Romantic poetry

As an English major, encountering Romantic poetry at some point in your college career is inevitable. In quite a few of the classes I’ve taken here, I’ve read poems by William Blake, Percy Shelley, John Keats, and so on – some of the key figures of the movement. Personally, although I have always had an interest in it, poetry was never my favorite type of literature, and before I’d been taught these poems I wasn’t entirely convinced that I’d enjoy them at all. But after learning about some of the Romantic key ideas, such as the ones we discussed in class on Wednesday – overflow of emotion, personal liberation, and a focus on the beauty of nature and the pastoral - as well as simply reading through and analyzing the poems and the elegant ways in which the poets construct the language and meanings, I was completely taken by the poetry of the period. I thought maybe I’d share some of the works I’ve enjoyed, in case others were interested in reading some more Romantic poetry, and thought it may be helpful to get a clearer sense of some of the core themes of the movement as we discussed in class (since they’re in English). Some of them are quite lengthy, but even just reading parts of the poems are helpful in seeing these particular themes in use.

http://bob-blair.org/donjuan.htm
Don Juan by Lord Byron

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ode-on-a-grecian-urn/
Ode On a Grecian Urn by John Keats

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-tyger/
The Tyger by William Blake

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lines-composed-a-few-miles-above-tintern-abbey/
Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth

Also, here’s a pretty good video of a reading of Samuel Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, which was mentioned in one of the videos we watched in class.