Byron, Shelley or Keats?

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Originally Posted by Kafka's Crow

Your point about Mask of Anarchy is valid but as far as philosophy is concerned, that has to be Rousseau whose influence both in philosophical and political aspects can not be overlooked. The political unrest in France inspired Romantic Poets and all of them were quite intellectual. Think of Blake when you think of intellectualism, think of Leigh Hunt when you think of political commitment. As far as the influence of friends and immediate acquaintances is concerned, all three were thoroughly influenced by Hunt, specially Shelley.

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Rosseu is a influence of Shelley, but that makes no sense. Rousseau was not poet, he did not wrote anything in poetry that would do the work that Shelley poetic works did.
Blake is a hardly an intelectual, rather a mistic. Shelley is the one linked with enlightment philosophers and thinkers, not Blake that was a hero of anti-reason of all the things. Coleridge would be another true intelectual.
(Of course, all poets are intelectual, but it is used here with reference to academic studies or something similar. Keats totally lacked it for example).
But taking away Shelley influence is like Pointing that they should all bow to Goethe, even Byron and his himself hero.

tthe sick rose is very beautiful,it,s short it's simple and very real.
It describes love as it it .

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Originally Posted by nebish

Keats appeals to youth - a melodic sensuousness and a wistful nostalgia that engage younger readers..he does however veer from sublimity to bathos more frequently, a pardonable fault at his age.
Knowing his frail physical condition intensifies the tragic fatefulness that underlies the reading of his work. He is terribly aware of mortality. Hyperion is only a fragment, but Keats evokes a sadness in the fall that is as epically grand as Milton's.

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I think that most of what we get from all three poets: Shelley, Byron, and Keats is juvenalia and doesn't stand up to the truly great works of other authors (Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, Donne). That's not to say that had they lived they absolutely wouldn't have written poems of greater worth, or that what they achieved wasn't great in itself. I'm just saying that I think their work lacked maturity and life experience. They appeal more to the emotions than they do to the mind. They are erratic, emotional, frequently hystrionic and prone to exaggeration. Nowhere do you find the same range, depth, and discipline which you can find in Yeats, Tennyson, or Frost.

Keats was the most accomplished technically. His individual lines and imagery are better than Shelley's, and a league beyond Byron. But Shelley is the superior poet, because his poems more often than not have better content. Shelley will develop his ideas, whereas Keats tends to scrape the shallow surface of things. Byron may have had more of an influence outside of poetry, but his compositions are a bit simpler than either of his contemporaries. Blake could be simple too, and yet his was a deceptive simplicity, with layers of meaning that I don't think can be found in Byron to the same extent.

I think that good writers age like wine, and most of them create their best work in their thirties and forties. It's a tragedy that these three promising young men never made it that far. For the best Romantic poet bar none I'd have to say it's probably a toss up between Wordsworth, Baudelaire, and Leopardi (however I have not read Holderlin or Novalis).

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

I think that most of what we get from all three poets: Shelley, Byron, and Keats is juvenalia and doesn't stand up to the truly great works of other authors (Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, Donne). That's not to say that had they lived they absolutely wouldn't have written poems of greater worth, or that what they achieved wasn't great in itself. I'm just saying that I think their work lacked maturity and life experience. They appeal more to the emotions than they do to the mind. They are erratic, emotional, frequently hystrionic and prone to exaggeration. Nowhere do you find the same range, depth, and discipline which you can find in Yeats, Tennyson, or Frost.

Keats was the most accomplished technically. His individual lines and imagery are better than Shelley's, and a league beyond Byron. But Shelley is the superior poet, because his poems more often than not have better content. Shelley will develop his ideas, whereas Keats tends to scrape the shallow surface of things. Byron may have had more of an influence outside of poetry, but his compositions are a bit simpler than either of his contemporaries. Blake could be simple too, and yet his was a deceptive simplicity, with layers of meaning that I don't think can be found in Byron to the same extent.

