11/8 - Shelley and Blake

Shelley's "To the Skylark" seemed pretty straightforward to me until the last couple of stanzas where he shifts from questioning the bird and envying it because as humans "Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought" (90), to understanding that if humans could attain the mindset of the bird then it would make the bird's joy kind of obsolete. He says that if we could scorn all the negative emotions, like the bird seems to, then he knows "not how thy joy we ever should come near" (95), so I guess he could be trying to say that to truly appreciate joy, human's also must experience pain and sadness.
I saw some of that idea in Keat's "Ode on Indolence" when he talks about his indolence giving him a numbing feeling where "Pain had no sting, and pleasure's wreath no flower" (18), he's not subject to pain, but he also isn't feeling any joy. Based on his letter to George and Georgiana, Keat's was trying not to think about his friend's father dying, and so was trying to ignore love, ambition, and poetry because they would disrupt his goal of attaining disinterestedness (or a state unmotivated by self-interest) which I think connects with the line "A pet-lamb in a sentimental farce" (54).
I think both poems contain the idea that joy (and poetry) spring from pain, and maybe where Shelley is more hopeful about learning from the skylark ("Teach me half the gladness/ That thy brain must know" (101), Keat's is weary of learning it because he thinks "nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced" (pg 856) and he doesn't actually want the experience that will make his poetry authentic so he tells love, ambition, and poetry to leave him and never come back.

"To a Skylark" Reflection

After I read this poem, I was curious to know exactly what a skylark was. I know the poem does explain to us that it is a bird but I wanted to know what was different about THIS particular bird. I thought some of you may be interested to know as well. This is what I found, and although it isn't the most reliable source we use, I found this information to be interesting.

"It is a bird of open farmland and heath, known throughout its range for the song of the male, which is delivered in hovering flight from heights of 50 to 100 m, when the singing bird may appear as just a dot in the sky from the ground. The long, unbroken song is a clear, bubbling warble delivered high in the air while the bird is rising, circling or hovering. The song generally lasts two to three minutes, but it tends to last longer later in the mating season, when songs can last for 20 minutes or more." (Wikipedia)

Now I can understand more of the beauty to this bird and why the poet made this bird seem to be so beautiful and inspiring. It is as if the narrator wants to be able to escape from the human life, and have no worries or thoughts, but to soar above the clouds like this bird. I get the feeling that the narrator envies the bird. No, it is not specifically spoken in the poem, but it is a feeling you get while you are reading it. They way the bird is identified and compared to so many beautiful things in the poem, and how you can feel the authors want of just wanting to escape and sing as the skylark can. One of the stanzas that I mostly related with is , "What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains?  What shapes of sky, or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?" (Lines 71-75) It is the narrator asking questions to this bird about it's secrets that it cannot tell, and the narrator wishes they could relate and have this ignorance of pain.

Harps and Meditations

When reading today's passages, I found it very intriguing that the physical setting surrounding the speakers of both Summer "Evening's Meditations" and "The Eolian Harp" were so similar. Both Barbauld's musing voice upon the heavens and Coleridge's own voice are reclining at the dusk hour, regarding Nature and her fading gilt of sunlight as they then internally vocalize their respective wonders of such existence. Though both speakers then venture forth on their respective topics — Barbauld to her ode on the far-reaching, wondrously unknowable Outward; Coleridge, to "phantasies" on the relationship between the physical body and its animation by the great "Soul of each, and God of all" — they are regrounded through an address to authority figures within their respective topics, and then settle contently once more with the fall of night into their human realities. Both settings also grant a sense of motion to their speakers' perspectives (day fading to night, cycle of reality » contemplation » reality), which then is amplified by each title. Barbauld's contains no article to define "Summer Evening's" as a single event, adding to the expanse of space within her poem the expanse of time, as "Summer Evening" could mean one, or each and every summer evening that has ever come to pass; Coleridge's title references a type of instrument that requires the movement of wind to produce sound, emphasizing that the marvels of Creation require that constant, eternal energy (the Soul, or God) to flourish life and meaning. All these examples of movement and energy, coupled to a sense of timelessness, convey to me the shift of comprehension that these authors were experiencing in regards to their spiritual beliefs — that one can venture out, marvel and worship the terrible and awesome power of Nature and its Engine, to wrestle with an understanding of these forces, and then return to their humanity, still broken and yet more holy for that venture.

"A Summer's Evening Meditation"

At first glance, this piece reads as one about space and all its' entities. It's interesting because she describes space so vividly when the study of space wasn't really a thing yet.

