English Romantic Poetry: An Anthology

by William Blake, Stanley Appelbaum (editor), William Wordsworth

Encompassing a broad range of subjects, styles, and moods, English poetry of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is generally classified under the term "Romantic," suggesting an emphasis on imagination and individual experience, as well as a preoccupation with such theme as nature, death, and the supernatural.
This volume contains a rich selection of poems by England's six greatest William Blake (24 poems, including "The Tyger" and "Auguries of Innocence"), William Wordsworth (27 poems, including " Intimations of Immortality" and "I wandered lonely as a cloud"), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (10 poems, including "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan"), Lord Byron (16 poems, including "The Prisoner of Chillon" and selections from Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage), Percy Bysshe Shelley (24 poems, including "Ode to the West Wind" and "Adonis"), John Keats (22 poems, including all the great odes, "Isabella," and "The Eve of St. Agnes").
For this edition, Stanley Appelbaum has provided a concise Introduction to the Romantic period and brief commentaries on the poets represented. The result is a carefully selected anthology that will be welcomed by lovers of poetry, students, and teachers alike.

259 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 2, 2012

About the author

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake's work is today considered seminal and significant in the history of both poetry and the visual arts.

Blake's prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the language". His visual artistry has led one modern critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced." Although he only once travelled any further than a day's walk outside London over the course of his life, his creative vision engendered a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced 'imagination' as "the body of God", or "Human existence itself".

Once considered mad for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is highly regarded today for his expressiveness and creativity, and the philosophical and mystical currents that underlie his work. His work has been characterized as part of the Romantic movement, or even "Pre-Romantic", for its largely having appeared in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the established Church, Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions, as well as by such thinkers as Emanuel Swedenborg.

Despite these known influences, the originality and singularity of Blake's work make it difficult to classify. One 19th century scholar characterised Blake as a "glorious luminary", "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors."

Reviews

[Raya Paul Gracchus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh dear Lord Byron, hear me, William Blake,
Most favored balladeers of Albion
Treat of things as deep, dark, quite like a lake
And of things so soft, gentle, like a fawn.
Ballads, short, sweet, and lyrical
With perfect rhyme and regularity,
Your words are touching, almost spiritual
Such mastery of meter, melody.
But Wordsworth and Coleridge, your poems I find
Confused and dragging – in a word, middling
I hesitate to write words more unkind
But your work was not very affecting.
English Romantics, this was my review
I wrote it in sonnet-form as a tribute.

[Just_An_E · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was a comment in one of the books I've read about rhyming in poetry and how every common rhyme has probably already been done, so if you're going to rhyme a lot in your poem that's something to be aware of. I definitely understand what they mean now. I can definitely also see how one might have found poetry stuffy and boring at reading some of the longer pieces in here. However, on the whole, this is pretty good stuff, pretty foundational stuff. Broadened my understanding of the medium as a whole.