I think that good writers age like wine, and most of them create their best work in their thirties and forties. It's a tragedy that these three promising young men never made it that far. For the best Romantic poet bar none I'd have to say it's probably a toss up between Wordsworth, Baudelaire, and Leopardi (however I have not read Holderlin or Novalis).

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I think that is just silly. All of those poets had huge influences, and still have enduring qualities. Byron outsold almost everyone in his time, and even went as far as to highly influence Pushkin's Eugene Onegin with his Child Roland's Pilgrimage. Shelly is perhaps the least successful, I would argue, of the Romantic poets (besides Coleridge, who I would argue was more successful for prose), yet he had immense influence on writers such as the copycat Poe, who is basically Shelly written by Byron. Keats is the biggest in terms of influence of these, and is one of the central figures of English literature.

To compare any of these guys to Donne, I think is rather silly. Donne was a minor poet (though a good one), and his influence was minimal until T.S. Eliot. Even then however, he doesn't even come close to any of these romantics.

I certainly agree that to underestimate the great Romantics is nonsense. Their work is far from juvenalia. Yes... many artists age and mature like fine wine, but many others (Wordsworth, Rimbaud, etc...) completed their most lasting artistic works while still quite young. Micheangelo had the Pieta, the David, and the Sistine Ceiling under his belt by age 30. Most artists have barely begun at that age. Schubert died at 30 and yet ranks among the greatest composers of all time and as THE single greatest composer of lieder or art songs. Beethoven would have been merely a good or interesting composer had he died at the same age. I certainly agree that Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Milton produced art of another order... but that was an art of a level that only the absolute pinnacles of any culture can match: Tolstoy, Montaigne, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Proust, Goethe, etc... Shelly, Keats, Wordsworth and Byron are among the great lyric poets (and Coleridge wrote several absolute stunning poems in his truncated career). They all composed at least a single great long poem... if not an equal to Paradise Lost (and what is?), they are at least far more than juvenalia. As for Donne... I fall in between our previous two posters. Although he may have lacked the popularity or recognition (so did Traherne and Dickinson and the painter Vermeer) until last century, he most certainly is NOT a minor poet. On the other hand... I don't see him as clearly outclassing Keats, Shelley, or Wordsworth, either.

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Originally Posted by JBI

I think that is just silly. All of those poets had huge influences, and still have enduring qualities. Byron outsold almost everyone in his time, and even went as far as to highly influence Pushkin's Eugene Onegin with his Child Roland's Pilgrimage. Shelly is perhaps the least successful, I would argue, of the Romantic poets (besides Coleridge, who I would argue was more successful for prose), yet he had immense influence on writers such as the copycat Poe, who is basically Shelly written by Byron. Keats is the biggest in terms of influence of these, and is one of the central figures of English literature.

To compare any of these guys to Donne, I think is rather silly. Donne was a minor poet (though a good one), and his influence was minimal until T.S. Eliot. Even then however, he doesn't even come close to any of these romantics.

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This is blasphemy, pure and simple. Donne is GOD!

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

I certainly agree that to underestimate the great Romantics is nonsense. Their work is far from juvenalia. Yes... many artists age and mature like fine wine, but many others (Wordsworth, Rimbaud, etc...) completed their most lasting artistic works while still quite young. Micheangelo had the Pieta, the David, and the Sistine Ceiling under his belt by age 30. Most artists have barely begun at that age. Schubert died at 30 and yet ranks among the greatest composers of all time and as THE single greatest composer of lieder or art songs. Beethoven would have been merely a good or interesting composer had he died at the same age. I certainly agree that Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Milton produced art of another order... but that was an art of a level that only the absolute pinnacles of any culture can match: Tolstoy, Montaigne, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Proust, Goethe, etc... Shelly, Keats, Wordsworth and Byron are among the great lyric poets (and Coleridge wrote several absolute stunning poems in his truncated career). They all composed at least a single great long poem... if not an equal to Paradise Lost (and what is?), they are at least far more than juvenalia. As for Donne... I fall in between our previous two posters. Although he may have lacked the popularity or recognition (so did Traherne and Dickinson and the painter Vermeer) until last century, he most certainly is NOT a minor poet. On the other hand... I don't see him as clearly outclassing Keats, Shelley, or Wordsworth, either.

