Creativity (Is The Lifeblood of The Poet)-
Trinity From Newfound Bliss, A Dream-Night's Sequence-
Honoring - Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Alfred Noyes
Poem One
Bestowed, Beauty And Bounty Of Moon's Heavenly Breath
Light of pallid moon and swashing oceans
Earth's natural beauty, spinning motion
Awaiting dawn's sweet new call, its soft glee
Truth of universe's eternal decree,
Golden orb, where romantic dreams are born
So oft fleeing from dark world sad and torn
Lovers' sight given unto those in need
Blessed bounty of divinely sent seed ….
Chalice of hope, love elixir of life
Sweet gems, gifted new world with less strife
So often found 'neath gleams of soft moonlight
Bountiful and within Heavenly sight
Love and joy, wherein true romance resides
There above, our moon that so softly glides
Sky light born of God's divine breath and fire
Treasured relief from world's constant ire.
Robert J. Lindley
Romanticism
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Poem Two
Morn's Rays Reaffirming I Am Not Blind
I will not kneel and fall as a lost slave
My bloodline is from heritage of the brave
My soul, its depths are so truly heart born
Tho', I have endured meritless scorn
I do not dare to cringe, instead I rise
Seeing truth, life through a humble poet's eyes!
Those dark times, I walked valleys of doubt
I rose from abyss with victory shouts
Reborn a warrior and a stronger man
Of retreating I have never been a fan
I seek divine light, in this soul it floods
This vessel a mixture of many bloods!
New dawn, waking to romantic love find
Morn's rays reaffirming I am not blind
Joy as sun its golden harvests beams down
Blessed to live in these hills just out of town
Mercy and sweet blessings in my old age
Now freed from darkness and my youthful rage!
I will not kneel and fall as a lost slave
My bloodline is from heritage of the brave
Those dark times, I walked valleys of doubt
I rose from abyss with victory shouts
New dawn, waking to romantic love find
Morn's rays reaffirming I am not blind!
Robert J. Lindley
Romanticism
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Poem Three
Under Red Sunset, Walking On White Beach Sands
Day's ending, reality time does fly
Romance searching as I ask life not why
With coming of full moon's radiant glow
Love's deep pleasures failed to ever show
And sad loneliness raced forth instead
Life to feel so empty, as is my bed
But my beautiful love is before you
Came to sate hot appetites of we two!
Under red sunset, walking on white beach sands
We in fervor -found out where new love stands
Above mountaintops, in heavenly spheres
Dancing out loud and devoid of life's fears
Ecstasy and promise of bedroom nights
Windows letting in sky's golden moonlight
And night recording our sensual moans
Long before videos on new cell phones!
Brother moon, you that urges wolf's loud calls
Shining down, as into love sweethearts fall
Heating hearts to loving memories make
Sweetest desserts to let love's hot fires bake
In new formed ovens, love's tender heat
Tapping in time with united heartbeats
Under your guide, golden moonbeams teach
Love's high plateau, we together may reach!
Robert J. Lindley
Romanticism
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(1.)
English poets such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Blake, and Lord Byron produced work that expressed spontaneous feelings, found parallels to their own emotional lives in the natural world, and celebrated creativity rather than logic.
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Romantic poetry
Romantic poetry is the poetry of the Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. It involved a reaction against prevailing Enlightenment ideas of the 18th century, and lasted approximately from 1800 to 1850. Wikipedia
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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/romanticism#:~:text=English%20poets%20such%20as%20William,celebrated%20creativity%20rather%20than%20logic.
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(2.)
https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-romantics
The Romantics
Theme: Romanticism
Published:
15 May 2014
Dr Stephanie Forward explains the key ideas and influences of Romanticism, and considers their place in the work of writers including Wordsworth, Blake, P B Shelley and Keats.
Today the word ‘romantic’ evokes images of love and sentimentality, but the term ‘Romanticism’ has a much wider meaning. It covers a range of developments in art, literature, music and philosophy, spanning the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The ‘Romantics’ would not have used the term themselves: the label was applied retrospectively, from around the middle of the 19th century.
In 1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau declared in The Social Contract: ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.’ During the Romantic period major transitions took place in society, as dissatisfied intellectuals and artists challenged the Establishment. In England, the Romantic poets were at the very heart of this movement. They were inspired by a desire for liberty, and they denounced the exploitation of the poor. There was an emphasis on the importance of the individual; a conviction that people should follow ideals rather than imposed conventions and rules. The Romantics renounced the rationalism and order associated with the preceding Enlightenment era, stressing the importance of expressing authentic personal feelings. They had a real sense of responsibility to their fellow men: they felt it was their duty to use their poetry to inform and inspire others, and to change society.
Revolution
When reference is made to Romantic verse, the poets who generally spring to mind are William Blake (1757-1827), William Wordsworth (1770-1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), George Gordon, 6th Lord Byron (1788-1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) and John Keats (1795-1821). These writers had an intuitive feeling that they were ‘chosen’ to guide others through the tempestuous period of change.
