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Poetry of the Romantics
This anthology of romantic poetry contains poems on the subjects of the human spirit, time, love, art and beauty. It includes work by William Blake, John Clare, John Keats and William Wordsworth.
112 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
March 11, 2025
o rose thou art sick
January 28, 2025
Reject modernity, return to Romanticism.
May 22, 2013
A great little book containing the most canonical poetry of the Romantics. They are all here; Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Byron, Clare et al. These famous poets, whom became known as the Romantic poets, deal with sensitivity, nature, politics, really introducing you into why they were known as the Romantics.
Its great for occasionally browsing through, and I actually found this little book a source of great inspiration with my own poetry. There is something beautiful about these collection of poems, and I found the poems from John Clare, Shelley, Keats etc the better ones. These poets were deeply tuned into nature and are amazingly descriptive.
Great little book. A great introduction into Romanticism.
Its great for occasionally browsing through, and I actually found this little book a source of great inspiration with my own poetry. There is something beautiful about these collection of poems, and I found the poems from John Clare, Shelley, Keats etc the better ones. These poets were deeply tuned into nature and are amazingly descriptive.
Great little book. A great introduction into Romanticism.
February 24, 2022
solid collection!
February 3, 2025
someday i shall be as dramatic, pretentious and talented as these mfs.
s o m e d a y, e v e n t u a l l y. anyways i luv poetry
s o m e d a y, e v e n t u a l l y. anyways i luv poetry
August 27, 2026
Such an astounding collection of poems! The beauty of nature, the feelings of men, the desperation and the loneliness of love.... The romantic era had everything i could've asked for in literature!
November 13, 2008
Leafing through the poems when the mood takes me.
Update: I really enjoyed this book as a sideliner to the novel I'm reading as I could dip in and out of it.
There are some poems in it that I really enjoyed and others I wasn't so keen on but it does give a variety of poets; this was my first real look at Shelley, Wordsworth and Byron. I would have expected Ode by Arthur O'Shaughnessy to be in this book but I suppose the poem was romantic but he wasn't really considered that way. I'd really like to own a copy of this book someday, and I wrote a list of the poems I liked somewhere so I'll edit when I find it. Poems I can remember appreciating were 'I am' by John Clare - so mournful and yet hopeful too, and I just like the first line, "I am; yet what I am none cares or knows." That and The Painted Veil were good ones. Other poems made such use of personification, like The Mask of Anarchy and I did like that.
The book ends with The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It may be long but ah, it's epic. I just feel happier owning this book, whether I read through it regularly or not!
Update: I really enjoyed this book as a sideliner to the novel I'm reading as I could dip in and out of it.
There are some poems in it that I really enjoyed and others I wasn't so keen on but it does give a variety of poets; this was my first real look at Shelley, Wordsworth and Byron. I would have expected Ode by Arthur O'Shaughnessy to be in this book but I suppose the poem was romantic but he wasn't really considered that way. I'd really like to own a copy of this book someday, and I wrote a list of the poems I liked somewhere so I'll edit when I find it. Poems I can remember appreciating were 'I am' by John Clare - so mournful and yet hopeful too, and I just like the first line, "I am; yet what I am none cares or knows." That and The Painted Veil were good ones. Other poems made such use of personification, like The Mask of Anarchy and I did like that.
The book ends with The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It may be long but ah, it's epic. I just feel happier owning this book, whether I read through it regularly or not!
February 10, 2011
As someone who isn't normally into poetry I absolutely adore this little volume!I docked a star for the abundance of John Clare in it as he just doesn't tickle my pickle!
It introduced me to Romanticism.
Cannot recommend it highly enough!
It introduced me to Romanticism.
Cannot recommend it highly enough!
August 7, 2013
I quite like Shelley sometimes; Coleridge has some good lines, and I suppose you can't hate too much on Blake, but I yawn and cringe through all this pastoral yearning for a golden age.
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March 6, 2016I didn't enjoy Percy Shelley's poems at all but loved William Blake's poems. The rest was okay.
May 19, 2016
Romantic poetry is always enjoyable, although this collection has NO female poets. WTF?! At least I have my other collections.
Read
May 16, 2018I don't understand or appreciate poetry. All of these poems made me frustrated. These might be nice poems, but I'm too much of an idiot to know.
January 12, 2018
The book is filled with plenty of meaningful poems that give an insight to many aspects which I enjoyed contemplating. Every poem is different and I quite enjoyed most. What let me down was the fact that most of the same poets were seen a lot and there could’ve been more variety, especially at the start as the same poet was used for ages and I was anticipating a change in poet. Overall I did enjoy the book and there is a use of many good poets.
January 12, 2019
Little bit old language, difficult to understand at some point. But wonderful rhymes.