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We are comparing apples and oranges here. How can one compare Dr Donne to mere humans is beyond me. We are comparing 'professional poets' and 'gentlemen poets' with Dr Donne the member of parliament, the full-time priest, the Dean of St Paul's with a huge body of magnificent sermons under his belt along with a small amount of poems most of which he renounced in his later life. He never published any of his poetry in his life-time. Donne is genius, pure genius. The effortlessness of that poetry, the complexity, the wit ("compared to him Shakespeare reads like a Hallmark greeting card.") There is only one Donne, 'Nothing else is!'

The scope of Donne's poetry is hardly as large as any of the great romantics. He wrote great work, but didn't explore nearly as many themes as the other poets. I would argue that further, with quote evidence, but that isn't the purpose of this thread.

The question is, who is greater between the later 3 romantic poets.

Keats is by FAR my favourite of the three (besides Milton he's my favourite poet period), and of the remaining two Shelley trumps Byron. Byron's verse is often pretty tawdry, I find.

Nobody else thinks that their poems reflect a juvenile view of the world? Half of their stuff is "A flower, a pretty, pretty flower, la la la la la." They remind me of certain Beatles songs like "All You Need is Love" with their gross oversimplifications. When I hear that I always think, "Really? Just love? You don't need things like sacrifice, discipline, or temperance to make that love work?"

I don't mean that all of their work is of this character. Shelley's Ozymandias is definitely mature. Keats' On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer is also good. But most of their work is not of the same caliber as Frost's The Road Less Traveled, Mending Wall, or Tennyson's Ulysses.

I also believe that some of you are underrating John Donne. It's been said that he could not be a great poet because he has left so little work, but then so did A.E. Housman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and T.S. Eliot. If you look at the poems of John Donne, they are some of the most finely structured poems in the English language. If you look at The Flea, it is a perfect argument, with point, counterpoint, reversals, and conclusion. There is a clear narrative thread throughout his poems that can be followed from step to step. The works of John Keats are often a series of grand explosions of color that go off at random until for one reason or another they stop.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

Nobody else thinks that their poems reflect a juvenile view of the world? Half of their stuff is "A flower, a pretty, pretty flower, la la la la la." They remind me of certain Beatles songs like "All You Need is Love" with their gross oversimplifications. When I hear that I always think, "Really? Just love? You don't need things like sacrifice, discipline, or temperance to make that love work?"

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I hear where you're coming from. Romanticism is as a philosophy something that appeals to youth. And the philosophic view one gets from rock and roll is derivative from romanticism. I agree some poems are incredibly simple, but I do think some transcend. Keats' Odes are magnificent to me. Shelley's West Wind is great stuff, and Byron in Childe Harold can be profound at times. I do think there is value in Romanticism, and it was highly influential. Like all poets or artistic movements, there is good and banal. I can find a T.S. Eliot poem or two that is trite. These three poets died young and never hit their mature outlooks.

Donne wrote poems for an elite coterie of male gentlemen: The Flea is a clever but quite amoral jest to those men over a sophistical argument persuading a reluctant female to submit to his lusts. Great poetry...?

