Percy Shelley, Robert Burns and William Blake Poem Analysis Examples - Essay Example

?Poem Analysis The last years of the 18th. century, threw up a host of distinctive and poets full of ideals, most particularly ideals of freedom. These men and women turned mostly to nature for inspiration and solace. They wrote about nature in all her glorious hues and moods and saw in her a divine hand. They personified her, seeking her help in their crusade for freedom, “Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: ….....Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!” (Shelley, Ode to the West Wind) and sought solace and a new strength from her “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” (Shelley, Ode to the West Wind) The emphasis on feeling and sincerity and the poet’s imagination were the hallmarks of poetry in this era which is known as the Romantic era. It was an artistic and literary movement that has given us some of the most beautiful poetry in the English language. Percy Shelley, Robert Burns and William Blake who were contemporaries, were part of the glorious age of romanticism in English poetry. The three men, coming from very different backgrounds, however shared the common trait of non conformism, and shared a deep interest in the revolutions that rocked the political and social traditions of the time. Shelley was the son of a country squire, while Blake was the son of a draper. Burns, a Scotsman also known as the pastoral poet, was the son of tenant farmers. Shelley was expelled from school because of his atheist views, while people went so far as to consider Blake mad because of his radical views. The radical political views held by Burns were shared by both Blake and Shelley, and all three did not conform to the existing norms of a steady married life and a conventional family. All of them had at one time or another in their lives, a run in with the established church of the time. All this is reflected in their work but in different ways. The beauty of their poetry hides behind it the anger of the poet at a world that is at odds with the divine creation. Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind is an example of the terza rima that Dante used in his Divine Comedy. Each part of the Ode consists of four stanzas of three lines each, ending with a two line couplet. In each of the three lines of each stanza, the first line rhymes with the third and the word at end of the middle line is used as the rhyme for the first and third lines of the next stanza. The beauty of nature is shown in both its gentle and violent forms as Shelley calls the West Wind the “preserver and destroyer” (Shelley, Ode to the West Wind) showing it sweeping away the dead leaves of the autumn and carrying the seeds that will herald the birth of new foliage in the Spring. Shelley cleverly uses both simple similes as well as complicated metaphors in the poem as he meditates on the beauty of nature in her gentle form as well as in her fury. Consider how deftly he uses the simile to compare seeds that have been blown by a wild wind, to corpses that lie in their graves waiting for the same wind’s gentler form to awaken them to a new birth, and when he says “The winged 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,” (Shelley, Ode to the West Wind) This stark scene of death is again contrasted with the riotous colors and scents of spring in his very next line “Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)With living hues and odours” (Shelley, Ode to the West Wind) portraying nature in her varied moods. He seeks solace in his need from the same wind as “A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.” and requests the wind to lift his spirits and give him renewed strength to face his woes, “As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!”(Shelley, Ode to the West Wind) William Blake too uses similes and metaphors for comparison, but the etchings that accompany his poems are the true symbols of what he is trying to convey. His Songs of Innocence are themselves a study in contrasts, as the joy and laughter of innocent children in The Nurse’s Song is contrasted with the forced labor of the Chimney sweeper who works even in his formative years in cold and miserable conditions, because of his poverty. He uses the simile to compare the child to the lamb, both innocent and both stripped of their hair or fleece that represent their vulnerability, by the uncaring who are unmoved by their piteous cries. “There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved,” (Blake, The Chimney Sweeper) His poems convey the ache in his heart as he sees little children forced to work, and as he speaks of their dreams of being set free, and their joy in their freedom to run and enjoy the little pleasures of life, Blake highlights the selfishness and cruelty of those would take away the innocence of childhood. His own ideals for humanity are conveyed through his Songs of Innocence as the child in the poems, who is created in the image of God and is an extension of God’s divine being. “He is meek & he is mild, He became a little child: I a child & thou a lamb, We are called by his name”. (Blake, The Lamb) Blake uses different forms for his poems, according to what he is trying to convey through the poem. In The Lamb, he uses rhymed couplets and repetition to give it a song like quality that a child would find easy to sing; while The Nurse’s Song, has four line stanzas or quatrains, that have an internal rhyme in the third line of each stanza. The poet seems to delight in the serenity of nature and the happiness and laughter of the children and the whole is a picture of the joy nature can give, a complete contrast to the woes of the little chimney sweeper who dreams of just such a life but laments “When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me........So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.” (Blake, The Chimney Sweeper) Robert Burns, considered the national poet of Scotland, brings to his poems the musical lilt of his native tongue, creating an enduring legacy that has been preserved in literary form. His Afton Water is in the classical style of nature poetry. The poem conveys a deep sense of peace and tranquility in the lap of nature. The imagery used is so vivid that the reader could almost visualize himself sitting on the banks of a river and hearing the gentle murmur of the stream as it flows on its way. The rhyme scheme a-a b-b matches the musical quality of the poem and the poet’s love for his loved one “My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,.......I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair” (Burns, Afton Water) where the lover’s concern that his loved one not be disturbed, adds to the serenity of the pastoral landscape as the river flows through the “pleasant... banks and green valleys below” (Burns, Afton Water) The alliteration “Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow;” (Burns, Afton Water) only serves to enhance the beautiful imagery of the tranquil woods full of the scents of wildflowers. The Romantic age was known for the emphasis laid on feelings. In the Ode to the West Wind, Songs of Innocence and Afton Water, the feelings of these poets reign supreme. The pity that Blake feels for the Chimney Sweeper and his rage that an innocent child should be treated so cruelly; or the love and concern that Burns feels for his Mary who is asleep and should not be disturbed; are what differentiates these poets from their predecessors. As different as Shelley, Blake or Burns are in their styles of writing, or their backgrounds, the binding factors are their love of nature and their emphasis on feeling. These have given us some of the finest poetry that the English language has ever produced. Works Cited Blake William Songs of Innocence, The Lamb Poetry Foundation http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172926 web 15 February 2013 Blake William Songs of Innocence, The Chimney Sweeper The literature Network http://www.online-literature.com/poe/628/ web 15 February 2013 Burns Robert Afton Water Poetry Foundation http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173055 web 15 February 2013 Shelley Percy Ode to the West Wind Poets.Org http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15693 web 15 February 2013 Read More