common approach among modern poets.

• Coleridge's poetry so impressed the parents of British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) that they named him after the poet.

• George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824) was an Anglo-Scottish poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. Among Lord Byron's best-known works are the narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan.

• The latter remained incomplete on his death.

• He was regarded as one of the greatest European poets and remains widely read.

George Gordon Byron

• The Hellespont is a narrow stretch of sea in the Strait of Dardanelles, separating western FROM eastern Turkey. Legend has it that the beautiful maiden Hero was on one side of the strait and her lover, Leander on the other.

• Leander swam across to her one dark and stormy night and was drowned.

• Lord Byron prided himself on his physical fitness. He walked with a limp and had been spoken of slightingly by a girl that he fancied in his youth as "that limping lad".

• Ever after he was out to prove himself as the equal of any man in any arena of physical competition, but particularly sexual.

• Aside FROM this, he was an excellent boxer and fencer, played cricket for his school and unlike most Englishmen of his date, was a very strong swimmer.

• His romantic notion of swimming the Hellespont like Leander resulted in a fever- the ague that he refers to in the last line.

Written after swimming from sestos to abydos

• Byron's first drama, Manfred, details the author's characterization of the Romantic hero, a figure of superior abilities and intense passions who rejects human contact as well as the aid and comfort offered by various religious representatives.

• Consumed by his own sense of guilt for an unspecified transgression involving Astarte, the only human he ever loved, Manfred finally seeks peace through his own death.

• Manfred represents Byron's articulation of the Romantic hero, a figure so far superior to other humans that he need not be bound by the constraints of human society. Similarly, he submits to no spiritual authority, rejecting pantheism, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity.

• Manfred answers only to himself, and because of this he is the instrument of his own destruction, fashioning a punishment for his unexplained guilt that far exceeds any possible retribution imposed by human or religious authorities.

• Lord Byron's fame rests not only on his writings but also on his life, which featured extravagant living, numerous love affairs, debts, separation, and allegations of incest and sodomy.

• He was famously described by Lady Caroline Lamb as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know."

• Byron served as a regional leader of Italy's revolutionary organization the Carbonari in its struggle against Austria, and later travelled to fight against the Turks in the Greek War of Independence, for which the Greeks consider him a national hero. He died from a febrile illness in Messolonghi.

• His daughter Ada Lovelace, notable in her own right, collaborated with Charles Babbage on the analytical engine, a predecessor to modern computers.

• Percy Bysshe Shelley (August 4, 1792 – July 8, 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets and is widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets of the English language.

• He is perhaps most famous for such anthology pieces as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, and The Masque of Anarchy.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

• However, his major works were long visionary poems including Alastor, Adonais, The Revolt of Islam, Prometheus Unbound and the unfinished The Triumph of Life.

• Shelley's unconventional life and uncompromising idealism, combined with his strong skeptical voice, made him a notorious and much denigrated figure during his life.

• He became the idol of the next two or three generations of poets, including the major Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as William Butler Yeats and poets in other languages such as Jibanananda Das and Subramanya Bharathy).

• He was also admired by Karl Marx, Henry Stephens Salt, and Bertrand Russell.

• Famous for his association with his equally short-lived contemporaries John Keats and Lord Byron, he was married to novelist Mary Shelley.

• In "Ode to the West Wind," Percy Bysshe Shelley tries to gain transcendence, for he shows that his thoughts, like the "winged seeds" (7) are trapped. 

• The West Wind acts as a driving force for change and rejuvenation in the human and natural world. 

• Shelley views winter not just as last phase of vegetation but as the last phase of life in the individual, the imagination, civilization and religion. 

Ode to the West Wind

• Being set in Autumn, Shelley observes the changing of the weather and its effects on the internal and external environment. 

• By examining this poem, the reader will see that Shelley can only reach his sublime by having the wind carry his "dead thoughts" (63) which through an apocalyptic destruction, will lead to a rejuvenation of the imagination, the individual and the natural world.

• John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was one of the principal poets of the English Romantic movement.