What doesn't seem to be understood in this questioning of whether a mere ode to flowers or love or a clever argument intended to persuade a reluctant would-be conquest to bed can be considered great art is that great art is not reserved solely for the profoundly deep and high-minded themes or concepts. On the surface Ronsard's Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle..., Robert Herreck's Gather ye rosebuds while ye may..., many of Petrarch's, Sidney's, Spencer's, Donne's and even Shakespeare's poems are efforts at seducation of a reluctant woman... or moaning of how she is so cruel in refusing the seducer. By the same token many of the greatest paintings are nothing more on the surface than a picture of a lovely woman in the nude (or approaching the same), a portrait of some rich aristocratic schmuck that I really couldn't care less about, or even a pile of frickin' apples (Cezanne?) Indeed, Rubens created one of the greatest painting cycles ever illustrating the life of Marie de Medici... who had done virtually nothing outside of almost drive France into bankruptcy ala Imelda Marcos. The profundity or the "greatness" of a work of art lies in what the artist does with his or her materials... not in the subject matter. Certainly a profound theme may suggest more possibilities... yet the same subject matter led to all of these art works:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...uppsmall-1.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2..._last_supp.jpg

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Goodness, both Keats and Donne under attack at the same time! Where to start? In response to the OP, I've got to go for Keats as the best of the trio of ill fated romantics. He's one of my favorite poets. There's been so much posted, and I don't have a lot of time just now, but I'll address a few points that have been brought up. As for the youth of the three poets on the thread's title, it is true that none of them ever got a chance to explore their whole range of potential. This is not to say that they didn't still produce some incredible works. The number of great works we would lose if we didn't read anything written by authors in their twenties is staggering: all the plays of Christopher Marlowe, a sizeable chunk of Shakespeare's works, Dickens' Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist...not to mention the works of the three poets in the title of this thread. As for the works of these poets being superficial, I can only think that those who make such claims have not read enough romantic poetry. It is true that all of these poets (like any poet) have lesser works, but all of them have works of incredible depths as well. It seems to me it would be very hard to argue that Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale," for example, can be boiled down to "A flower, a pretty, pretty flower, la la la la la."

Also, with regard to both the romantic poets in question and to Donne, it seems to me that a lot of the attacks being made are on the basis of the topics they chose to write about. While content is an important aspect of poetry, really what sets great poets apart is their way with language, and the way they use their skill with language to open their topic up to thought. All of these poets have an amazing ability with words. Keats makes some of the best uses of the caesura since Spenser's smoothly balanced lines. Byron is fantastic at packing wit and complexity into superficially simplistic rhyme. Donne is simply amazing when you really sit down with him. The way he sets up his verse sometimes forces certain words to unpack themselves into layers of different meanings, usually without resorting to the use of puns, which is sometimes a weakness of Shakespeare's. Anyway, I don't have time to go into an in depth discussion of the poetics of each of these writers just now, but I did want to suggest that we look at other ways to judge a poet apart from the topic he/she writes on. There are bad poems written on flowers and there are great poems written on flowers. To say that writing about flowers means the poet is bad doesn't really make sense.


Edit: Just saw St. Luke's post above, which sums up nicely what I was trying to get across regarding style versus content. Also, love the Lego last supper, St. Luke's. Priceless. :lol:

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Donne wrote poems for an elite coterie of male gentlemen: The Flea is a clever but quite amoral jest to those men over a sophistical argument persuading a reluctant female to submit to his lusts. Great poetry...?

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If the requirement of great poetry was that it had to be moral and egalitarian, then I doubt there would be much of anything left to be recognized as great poetry. :lol:

If the requirement of great poetry was that it had to be moral and egalitarian, then I doubt there would be much of anything left to be recognized as great poetry.:lol:

Or as Oscar Wilde (who was never wrong about anything) stated:

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written." :nod:

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Or as Oscar Wilde (who was never wrong about anything) stated:

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written."

