ROMANTICS Flashcards
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In one of those sweet dreams I slept,
Kind Nature’s gentlest boon!
And all the while my eyes I kept
On the descending moon.
Wordsworth, Strange fits of passion have I known
There poets find materials for their books,
And every now and then we read them through,
So that their plan and prosody are eligible,
Unless, like Wordsworth, they prove unintelligible.
Byron, Don Juan
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft – so calm – yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent –
A mind at peace with all below –
A Heart – whose love is innocent!
Byron, She Walks in Beauty
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ‘tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: —Do I wake or sleep?
Keats, Ode to a Nightingale (early May)
She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
Keats, La Belle Dame Sans Merci: a Ballad
There are in our existence spots of time,
Which with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating Virtue, whence, depressed
By false opinion and contentius thought,
Wordsworth, The Prelude (spots in time)
Must I burn through; once more humbly assay
The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit.
Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
Keats, On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.
Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
Coleridge, Kubla Khan
Their Clay Creator the vain title take
Of Lord of thee, and Arbiter of War –
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar *
Alike the Armada’s pride or spoils of Trafalgar. †
Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Wordsworth, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
both hands
Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth
Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,
Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls
That they might answer him.
Wordsworth, The Prelude (there was a boy)
Had cross’d the mighty Orb’s dilated glory,
While thou stood’st gazing; or, when all was still,
Flew creeking o’er thy head, and had a charm
For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom
No sound is dissonant which tells of Life.
Coleridge, This Lime-Tree Bower, My Prison
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield!
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay!
Religion, Christless, Godless—a book sealed!
Shelley, England in 1819
‘Twas strange that one so young should thus concern
His brain about the action of the Sky;
If you think ’twas Philosophy that this did,
I can’t help thinking Puberty assisted. – – –
Byron, Don Juan
Meanwhile the sun paus’d ere it should alight,
Over the horizon of the mountains —Oh,
How beautiful is sunset, when the glow
Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee,
Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!
Shelley, Julian and Maddalo: A Conversation
To the kind reader of our sober clime
This way of writing will appear Exotic;
Pulci was Sire of the half-serious Rhyme
Who sang when Chivalry was more Quixotic
And revelled in the fancies of the Time,
Byron, Don Juan
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Keats, Ode to Autumn
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
Wordsworth, Composed upon Westminster Bridge
O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gusht from my heart,
And I bless’d them unaware!
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I bless’d them unaware.
The self-same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.
Coleridge, THE RHYME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER
‘Tis known, at least it should be, that throughout
All countries of the Catholic persuasion,
Some weeks before Shrove Tuesday comes about,
The People take their fill of recreation,
And buy repentance, ere they grow devout,
However high their rank, or low their station,
Byron, Beppo
Eve of the land which still is Paradise!
Italian Beauty! didst thou not inspire
Raphael, who died in thy embrace, and vies
With all we know of heaven, or can desire
In what he hath bequeathed us?
Byron, Beppo
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardours of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of Heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine aëry nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
Shelley, The Cloud
First the realm I’ll pass
Of Flora, and old Pan: sleep in the grass,
Feed upon apples red, and strawberries,
And choose each pleasure that my fancy sees;
Keats, Sleep and Poetry
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Keats, Ode to Autumn
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—
Keats, On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer
Go thou to Rome—at once the Paradise,
The grave, the city, and the wilderness;
And where its wrecks like shatter’d mountains rise,
And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress
The bones of Desolation’s nakedness
Pass,
Shelley, Adonis
Wordsworth, ODE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY
“The eye — it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where’er they be,
Against, or with our will.
Wordsworth, Expostulation and Reply
and I watch’d
Some broad and sunny leaf, and lov’d to see
The shadow of the leaf and stem above
Dappling its sunshine!
Coleridge, This Lime-Tree Bower, My Prison
The naked Hulk alongside came
And the Twain were playing dice;
“The Game is done! I’ve won, I’ve won!”