• During his short life, his work received constant critical attacks from the periodicals of the day, but his posthumous influence on poets such as Alfred Tennyson has been immense.

• Elaborate word choice and sensual imagery characterize Keats's poetry, including a series of odes that were his masterpieces and which remain among the most popular poems in English literature.

John Keats

• Keats's letters, which expound on his aethetic theory of "negative capability", are among the most celebrated by any writer.

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

• 我已經遨遊過不少黃金的領域，造訪了許多美好的城邦和國度；我曾經巡迴許多西方的島嶼，那裡歌者一致效忠的是阿波羅。人們時常對我提到一廣袤的空間屬於那眉目深陷的荷馬統治之邑；但我從未呼吸到那清純肅穆的空氣，直到這一刻聆聽查普曼朗聲長吟。我感覺如同一浩浩太空的凝望者當一顆全新的星球泅入他的視野；或者就像那果敢的戈奧迭，以他蒼鷹之眼注視太平洋──當所有水手都面面相覷，帶著荒忽的設想──屏息於大雷岩之巔。

• Sleep and Poetry (1816) is a poem by John Keats. It was started late one evening while staying the night at Leigh Hunt's cottage.

• It is often cited as a clear example of Keats's bower-centric poetry, yet it contains lines that make such a simplistic reading problematic.

• Furthermore, Keats defends his early 'bower-centric' subject matter, which hearkens back to the classical poetic tradition of Homer and Virgil.

• Keats mounts an attack against Alexander Pope and many of his own fellow Romantic poets by downplaying their poetic departures into the imaginary.

• Although written in simplistic rhyming couplets, the gradual turn towards inwardness serves as an important anticipation for Keats's later poetry.

• Ode to a Nightingale was written in May, 1819, in the garden of the Spaniards Inn, Hampstead.

• It was first published in 'Annals of the Fine Arts' in July of the same year. Referred to by critics of the time as "the longest and most personal of the odes," the poem describes Keats' journey into the state of Negative Capability.

• The poem explores the themes of nature, transience and mortality.

• Keats imagines the loss of the physical world, and sees himself dead--he uses an abrupt, almost brutal word for it--as a "sod" over which the nightingale sings.

• The contrast between the immortal nightingale and mortal man, sitting in his garden, is made all the more acute by an effort of the imagination.

• The presence of weather is noticeable in the poem, as spring came early in 1819, which brought nightingales all over the heath.

• According to Keats' friend, Charles Armitage Brown, a nightingale had built its nest hear his home in the spring of 1819.

• Keats felt a "tranquil and continual joy in her song; and one morning he took his chair from the breakfast table to the grass plot under a plum tree, where he sat for two of three hours."

• "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is first published in January 1820.

• Its inspiration is considered to be a visit by Keats to the exhibition of Greek artifacts accompanying the display of the "Elgin Marbles" at the British Museum.

• The poem captures aspects of Keats's idea of "Negative Capability", as the reader does not know who the figures are on the urn, what they are doing, or where they are going.

• Instead, the speaker revels in this mystery, as he does in the final couplet, which does not make immediate, ascertainable sense but continues to have poetic significance nonetheless.

• The ode ultimately deals with the complexity of art's relationship with real life.

Reference

http://blog.roodo.com/poe/archives/3910033.htmlhttp://hk.geocities.com/ice_pears/william_blake.ht

mhttp://asms.k12.ar.us/classes/humanities/britlit/97-

98/blake/POEMS.htmhttp://www.amdgchinese.org/ss/s02.phphttp://asms.k12.ar.us/classes/humanities/britlit/97-

98/blake/POEMS.htmhttp://dfpoon.wordpress.com/2005/04/21

Reference

• http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1103889

• http://www.umd.umich.edu/casl/hum/eng/jonsmith/sample1.html

• http://www.bilinguist.com/data/hanying/messages/33952.html

• http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/11251647.html?fr=qrl3

Reference

• http://www.123helpme.com/assets/17455.html

• http://lignifyart.blogspot.com/2007/03/on-first-looking-into-chapmans-homer.html