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As always, Maestro Wilde said it first and said it best. :nod:

I once worshiped Keats and loved Shelley. Then I grew out of all that. They achieved a lot for their short lives but most of what they composed was juvenilia to be honest and that comprises large chunks and long poems which came to nothing and miserably failed the test of time. Given the huge bodies of their work, they have a lot which can be rated as ineffectual at the best. The effect on Victorians and Yeats etc is all well and good but you do grow out of this sort of poetry. They appeal to the youth in us who does not know the limits of his own world-view. With the passage of youth we realize that there is more to life than mere life or colour or flowers or the past or even the future. Great poets like Shakespeare, Donne, Ghalib (India), Saadi (Iran) show us what it means to be alive and what it means to stop being alive, to go beyond life, not only the meaning of life but they take us to the final frontiers of life, language and expression. Romanticism has problems, it is unrealistic, it is neurotic, adolescent and immature. Classicism goes beyond all these limitations and truly great literature bears the great lyricism of the romantic poetry and timelessness of classicism because it deals with the timeless, the eternal and the universal as well as asks new questions, provides thought-provoking answers while maintaining the grandeur and sublimity which differentiate it from both romanticism and classicism. Proust's fiction, Donne's poetry and Shakespeare's plays fall into the category of truly great literature.

I once worshiped Keats and loved Shelley. Then I grew out of all that. They achieved a lot for their short lives but most of what they composed was juvenilia to be honest and that comprises large chunks and long poems which came to nothing and miserably failed the test of time. Given the huge bodies of their work, they have a lot which can be rated as ineffectual at the best. The effect on Victorians and Yeats etc is all well and good but you do grow out of this sort of poetry. They appeal to the youth in us who does not know the limits of his own world-view. With the passage of youth we realize that there is more to life than mere life or colour or flowers or the past or even the future. Great poets like Shakespeare, Donne, Ghalib (India), Saadi (Iran) show us what it means to be alive and what it means to stop being alive, to go beyond life, not only the meaning of life but they take us to the final frontiers of life, language and expression. Romanticism has problems, it is unrealistic, it is neurotic, adolescent and immature. Classicism goes beyond all these limitations and truly great literature bears the great lyricism of the romantic poetry and timelessness of classicism because it deals with the timeless, the eternal and the universal as well as asks new questions, provides thought-provoking answers while maintaining the grandeur and sublimity which differentiate it from both romanticism and classicism. Proust's fiction, Donne's poetry and Shakespeare's plays fall into the category of truly great literature.

Absolute nonsense! Because you personally grew out of your infatuation with Romanticism you assume that it is Romanticism which is failed and you that have moved to higher more rarefied delights? Certainly that is one interpretation... that assumes that your personal preferences are proof of an artist's worth. I no longer look much at Raphael or Leonardo as I did when I was a younger art student. Must be proof that I have moved beyond them and as such they are immature artists at best. It couldn't be that my own personal interests have changed which may or may not have anything to do with the quality of the art. I must congratulate your achievement. Your critical acumen has clearly surpassed that of such inferior judges of literary merit as Yeats, Rossetti, Walter Pater, Baudelaire, Proust, Harold Bloom, and any number of others who clearly appreciated the achievements of the great Romantics. Classicism vs Romanticism? I thought that argument... the notion that the two presented an "either-or" dichotomy had died out by the end of the 19th century... or at least with T.S. Eliot. Certainly there were weak poems by the Romantics and surely a degree of juvenalia, to say nothing of some of the crap influenced by Romanticism (the Beats?)... but the Classicists had their juvenalia and their poor poems as well, and certainly inspired any number of empty academic imitators. The best works of the great Romantics can stand up to comparison with the works of almost any poet in spite of the in youth.

With all due respect to Petrarch's Love and StLukesGuild I believe you are both mistaken. The subject of a work of art is the most important thing about it, which is not to say that a great theme cannot be fumbled by inexperienced hands, or that a mediocre one cannot be improved upon. I believe that just as a book or an author can be greater than another, so too can a theme, or a subject. Take that as you will. When push comes to shove, mankind only cares about two things: Love, and Death. These are the fundamentals and appeal universally to all audiences. Individually, they are the matter of great art, but when wedded they become the subject matter for the greatest of art. For examples, I propose Romeo and Juliet and The Divine Comedy. As subject matter strays farther and farther from these sources, the effect is diluted. It becomes abstract and superficial.

