THE HEIGHTS OF POETRY

I think it is striking that that some of the greatest poetry in the English language was written in two quite short periods by five poetic giants. 1797-1805 saw the fruitful close cooperation of Wordsworth and Coleridge and 1816-1824 witnessed the finest flowering of the genius of Byron, Keats and Shelley.

I am a mere amateur of poetry and much better-informed students and more deeply-read scholars will contest my assertions. Of my chosen five, much was written outside these dates – but not their best and I want to celebrate their heights of achievement. I learnt many of these pieces at school and I earnestly hope today’s teachers, spurred on by vigorous Michael Gove, continue to inculcate Beauty and Truth into the minds of their precious pupils.

I open with Coleridge at his most Gothic and mysterious:

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover! 

To be followed by a transcendent vision:

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

 (from Kubla Khan)

Poetic visions indeed, even if Coleridge sometimes needed opium to give him a helping hand.

Wordsworth wrote his incomparable Prelude with Coleridge’s advice and who could fail to be moved by his opening lines:

    Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up
    Fostered alike by beauty and by fear:

Or by his evocation of the voice of Nature:

I heard among the solitary hills
Low breathings coming after me, and sounds
Of undistinguishable motions, steps
Almost as silent as the turf they trod.

(from The Prelude)

Wordsworth’s mastery of high poetic diction is surely his greatest strength:

                                             And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

(from Tintern Abbey)

Wordsworth of course belonged to a group both lyrical and romantic:

The rainbow comes and goes,
        And lovely is the rose;
        The moon doth with delight
    Look round her when the heavens are bare;
        Waters on a starry night
        Are beautiful and fair;
    The sunshine is a glorious birth;
    But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.

Later, a paean to Youth and Love:

Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!   
        And let the young lambs bound   
        As to the tabor's sound!     
We in thought will join your throng,   
      Ye that pipe and ye that play,   
      Ye that through your hearts to-day   
      Feel the gladness of the May!   
What though the radiance which was once so bright    
Be now for ever taken from my sight,   
    Though nothing can bring back the hour   
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;   
      We will grieve not, rather find   
      Strength in what remains behind;

(from Intimations of Immortality)
   
Both Coleridge and Wordsworth were sons of the Enlightenment and were liberated and inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution.

Their successors Byron, Keats and Shelley rebelled against the conformity of England after the Napoleonic Wars and her reactionary attitudes.

Byron’s was the most confident voice, often satirical and cynical, but classic as he describes a dramatic shipwreck:

Then rose from sea to sky the wild farewell—
     Then shriek'd the timid, and stood still the brave,
Then some leap'd overboard with dreadful yell,
     As eager to anticipate their grave;
And the sea yawn'd around her like a hell,
     And down she suck'd with her the whirling wave,
Like one who grapples with his enemy,
And strives to strangle him before he die.

    And first one universal shriek there rush'd,
     Louder than the loud ocean, like a crash
Of echoing thunder; and then all was hush'd,
     Save the wild wind and the remorseless dash
Of billows; but at intervals there gush'd,
     Accompanied with a convulsive splash,
A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry
Of some strong swimmer in his agony.

(from Don Juan)

Quite different was Keats, who in his Odes reached heights unscaled by any others.

Thou was’t not born for death, immortal Bird!   
  No hungry generations tread thee down;   
The voice I hear this passing night was heard   
  In ancient days by emperor and clown:   
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path            
  Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,   
    She stood in tears amid the alien corn;   
          The same that oft-times hath   
  Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam   
    Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.   

(from Ode to a Nightingale)        

His final flourish was his rich Ode to Autumn   
    
SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
        Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
    Conspiring with him how to load and bless
        With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
    To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
        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 cell.

Shelley was an admirer of Keats and his enormous talent was inspired to eulogise Keats when he died prematurely. The elegy Adonais is the magnificent result.

He begins with the greatest eloquence:

I weep for Adonais-he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow, say: "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 concludes on a hopeful note

That Light whose smile kindles the Universe
     That Beauty in which all things work and move
That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse
     Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love
     Which through the web of being blindly wove
     By man and beast and earth and air and sea,
     Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of
     The fire for which all thirst; now beams on me,
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.

(from Adonais)

 All five poetic giants suffered in life broken relationships, financial worry and, in the cases of the younger three, early death. Yet all five produce rhythms to excite us, use diction to enchant us and express ideas that reach and stir our deepest beings. How lucky we are to have a Literature which embraces such masters and we can rejoice in their poetic immortality.

SMD
14.06.13
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2013