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Ode to the West Wind and To a Skylark; and in Landor's Ah, What Avails the Sceptered Race we feel that the poets

"have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating; though of ample power
To chasten and subdue;"

that they have felt

"a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man."

In such poems they set the standard of imaginative expression which, a century after their death, still seems valid.

The new movement in lyrical poetry affected the ode. The old formal pattern of the ode could not satisfy a time of experiment and freedom. In Wordsworth's Ode: Intimations of Immortality and Keats's Ode to a Nightingale and Ode on a Grecian Urn we find the old power and dignity of the ode combined with new depth of emotion and flexibility of form. Elegiac poetry ceased to interest the poets of the romantic period. Shelley's Adonais, however, an elegy written on the death of Keats, showed that a poet of the time could write effectively in this form. In its form and variety, Adonais harks back to the elegiac poetry of the Greeks. It is thoroughly modern, however, in its unconventionality and in its vigor and intensity of feeling.

Narrative poetry flourished in bewildering variety. Every poet had a story to tell, and every poet put into the telling his own view of life. In the hills and valleys of his beloved Lake Country, Wordsworth watched the simple lives of the

country folk with a feeling that their joys and sorrows were deeper and more significant than those of city dwellers. With tender pathos he writes the tale of Michael, the shepherd whose life was bound up with that of his erring son, and who, heartbroken at his son's disgrace, would go to the barren hillside

"to build the fold of which

His flock had need. 'Tis not forgotten yet
The pity which was then in every heart
For the old Man-and 'tis believed by all
That many and many a day he thither went,
And never lifted up a single stone."

In different style are Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel, full of weird mystery and eerie romance; Scott's Marmion and The Lady of the Lake, which recite in swinging measure, as if to martial music, old tales of daring adventure; Byron's Mazeppa and The Bride of Abydos, which captured the imagination of all Europe with their reflection of the passionate glamor of the Orient; Shelley's Alastor, in which a vague story embodies Shelley's dreams of ideal beauty; and Keats's Isabella, or the Pot of Basil, a tender and pathetic love story.

The vogue of the literary ballad, begun in the preceding century by Percy's Reliques, continues in the work of Scott who knew, as did no other man of his time, the minstrelsy of the Scottish border.

Descriptive poetry in the formal manner of the eighteenth century lingered into the new period, but the poets of the new age were no longer interested in the artificiality of the old form. Their descriptive poems are not decorous, neat, sentimental, or realistic; they are passionate, strange, and glowing descriptions of the wilder aspects of nature either in foreign lands or in the poets'

"land of heart's desire."

Only Wordsworth writes of the English countryside; in such poems as Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey and Resolution and Independence, familiar English scenes take on new meaning and beauty. Coleridge in Kubla Khan has a radiant vision of dreamland; Byron in Childe Harold pictures in glowing words the sea, the mountains, and Rome with its memories of a mighty past; and Keats in The Eve of St. Agnes creates a tapestry of sensuous beauty rich with "argent revelry,

With plume, tiara, and all rich array,
Numerous as shadows haunting fairily

The brain, new stuffed, in youth, with triumphs gay
Of old romance."

Indeed, the descriptive poetry of the romantic period is perhaps its most characteristic product. Here is its unmistakable voice, clear with the accent of youthful love, wonder, idealism, and a calm assurance that

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing."

Didactic poetry still continues to be written, but in a form quite changed from that of the previous period. Only Byron in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers continues the tradition of personal satire in the heroic couplet. In Don Juan, however, a long narrative poem in the Spenserian stanza, he developed a new form of satire. On the slender thread of story he hangs his satirical reflections on the whole course of life. He takes nothing seriously, least of all himself. Passages of tender sentiment are interrupted by mocking laughter; passages of tragedy lose themselves in burlesque. The poem is a mine of beautiful poetry inter

spersed with doggerel; above all, it is a revelation of romantic irony, the self-satire of an intensely sensitive poet to whom, in the end, all life seemed vain and empty.

The most important type of didactic poetry in the romantic period one may call the "reflective epic." It is best illustrated by Wordsworth's poems The Prelude and The Excursion which he considered, in spite of their length, only parts of one great whole. Just as a great story may have epic size, dignity, and grandeur, so he seems to have thought of his reflective poems. They were the presentation of the thoughts of a man who had carefully developed for himself, after a youth of storm and stress, a consistent philosophy of life which he made articulate in serious dignified verse. The "reflective epic" of Wordsworth has interest for us accordingly as we believe his thoughts to have value and his poetry to have power.

Prose

Though the romantic period is richest in its poetry, prose also felt the new literary influences. Just as lyrical poetry felt the widening influence of the new spirit of individualism, so the essay began to be diversified both in form and subject. In the Essays of Elia Charles Lamb (1775-1834) made the essay almost as flexible in the presentation of moods as the lyric. The tender pathos of Dream Children, the gentle reminiscence of Old China, the farcical abandon of A Dissertation on Roast Pig, and the burlesque seriousness of A Chapter on Earsthese and many other sides of one of the sweetest personalities in English literature make the Essays of Elia the highest achievement of the personal essay in English.

With the rise of modern magazines after 1800, prose literature extended to wider and wider fields. History declined in interest, but literary criticism with William Hazlitt (1778–1830), and biography with Thomas De Quincey's

(1785-1859) fantastic autobiography, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and Robert Southey's (1774–1843) Life of Nelson more than hold their own.

In the novel of the period only two writers need consideration here, Jane Austen (1775-1817) and Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). Jane Austen was a quiet, unobtrusive woman who lived in quiet little English towns. One would have supposed that there was little in her life to provide material for great novels, but she was a person to whom all life was full of interest. In Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility she wrote novels of life in English country houses and provincial towns so true in their interpretation of human nature, so delightful in humor, and so admirable in structure and style that they are of perennial interest.

The novels of Scott are in quite a different strain. His aim was to tell vivid stories of chivalry, daring, and military prowess against a background of history. In general, his novels fall into three groups: the novels of Scottish history, such as Old Mortality and Guy Mannering; the novels of English history, such as Ivanhoe and Kenilworth; and the novels of Continental history, such as The Talisman and Quentin Durward. His historical background generally follows the facts and enlivens our historical knowledge with richly detailed pictures of famous men and famous places. Against this background are placed the fictitious lives of Scotch or English men and women of noble birth.

So popular did Scott's novels become, and so widely imitated were they in other countries, that Scott may fairly be said to have established the historical novel as an important form of literature.

Drama

There is little to say of the drama in this period. Shelley in Prometheus Unbound and Byron in Cain expressed them

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