I once read a novel of the kind you propose, the type which handles trivia expertly. Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine deals at great length with the proper way to tie one's shoe laces, the importance of brown paper bags at the grocery store, and the various uses of chewing gum. While I thought it was a novel literary experiment in minutia, it did not strike me as great and lasting literature. Similarly, I have grave misgivings when adults become enamored of magical schoolboys who play air soccer on brooms while solving mysteries and fighting giant spiders. Perhaps, I'm wrong and Quidditch is a profound metaphor for apartheid. If so, then I beg your pardon, but I stand by my conviction that the subjectmatter is the most important part of any text. I would rather read a book of substance that was poorly written, than a skillfully crafted piece of fluff.

A really good poem about flowers is often not a poem about flowers at all. Rather it is frequently a poem about a person looking at a flower, their reactions, and that person could properly be called the subject of the poem. The person's reaction can be either complex or simplistic, profound, or maudlin. In the rare case when a poem really is about a flower, a good poem I mean, it is often not just about a simple flower. It is about a flower plus something, in relation to something. The flower reminds the poet of something else, or stands in for that missing thing. Dante Gabriel Rosetti's poem The Woodspurge is not solely a poem about a flower. It is a poem about grief and loss. Perhaps, this is what you meant, and we are not even in disagreement?

I would like to thank Virgil for his insightful post above. It helped me to clarify to myself just what it was about these writers which I found most off-putting. That thing was their philosophy, their outlook on life. You see, I've long considered their influence on modern letters to be a negative one. These poets: Keats, Shelley, Byron, and others like them are responsible for setting up a persistent image of the artist as a rebel, as an iconoclast outside of society, a dashing bohemian who is above conventional morality and "plays by his own rules." Stlukesguild, I know you've mentioned this falacy elsewhere. I know you've mentioned how it annoyed you that some people thought that all they had to do was dress in black and drink a lot to be great artists.To my mind, these men make bad role models and their conceit is nothing but an affected attitude along with a series of empty platitudes generations of young people have used to justify their bad manners. From the romantics we get ill conceived notions about the proper way for an artist to create. Notions of inspiration replace the doctrine of hard work and study. Individual originality is placed on a pedestal and no one worries about perfecting a style, or working in a tradition. The classics are neglected, because when art is supposed to be about an original self-expression from within the artist, what can some dead white males have to teach anybody?

More specifically, they're hippies, with their free love and their "Don't oppress me man" philosophy. They spout a laughable nature ideal, where everything would be cool if we just cast off our city life and lived as God intended. Animals don't prey upon human's in their nature. People don't freeze from cold, or poison themselves with bad drinking water. The mosquito and malaria do not exist for them. The very mechanism that sustains human life, civilization is regarded as a corrupting influence. I'm not saying he was on their level, but Carl Sandburg was onto something when he sung the praises of cities. They talk quite a bit about love, but it's always passionate love. Young love, nearly indistinguishable from lust. You don't get the kind of love a man has for his wife after twenty years from these poets. You don't often get the paternal love, of a parent for a child. To be sure you get disappointed love, love with reservations, love which defies societal conventions, and these can be complex in themselves. But I think that socially acceptable forms of love were too much for them, and they had not the courage to conform.

Often, I regard the romantics as reactionary. They throw themselves into this exaggerated emotional rhetoric in response to the over disciplined, over thought, over structured verse of the previous era. For me, Dryden, Pope, and Johnson have as many errors at the opposite pole. One is too wet and the other too dry. One type of writing appeals to old men, and the other to young men. Or women if you prefer. I will posit that Pope has mastered his style, and has a greater control of his verses than any of the three romantics we are discussing. Line for line, he stands up to any of them. "A little learning is a dangerous thing" might just as easily have been written by the man who wrote "A thing of beauty is a joy forever."

