Keats, Rossetti, Shelley & More: Romantic & Victorian Poetry & Prose

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Author: John Keats | Form: sonnet | Imagery clues: explorers, Cortez, new worlds | Theme: discovery and awe through imagination | Characters: speaker

If by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd

Author: John Keats | Form: sonnet | Imagery clues: rhyme, chains, freedom | Theme: poetic freedom and innovation | Characters: speaker

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Author: John Keats | Form: ode | Imagery clues: frozen lovers, carved scenes, urn | Theme: permanence of art vs fleeting human life | Characters: figures on the urn

Ode to Psyche

Author: John Keats | Form: ode | Imagery clues: dreams, temples of the mind, blood | Theme: imagination as access to the divine | Characters: speaker, Psyche

In an Artist's Studio

Author: Christina Rossetti | Form: Italian sonnet | Imagery clues: mirror, same woman repeated in paintings | Theme: artistic idealization drains women's real lives | Characters: artist, female model

A Sonnet is a Moment's Monument

Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti | Form: English sonnet | Imagery clues: coin, monument, Charon | Theme: poetry preserves fleeting moments forever | Characters: none

Sonnet II: Written at the Close of Spring

Author: Charlotte Smith | Form: sonnet | Imagery clues: fading spring, seasonal change | Theme: loss, melancholy, impermanence | Characters: speaker

Sonnet LXX: On Being Cautioned against Walking on a Headland

Author: Charlotte Smith | Form: sonnet | Imagery clues: cliffs, sea, danger | Theme: emotional unrest and isolation | Characters: speaker

Ozymandias

Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley | Form: sonnet | Imagery clues: broken statue, ruins, desert | Theme: impermanence of power and pride | Characters: Ozymandias, traveler

Mont Blanc

Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley | Form: lyric meditation | Imagery clues: mountain, river, vast landscape | Theme: sublime nature shapes the human mind | Characters: speaker

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley | Form: lyric/hymn | Imagery clues: unseen spirit, shadow | Theme: invisible forces give meaning to life | Characters: speaker

Ode to the West Wind

Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley | Form: ode | Imagery clues: wind, dead leaves, seasons | Theme: revolution, renewal, poetic power | Characters: speaker

The World Is Too Much with Us

Author: William Wordsworth | Form: sonnet | Imagery clues: "getting and spending," pagan gods | Theme: materialism alienates humans from nature | Characters: speaker

We Are Seven

Author: William Wordsworth | Form: lyric ballad | Imagery clues: counting siblings, child dialogue, graves | Theme: imagination and emotional truth vs adult logic | Characters: narrator, little girl

Lines Written in Early Spring

Author: William Wordsworth | Form: lyric poem | Imagery clues: grove, birds, flowers | Theme: harmony of nature vs human corruption | Characters: speaker

Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey

Author: William Wordsworth | Form: lyric meditation | Imagery clues: river Wye, cliffs, memory | Theme: nature's lasting influence on the mind | Characters: speaker, Dorothy

Preface to Lyrical Ballads

Author: William Wordsworth | Form: critical prose | Imagery clues: rustic life, ordinary language | Theme: redefine poetry using real language and emotion | Characters: none

The Eolian Harp

Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge | Form: conversation poem | Imagery clues: harp in window, wind music | Theme: spiritual unity of all life | Characters: speaker, Sara

Kubla Khan

Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge | Form: fragment | Imagery clues: pleasure dome, ice and fire | Theme: creative imagination and its power | Characters: Kubla Khan

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge | Form: narrative ballad | Imagery clues: albatross, ghost ship, curse | Theme: guilt, punishment, redemption | Characters: Mariner, Wedding Guest

All Religions Are One

Author: William Blake | Form: philosophical prose-poem | Imagery clues: poetic genius, imagination | Theme: imagination is the source of all religion | Characters: none

The Lamb

Author: William Blake | Form: lyric | Imagery clues: lamb, child, meadow | Theme: innocence and gentle creation | Characters: speaker, lamb

The Tyger

Author: William Blake | Form: lyric | Imagery clues: fire, forge, tiger | Theme: fearful beauty and creation | Characters: speaker, tiger

Washing Day

Author: Anna Barbauld | Form: mock-epic poem | Imagery clues: laundry, bubbles, household chaos | Theme: domestic labor and hidden female power | Characters: women, family

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Author: Mary Wollstonecraft | Form: political/philosophical prose | Imagery clues: education, virtue, reason | Theme: women deserve education to achieve equality | Characters: none

Frankenstein

Author: Mary Shelley | Form: novel (epistolary, Gothic, science fiction) | Imagery clues: letters, creation, isolation | Theme: responsibility, ambition, domestic virtue | Characters: Victor Frankenstein, Monster, Walton