Romantic Poems (Anthology)

Songs of Experience: The Tyger (Blake)

Structure:

• Uses a series of questions to create a sense of curiosity and inquiry.

• Refrains to mirror rhythmic quality of nursery rhymes and folk songs, highlighting the paradox of the Tyger as a dangerous yet beautiful creature (Cyclical structure)

• The poem consists of six quatrains, revealing an underlying symmetry that mirrors the balanced dichotomy of good and evil, beauty and ferocity of the Tyger.

• “The Tyger” uses an AABB rhyme scheme that gives it a rhythmic symmetry.

• Composed of six quatrains and uses a mix of trochaic tetrameter and iambic tetrameter. This irregularity contributes to the unsettling atmosphere of the poem

• Uses catalexis - question unanswered

Songs of Experience: London (Blake)

• 4 quatrains

• ABAB (BCBC, etc.) rhyme scheme

• Masculine rhymes + catalexis

Songs of Innocence: Holy Thursday (Blake)

• Iambic heptameter (mostly) with some dactylic foot in there (song-like rhythm, dactyl speeds the pace a little, variation - perhaps slight sense that all’s not as it seems)

• 3 quatrains, AABB rhyme scheme (simplistic - childlike + feels complete and balanced, invokes the “two and two” of the kids)

Songs of Experience: Holy Thursday (Blake)

• 4 quatrains, ABAB (contrasting even rhyme of Innocence)

• Mostly trochaic tetrameter (slows down the pace, rlly makes you reflect) - first line is iambic tetrameter, then inverted, occasional dactyl to speed up pace/ irregular (each begins with stressed beat, places weight on the words)

• Catalexis, feels unresolved

• Masculine rhymes, harsh, doesn’t flow - ends on that weight

The Sick Rose (Blake)

• Anapestic dimeter (uncommon rhythm, fast pace), BUT lots of substitutions (starts on spondee, uses iamb - only true anapestic line is line 7)

• Light, faced pace rhythm feels childish/ like a nursery rhyme, but tension/ high stakes at the same time

Lines Written in Early Spring (Wordsworth)

• 6 quatrains (24 lines) - ABAB rhyme scheme

• Iambic tetrameter (trimeter in last line of each stanza - feels incomplete)

• Ballad - rhyme scheme, quatrains, refrain

• Mostly masculine rhymes but some feminine mixed in when discussing nature

• Ends with rhetorical Q - unresolved (refrain)

Tintern Abbey (Wordsworth)

SACRIFICIAL POEM

Ode on Intimations of Immortality (Wordsworth)

• Touches on ideas of pre-existence (Romantic notion, Platonic idea)

• Says that “the fall of Man presents an analogy” for pre-existence

• “The child is father of the man” (My Heart Leaps Up)

• Eleven stanzas of varying lengths. There is no single rhyme scheme, but there are individual patterns of rhyme in each stanza

• Wordsworth uses several different metrical patterns used throughout the poem. There are examples of Alexandrine lines, as well as iambic pentameter, tetrameter, and trimeter (although there are also some trochaic lines)

• The non-uniform stanza lengths and varying rhyme schemes allow Wordsworth to move fluidly between different emotional states

• Form - Ode: Wordsworth elevates childhood, nature, and the imagination to a near-sacred status, consistent with the ode's dignified tone

• Wordsworth modifies the traditional Pindaric ode, which normally alternates strophe, antistrophe, and epode, in favour of a freer structure (stream of consciousness - the appreciation is developed gradually)

Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed by a Skull (Byron)

So We’ll Go No More a Roving (Byron)

On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year (Byron)

The Cold Earth Slept Below (Shelley)

Stanzas Written in Dejection (Shelley)

Ode to the West Wind (Shelley)

The Question (Shelley)

Ode to a Nightingale (Keats)

Ode on a Grecian Urn (Keats)

Ode on Melancholy (Keats)

On the Sea (Keats)