Quoth she, and whistled thrice.
A gust of wind sterte up behind
And whistled thro’ his bones;
Thro’ the holes of his eyes and the hole of his mouth
Half-whistles and half-groans.
Coleridge, THE RHYME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Wordsworth, ODE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
Wordsworth, A Slumber did my Spirit Seal
yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.
Keats, Bright Star
Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But when I am consumed in the fire,
Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.
Keats, On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again
In Venice Tasso’s echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless Gondolier;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And Music meets not always now the ear:
Those days are gone – but Beauty still is here.
Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
I met Murder on the way–
He had a mask like Castlereagh–
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him:
Shelley, The Mask of Anarchy
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
—Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
Wordsworth, She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways
So much for Julia. Now we’ll turn to Juan,
Poor little fellow! he had no idea
Of his own Case, and never hit the true one;
In feelings quick as Ovid’s Miss Medea,
Byron, Don Juan
that branchless ash,
Unsunn’d and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves
Ne’er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,
Fann’d by the water-fall! and there my friends
Behold the dark green file of long lank weeds,
That all at once (a most fantastic sight!)
Still nod and drip beneath the dripping edge
Of the dim clay-stone.
Coleridge, This Lime-Tree Bower, My Prison
She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
Keats, Ode on Melancholy (May)
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
Keats, When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be
But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perish’d,
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherish’d,
And fed with true-love tears, instead of dew;
Shelley, Adonis
I woke, and we were sailing on
As in a gentle weather:
‘Twas night, calm night, the moon was high;
The dead men stood together.
All stood together on the deck,
For a charnel-dungeon fitter:
All fix’d on me their stony eyes
That in the moon did glitter.
Coleridge, THE RHYME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Shelley, Ode to the West Wind
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-coloured bow;
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,
While the moist Earth was laughing below.
Shelley, The Cloud
“With me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!”
Shelley, Adonis
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
Wordsworth, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
A single field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone;
The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Wordsworth, ODE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY
I said that like a picture by Giorgione
Venetian women were, and so they are,
Particularly seen from a balcony
Byron, Beppo
And its peculiar tint of yellow green –
And still I gaze—and with how blank an eye!
And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,
That give away their motion to the stars;
Coleridge, DEJECTION
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Shelley, To a Skylark
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
Keats, Ode to a Nightingale (early May)
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
Shelley, Ode to the West Wind
Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Wordsworth, ODE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY
Now, my friends emerge
Beneath the wide wide Heaven—and view again
The many-steepled tract magnificent
Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea,
With some fair bark, perhaps,
Coleridge, This Lime-Tree Bower, My Prison
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
Coleridge, Kubla Khan
On summer-evenings, I believe that there
A long half-hour together I have stood
Mute—looking at the grave in which he lies!
Wordsworth, The Prelude (there was a boy)
I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
The moment that his face I see.
I know the man that must hear me;
To him my tale I teach.
Coleridge, THE RHYME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER
He raised, and never stopp’d:
When down behind the cottage roof,
At once, the planet dropp’d.
What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a lover’s head—
‘O mercy!’ to myself I cried,
‘If Lucy should be dead!’
Wordsworth, Strange fits of passion have I known
When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;
Keats, When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be
A little distance from the prow
Those dark-red shadows were;
But soon I saw that my own flesh
Was red as in a glare.
I turn’d my head in fear and dread,
And by the holy rood,
The bodies had advanc’d, and now
Before the mast they stood.
Coleridge, THE RHYME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER
Give me your tool” to him I said ;
And at the word right gladly he
Received my proffer’d aid.
Wordsworth, Simon Lee: The Old Huntsman, with an incident in which he was concerned
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year,
Shelley, Ode to the West Wind
Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
Shelley, The Cloud
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying, by such discipline,
Both pain and fear, until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.
Wordsworth, The Prelude (the skating scene)
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Keats, Ode to a Nightingale (early May)