This was a time of physical confrontation; of violent rebellion in parts of Europe and the New World. Conscious of anarchy across the English Channel, the British government feared similar outbreaks. The early Romantic poets tended to be supporters of the French Revolution, hoping that it would bring about political change; however, the bloody Reign of Terror shocked them profoundly and affected their views. In his youth William Wordsworth was drawn to the Republican cause in France, until he gradually became disenchanted with the Revolutionaries.
The imagination
The Romantics were not in agreement about everything they said and did: far from it! Nevertheless, certain key ideas dominated their writings. They genuinely thought that they were prophetic figures who could interpret reality. The Romantics highlighted the healing power of the imagination, because they truly believed that it could enable people to transcend their troubles and their circumstances. Their creative talents could illuminate and transform the world into a coherent vision, to regenerate mankind spiritually. In A Defence of Poetry (1821), Shelley elevated the status of poets: ‘They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit…’.[1] He declared that ‘Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world’. This might sound somewhat pretentious, but it serves to convey the faith the Romantics had in their poetry.
Manuscript of P B Shelley's 'The Masque of Anarchy'
Sheet of paper containing the handwritten draft of P B Shelley's 'The Masque of Anarchy', and a faint pencil sketch of a tree
P B Shelley’s manuscript of ‘The Masque of Anarchy’, 1819, was a reaction of furious outrage at the Peterloo Massacre. An avowedly political poem, it praises the non-violence of the Manchester protesters when faced with the aggression of the state.
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The marginalised and oppressed
Wordsworth was concerned about the elitism of earlier poets, whose highbrow language and subject matter were neither readily accessible nor particularly relevant to ordinary people. He maintained that poetry should be democratic; that it should be composed in ‘the language really spoken by men’ (Preface to Lyrical Ballads [1802]). For this reason, he tried to give a voice to those who tended to be marginalised and oppressed by society: the rural poor; discharged soldiers; ‘fallen’ women; the insane; and children.
Blake was radical in his political views, frequently addressing social issues in his poems and expressing his concerns about the monarchy and the church. His poem ‘London’ draws attention to the suffering of chimney-sweeps, soldiers and prostitutes.
Lyrical Ballads: 1800 edition
Page from the preface to Lyrical Ballads
In the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth writes that he has ‘taken as much pains to avoid [poetic diction] as others ordinarily take to produce it’, trying instead to ‘bring [his] language near to the language of men’.
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William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Decorated page containing the poem 'London' with illustration of a child leading an elderly man through a street, from William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience
‘London’ from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, 1794. Blake emphasises the injustice of late 18th-century society and the desperation of the poor.
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Children, nature and the sublime
For the world to be regenerated, the Romantics said that it was necessary to start all over again with a childlike perspective. They believed that children were special because they were innocent and uncorrupted, enjoying a precious affinity with nature. Romantic verse was suffused with reverence for the natural world. In Coleridge’s ‘Frost at Midnight’ (1798) the poet hailed nature as the ‘Great universal Teacher!’ Recalling his unhappy times at Christ’s Hospital School in London, he explained his aspirations for his son, Hartley, who would have the freedom to enjoy his childhood and appreciate his surroundings. The Romantics were inspired by the environment, and encouraged people to venture into new territories – both literally and metaphorically. In their writings they made the world seem a place with infinite, unlimited potential.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, A Walking Tour of Cumbria
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, A Walking Tour of Cumbria [folio: 3v-4r]
In August 1802, Samuel Taylor Coleridge set out from his home at Greta Hall, Keswick, for a week’s solo walking-tour in the nearby Cumbrian mountains. He kept detailed notes of the landscape around him, drawing rough sketches and maps. These notes and sketches are in Notebook No 2, one of 64 notebooks Coleridge kept between 1794 and his death.
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A key idea in Romantic poetry is the concept of the sublime. This term conveys the feelings people experience when they see awesome landscapes, or find themselves in extreme situations which elicit both fear and admiration. For example, Shelley described his reaction to stunning, overwhelming scenery in the poem ‘Mont Blanc’ (1816).
Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful [page: title page]
In this 1757 essay, the philosopher Edmund Burke discusses the attraction of the immense, the terrible and the uncontrollable. The work had a profound influence on the Romantic poets.
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The second-generation Romantics
Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge were first-generation Romantics, writing against a backdrop of war. Wordsworth, however, became increasingly conservative in his outlook: indeed, second-generation Romantics, such as Byron, Shelley and Keats, felt that he had ‘sold out’ to the Establishment. In the suppressed Dedication to Don Juan (1819-1824) Byron criticised the Poet Laureate, Robert Southey, and the other ‘Lakers’, Wordsworth and Coleridge (all three lived in the Lake District). Byron also vented his spleen on the English Foreign Secretary, Viscount Castlereagh, denouncing him as an ‘intellectual eunuch’, a ‘bungler’ and a ‘tinkering slavemaker’ (stanzas 11 and 14). Although the Romantics stressed the importance of the individual, they also advocated a commitment to mankind. Byron became actively involved in the struggles for Italian nationalism and the liberation of Greece from Ottoman rule.