Barbauld's poem, "A Summer's Evening Meditation," raised interesting points about death and the afterlife at a time where a vast majority of people believed that their souls were either going to heaven or hell. She depicts a completely different scenario of life after death, where her soul is free to travel the universe and is able to learn infinite amounts of knowledge and the mysteries of the universe. I find it interesting that she believes space travel to be a benefit of death. What event in her life made her come to this conclusion?

In this piece she contemplates the limits of creation and its' essence. Much of the piece is her praising higher powers and divine entities, but she doesn't ever specifically refer to "God," which is also interesting to me since this time period was very much centered around the church. I wonder if her views on the afterlife and her attitude towards death would have been misconstrued during that time, or if they would have agreed with her, or at least embraced her views on the afterlife.

She also recognizes that we, as humans, are minuscule on a much grander scale. She knows that there's a vast universe out there, and that the possibilities are endless. He attitude about death is so positive, as opposed to the typical melancholy that people usually express when they talk or think about death. I feel as if she has almost has a moment of enlightenment while pondering the afterlife and the unique possibilities associated with it.

11/03 A Summer Evening's Meditation

I find Anna Barbauld's vision for the afterlife depicted here most interesting and quite unique, especially for this particular time period. Instead of envisioning her soul in Heaven, Barbauld hoped to have the ability to space travel. She wanted to uncover the vast mysteries of space after death. It makes me curious about how she must have felt when she was writing this poem, because she is basically acknowledging how small humans are when compared to the immeasurable universe. She seems to take the limitlessness of space very well, considering that there was not much information about space in the Romantic period. Her ability to balance her extraterrestrial curiosities with Christian faith is astounding. Barbauld never seems to question the existence of God in this poem. She doesn't even question the purpose of the human existence, which is often a normal response that occurs when one thinks about how unbelievably large the universe is. Barbauld's optimism for the afterlife is related beautifully across the page, but it makes me wonder what her true thoughts were on death and post-death. Could it be possible that she honestly believed that death would allow her to pursue knowledge that is out of reach for those on earth? It would seem that even the splendor of Heaven would not be able to satisfy her hunt for truth and wisdom!

11/3 "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem written June 1797 “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”

Poet begins in despair, which is over-dramatized “Friends, whom I never more may meet again”, at not being able to join his friends on their hike. The poet’s perspective of the bower as a prison changes after the poet recognizes that his friend is feeling what he had and would have felt “So my friend Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood” (lines 38-39). Though unable to be physically present with his companions the poet feels a shared connection of enjoying beauty of nature. The connection the poet feels is a vicarious experience of enjoying nature, yet in doing so poet able to appreciate beauty around him despite current physical limitations.Something else of note there is, possibly, a subtle criticism of industrialized society Coleridge mentions when speaking of how glad he is Charles is able to wander about the hills “In the great City pent, winning thy way With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain And strange calamity!” (426). 

Dorothy Wordsworth's "The Grasmere Journal"

        The attention to detail in Dorothy Wordsworth’s The Grasmere Journal offers lyrical descriptions of everyday life that reads as a catalog of the beauty that resides in nature. This is especially evident in the passage “The wood rich in flowers. A beautiful yellow, parish yellow flower. That looked thick and round and double, and smelt very sweet—I supposed it was ranunculus—crowfoot, the grassy-leaved rabbit-toothed white flower, strawberries, geranium—scentless violet, anemones two kinds, orchises, primroses” (342). Dorothy seems to wish to describe in detail every beautiful thing that she sees in order to cultivate as accurate a picture of the picturesque beauty of nature.

Also it seems as if Dorothy strives to record what she experiences in vivid detail in order to assist her brother William to compose his own poetry. In her Journal she states that she writes her journal “because I shall give Wm. pleasure by it when he comes home again” (343). Here we can see that Dorothy wrote in order to please her brother and gain enjoyment in writing for herself, presumably. Her works do in fact influence those of William’s, and we can see this in his poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”. William draws inspiration from Dorothy’s Journal regarding her depictions of the daffodils but condenses the detailed descriptions of the daffodils that “tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing” (349) into a more poetic and lyrical version that nevertheless loses the vivid detail present in Dorothy’s version. We can see these differences by looking at William’s version “A host of dancing daffodils; / along the lake, beneath the trees, / ten thousand dancing in the breeze” (246). This morphing of Dorothy’s observations into a poem seems to illustrate how the writing of William’s poems were a collaborative effort at times, where Dorothy helped to inspire William with her keen attention to the beauty of the world.