I agree with much of what Kafka's Crow said, with one or two exceptions. I don't think we necessarily grow out of literature. It's just that the emphasis changes. The romantic poets appeal strongly to youths and that's what youths should be reading. It's the best kind of literature for people at their age when they would possibly be less receptive to other types of poetry or fiction. In the same way, I think we have great children's literature, which can be read with renewed pleasure many years later. Also, the best literature is not simply an either or affair, romantic or classic, but a happy median in between the two types of writing.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

With all due respect to Petrarch's Love and StLukesGuild I believe you are both mistaken. The subject of a work of art is the most important thing about it, which is not to say that a great theme cannot be fumbled by inexperienced hands, or that a mediocre one cannot be improved upon. I believe that just as a book or an author can be greater than another, so too can a theme, or a subject. Take that as you will. When push comes to shove, mankind only cares about two things: Love, and Death. These are the fundamentals and appeal universally to all audiences. Individually, they are the matter of great art, but when wedded they become the subject matter for the greatest of art. For examples, I propose Romeo and Juliet and The Divine Comedy. As subject matter strays farther and farther from these sources, the effect is diluted. It becomes abstract and superficial.

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O.K., I can see that I didn't get across what I was trying to say clearly enough before. You absolutely cannot judge a work of art solely on it's topic. If you say that writing on Love and Death makes something great, then every 16 year old on the planet is a great poet. I didn't say that the subject of the poem doesn't matter at all. I agree that a part of the poem is its content, and if you don't start with a good idea it's going to be harder (though not impossible) to write a good poem. The best poetry will indeed have some sort of great idea as its seed. However, the idea, no matter how good, is not going to carry the poem on its own. The subject isn't going to be the thing that sets it apart from all the other poems on that same subject. Since you suggested it, let's just start with Romeo and Juliet. Here's the prologue:

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There is beyond the Alps, a town of ancient fame,
Whose bright renown yet shineth clear: Verona men it name;
Built in a happy time, built on a fertile soil
Maintained by the heavenly fates, and by the townish toil
The fruitful hills above, the pleasant vales below,
The silver stream with channel deep, that thro' the town doth flow,
The store of springs that serve for use, and eke for ease,
And other more commodities, which profit may and please,--
Eke many certain signs of things betid of old,
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To fill the hungry eyes of those that curiously behold,
Do make this town to be preferred above the rest
Of Lombard towns, or at the least, compared with the best.
In which while Escalus as prince alone did reign,
To reach reward unto the good, to pay the lewd with pain,
Alas, I rue to think, an heavy hap befell:
Which Boccace scant, not my rude tongue, were able forth to tell.
Within my trembling hand, my pen doth shake for fear,
And, on my cold amazéd head, upright doth stand my hair.
But sith she doth command, whose hest I must obey,
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In mourning verse, a woeful chance to tell I will assay.
Help, learnéd Pallas, help, ye Muses with your art,
Help, all ye damnéd fiends to tell of joys returned to smart.
Help eke, ye sisters three, my skilless pen t'indite:
For you it caused which I, alas, unable am to write.
There were two ancient stocks, which Fortune high did place
Above the rest, indued with wealth, and nobler of their race,
Loved of the common sort, loved of the prince alike,
And like unhappy were they both, when Fortune list to strike;
Whose praise, with equal blast, Fame in her trumpet blew;
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The one was clepéd Capulet, and th'other Montague.
A wonted use it is, that men of likely sort,
(I wot not by what fury forced) envy each other's port.
So these, whose egall state bred envy pale of hue,
And then, of grudging envy's root, black hate and rancour grew
As, of a little spark, oft riseth mighty fire,
So of a kindled spark of grudge, in flames flash out their ire:
And then their deadly food, first hatched of trifling strife,
Did bathe in blood of smarting wounds; it reavéd breath and life,
No legend lie I tell, scarce yet their eyes be dry,
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That did behold the grisly sight, with wet and weeping eye
But when the prudent prince, who there the sceptre held,
So great a new disorder in his commonweal beheld;
By gentle mean he sought, their choler to assuage;
And by persuasion to appease, their blameful furious rage.
But both his words and time, the prince hath spent in vain:
So rooted was the inward hate, he lost his busy pain.
When friendly sage advice, ne gentle words avail,
By thund'ring threats, and princely power their courage 'gan he quail
In hope that when he had the wasting flame supprest,
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In time he should quite quench the sparks that burned within their breast.