Notorious for his sexual exploits, and dogged by debt and scandal, Byron quitted Britain in 1816. Lady Caroline Lamb famously declared that he was ‘Mad, bad and dangerous to know.’ Similar accusations were pointed at Shelley. Nicknamed ‘Mad Shelley’ at Eton, he was sent down from Oxford for advocating atheism. He antagonised the Establishment further by his criticism of the monarchy, and by his immoral lifestyle.
Letter from Lord Byron about his memoirs, 29 October 1819
Letter from Lord Byron about his memoirs, 1819
In this letter to his publisher, John Murray, Byron notes the poor reception of the first two cantos of Don Juan, but states that he has written a hundred stanzas of a third canto. He also states that he is leaving his memoirs to his friend George Moore, to be read after his death, but that this text does not include details of his love affairs.
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Female poets
Female poets also contributed to the Romantic movement, but their strategies tended to be more subtle and less controversial. Although Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855) was modest about her writing abilities, she produced poems of her own; and her journals and travel narratives certainly provided inspiration for her brother. Women were generally limited in their prospects, and many found themselves confined to the domestic sphere; nevertheless, they did manage to express or intimate their concerns. For example, Mary Alcock (c. 1742-1798) penned ‘The Chimney Sweeper’s Complaint’. In ‘The Birth-Day’, Mary Robinson (1758-1800) highlighted the enormous discrepancy between life for the rich and the poor. Gender issues were foregrounded in ‘Indian Woman’s Death Song’ by Felicia Hemans (1793-1835).
The Gothic
Reaction against the Enlightenment was reflected in the rise of the Gothic novel. The most popular and well-paid 18th-century novelist, Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823), specialised in ‘the hobgoblin-romance’. Her fiction held particular appeal for frustrated middle-class women who experienced a vicarious frisson of excitement when they read about heroines venturing into awe-inspiring landscapes. She was dubbed ‘Mother Radcliffe’ by Keats, because she had such an influence on Romantic poets. The Gothic genre contributed to Coleridge’s Christabel (1816) and Keats’s ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ (1819). Mary Shelley (1797-1851) blended realist, Gothic and Romantic elements to produce her masterpiece Frankenstein (1818), in which a number of Romantic aspects can be identified. She quotes from Coleridge’s Romantic poem The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere. In the third chapter Frankenstein refers to his scientific endeavours being driven by his imagination. The book raises worrying questions about the possibility of ‘regenerating’ mankind; but at several points the world of nature provides inspiration and solace.
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https://poets.org/text/brief-guide-romanticism
A Brief Guide to Romanticism
"In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs, in spite of things silently gone out of mind and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. The objects of the Poet's thoughts are everywhere; though the eyes and senses of man are, it is true, his favorite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever he can find an atmosphere of sensation in which to move his wings. Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge—it is as immortal as the heart of man."
—William Wordsworth, "Preface to Lyrical Ballads"
Romanticism was arguably the largest artistic movement of the late 1700s. Its influence was felt across continents and through every artistic discipline into the mid-nineteenth century, and many of its values and beliefs can still be seen in contemporary poetry.
It is difficult to pinpoint the exact start of the romantic movement, as its beginnings can be traced to many events of the time: a surge of interest in folklore in the early to mid-nineteenth century with the work of the brothers Grimm, reactions against neoclassicism and the Augustan poets in England, and political events and uprisings that fostered nationalistic pride.
Romantic poets cultivated individualism, reverence for the natural world, idealism, physical and emotional passion, and an interest in the mystic and supernatural. Romantics set themselves in opposition to the order and rationality of classical and neoclassical artistic precepts to embrace freedom and revolution in their art and politics. German romantic poets included Fredrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and British poets such as Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, George Gordon Lord Byron, and John Keats propelled the English romantic movement. Victor Hugo was a noted French romantic poet as well, and romanticism crossed the Atlantic through the work of American poets like Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe. The romantic era produced many of the stereotypes of poets and poetry that exist to this day (i.e., the poet as a tortured and melancholy visionary).
Romantic ideals never died out in poetry, but were largely absorbed into the precepts of many other movements. Traces of romanticism lived on in French symbolism and surrealism and in the work of prominent poets such as Charles Baudelaire and Rainer Maria Rilke.
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"Creativity, Romanticism - Life, Love, Inspiration, Depth, Heart And Beauty
To many are indeed the majority aspects qualities building blocks of the
foundation of poetry…..In that ocean, one must swim or sink.
Creativity is listed first, as poetry cannot exist without it, imho." RJL
This blog was started back in early November of 2020. I got then very
sick and put the blog on a back burner--now that I have had a few days
to compete it and post it here. I bite the bullet and burned midnight oil
to get it completed…
My first two poems for this new blog were composed back then,
while the third and final poem composed as a tribute was created
this week..
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"Poetic beauty is born from heart and soul. Its depths sweet sunshine,
romance sets world aglow and on its desserts we are blessed to dine" .. RJL
"Poeticus decor oritur ex corde et anima. Intus suavis sunshine,
suis romance sets orbem terrarum super solitum ardens et demerita ad nos beati dine" ..RJL