August 3, 2022
Nobody asked, but my favorite works were:
Nurse's Song
The Human Abstract
The Sick Rose
When we two parted
Stanzas
To Autumn
Rondeau
Snow Storm
Night wind
Old man travelling
Eternity
Nurse's Song
The Human Abstract
The Sick Rose
When we two parted
Stanzas
To Autumn
Rondeau
Snow Storm
Night wind
Old man travelling
Eternity
March 17, 2019
Modern life can be so noisy it's easy to forget to stop and sometimes take it in. I fell into that trap; I was rushing out a couple of days ago when something unusual caught my eye: a bird, hopping on a stone wall, the air around adrift with white blossoms.
I began noticing a few other things: the quiet of that morning, the thick fog crowning the mountains around me, the deep green pastures leading up to them. Spring had come early to Tuscany, and I had been too in my head to notice.
It brought to mind a starkly different, starkly beautiful poem from a different lifetime: A widow bird sate mourning for her love...
In that lifetime, I'd have been considered a Romantic; the aesthetics, outlook, and sensibility of Romanticism appealed to me, and the world had taken on a golden tinge. My literary education had never been formalised—school scrapped French and literature, the only two classes I'd been looking forward to, on my year—but Romanticism I knew; Poetry of the Romantics was almost like fate, a slim volume my finger passed over in a drab, grey bookshelf loaded with secondhand management and calculus textbooks, only stopping at it because it held a hint of colour. Reading it at home, I saw it was radiant.
Now, Romanticism isn't a movement bursting with self-awareness; the Romantics were, if anything, a very, uh, sensitive lot. It's accordingly hard to love it all earnestly, but it's also hard not to love their earnestness. Of course some of the poems aren't good, too twee, and I knew that even then. "The Sick Rose" is almost a self-parody.
But they were important, I think, for their technique as well as their outlook, and in wake of remembering their importance, I revisited the ones I could remember, suspecting I'd like them but roll my eyes. Maybe I've read too much McSweeney's. Maybe I'm hopelessly detached. I almost hadn't stopped.
Yet stop I had.
It was worth thinking over what kind of priorities I've created for myself, and the few early morning stragglers I saw around me were contemplating their phones. I had subconsciously reached for mine to take a picture.
But, again, I stopped. I took it in. And slowly, as clear as sunlight, the rest of the poem came back:
A widow bird sate mourning for her love
Upon a wintry bough.
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.
There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
No flower upon the ground.
And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel's sound.
Another memory, unbeckoned, came back: my then-girlfriend, reading the same poem the next day, putting the book down and saying, "Wow, you can totally see it."
I've been rereading some of the poems sporadically since, and I wasn't wrong; while sometimes rolling my eyes, I've been loving their unrestrained love, technique, and imagery. It's good to be in the world.
I began noticing a few other things: the quiet of that morning, the thick fog crowning the mountains around me, the deep green pastures leading up to them. Spring had come early to Tuscany, and I had been too in my head to notice.
It brought to mind a starkly different, starkly beautiful poem from a different lifetime: A widow bird sate mourning for her love...
In that lifetime, I'd have been considered a Romantic; the aesthetics, outlook, and sensibility of Romanticism appealed to me, and the world had taken on a golden tinge. My literary education had never been formalised—school scrapped French and literature, the only two classes I'd been looking forward to, on my year—but Romanticism I knew; Poetry of the Romantics was almost like fate, a slim volume my finger passed over in a drab, grey bookshelf loaded with secondhand management and calculus textbooks, only stopping at it because it held a hint of colour. Reading it at home, I saw it was radiant.
Now, Romanticism isn't a movement bursting with self-awareness; the Romantics were, if anything, a very, uh, sensitive lot. It's accordingly hard to love it all earnestly, but it's also hard not to love their earnestness. Of course some of the poems aren't good, too twee, and I knew that even then. "The Sick Rose" is almost a self-parody.
But they were important, I think, for their technique as well as their outlook, and in wake of remembering their importance, I revisited the ones I could remember, suspecting I'd like them but roll my eyes. Maybe I've read too much McSweeney's. Maybe I'm hopelessly detached. I almost hadn't stopped.
Yet stop I had.
It was worth thinking over what kind of priorities I've created for myself, and the few early morning stragglers I saw around me were contemplating their phones. I had subconsciously reached for mine to take a picture.
But, again, I stopped. I took it in. And slowly, as clear as sunlight, the rest of the poem came back:
A widow bird sate mourning for her love
Upon a wintry bough.
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.
There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
No flower upon the ground.
And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel's sound.
Another memory, unbeckoned, came back: my then-girlfriend, reading the same poem the next day, putting the book down and saying, "Wow, you can totally see it."
I've been rereading some of the poems sporadically since, and I wasn't wrong; while sometimes rolling my eyes, I've been loving their unrestrained love, technique, and imagery. It's good to be in the world.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews