Romantics - Structures

The Sick Rose

• Short form

• Lines 2-8 mimic movement of worm infiltrating rose’s bed

• Regular rhyme + quatrains = feels like an allegory

London

• Acrostic = emphasise hushed suffering

• Not noticable = poverty is hidden

The Tyger

• 6 quatrains

• First + last = almost identical

• Only change = punctuation + ‘could’ to ‘dare’

• 4 stanzas in middle = characterise the creator as daring, the tyger is fearsome so creator must be daring

• God was not only able but willing to make tyger

• God wants fear + danger in world

• Gives poem symmetry = artistry + skill the poem discusses

• Consists entirely of questions

• Poem has doubt and mystery at its centre

Holy Thursday SOI

• 3 quatrains

• Enjambment = amount of children + flow of march to St Pauls

• Rhyming couplets = nursery rhyme = innocence

• Direct ideas of exploiting childhood innocence = Blake’s belief in Individual freedom.

Holy Thursday SOE

• Deceptively simple form 

• 4 short quatrains

• Looks + sounds like nursery rhyme 

• Forceful simplicity = Blake’s rage

• The ways of society aren’t right + even a child can see that

Early Spring

• 6 quatrains 

• Each = unique ABAB rhyme scheme

• Iambic = musical = ballad

• Consistent rhythm = longevity + holiness of nature

Tintern Abbey

• Monologue 

• Blank verse

• Unrhymed 

• Iambic pentameter

• Natural = conversational 

Ode intimations

• 11 variable ode stanzas

• Inconsistent iambic meter + rhyme scheme

• Change from childhood - adulthood

So we’ll go no more a roving

• Short poem = short life

• How quickly youth is lost 

• Short nature of romantic relationship

Cup formed from a skull

• Dramatic monologue

• Ballad

• 6 quatrains

• Iambic tetrameter (start not = variation)

• Uniform structure = contemplative nature of speaker’s meditation on mortality

• Rhythm of drinking songs

36th year

• 10 quatrains

• Regular ABAB rhyme scheme = musical

• Elegy = lamenting his youth 

Cold earth slept below

• Iambic trimeter - Iambic tetrameter

• As narrator becomes at one with nature, poem slows down

• Internal rhyme in middle of each verse - masculine rhymes 

• Harsh sound - contrasts delicate topic

Dejection near naples

• Complex rhyme 

• Subtle flow - complexity is natural

• Metrical rhythm (iambic tetrameter)

• Caesura = time to think about poem

Question

• Cyclical structure

• Final line is the question the title refers to

• But it’s a rhetorical question 

• Unfinished tone to poem

• Regular rhyme scheme 

• Ottava rima form 

• Often used for serious subjects + heroic adventures

Ode to west wind

• Terza rima

• Interlocking rhyme scheme

• Couplet = marks end of section

• Iambic pentameter - but irregular

• Metrical substitutions disrupt rhythm

• Creates chaos

• Reflects wind’s violence