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Here's a different version:

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Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

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Most people greatly prefer the second version, even though both of them are talking about a tragic story they are about to tell involving two feuding families in Verona and the subject of love and death. The thing that makes Shakespeare's opening to Romeo and Juliet different--and most would say better--than the opening to his source, Arthur Brooke's Romeus and Juliet, is not what he is saying but how he is saying it. You could point to any number of things Shakespeare is doing with his language that carry his work into greatness. He has carefully selected his words in a way that enables him to convey the same ideas Brooke tried to convey, but with greater pith in the condensed sonnet form. He has replaced the slightly jarring, perhaps even occasionally silly sounding meter of Brooke's fourteeners with a more smoothly flowing iambic pentameter. He uses rhetorical tricks, like the parallel "civil blood" and "civil hands," which makes the line more memorable and conveys both the concept and the emotion of what he is trying to put across more succinctly and more effectively than Brooke's more expository rhyme.

Well, I could spend a year or so going through an analysis of what Shakespeare does differently, but I think you'll see my point by now. You are absolutely right, of course, that one thing that seperates a good poem on a flower from a great one is that the great poem isn't really just about the flower. What you are getting at there is the multiple levels of meaning that make a poem interesting for us to read. What allows for these multiple levels of meaning, however, is not just that the poet is thinking on multiple levels, but that he is able to convey these multiple levels to the reader by means of language. It is the way language is deployed on the page that gives any writer, but the poet especially, the kind of control he or she needs to convey such thought.

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Originally Posted by Kafka's Crow

I once worshiped Keats and loved Shelley. Then I grew out of all that. They achieved a lot for their short lives but most of what they composed was juvenilia to be honest and that comprises large chunks and long poems which came to nothing and miserably failed the test of time. Given the huge bodies of their work, they have a lot which can be rated as ineffectual at the best. The effect on Victorians and Yeats etc is all well and good but you do grow out of this sort of poetry. They appeal to the youth in us who does not know the limits of his own world-view. With the passage of youth we realize that there is more to life than mere life or colour or flowers or the past or even the future. Great poets like Shakespeare, Donne, Ghalib (India), Saadi (Iran) show us what it means to be alive and what it means to stop being alive, to go beyond life, not only the meaning of life but they take us to the final frontiers of life, language and expression. Romanticism has problems, it is unrealistic, it is neurotic, adolescent and immature. Classicism goes beyond all these limitations and truly great literature bears the great lyricism of the romantic poetry and timelessness of classicism because it deals with the timeless, the eternal and the universal as well as asks new questions, provides thought-provoking answers while maintaining the grandeur and sublimity which differentiate it from both romanticism and classicism. Proust's fiction, Donne's poetry and Shakespeare's plays fall into the category of truly great literature.

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Both Romanticism and Classicism have their pros and cons as philosophies, and Romanticism, at its best, deals with the timeless and the universal just as much as Classicism. Frankly, though, I don't see much value in making this into a dichotomy between the two. Both are highly influential modes that produced their fair share of both good and bad poetry. I won't deny that there is an element of Romanticism that appeals particularly to the adolescent mind, and that many adolescents become enamored with those aspects of Romanticism. That doesn't mean it does not offer other things beyond that sort of adolescent thinking as well. In some ways I've always thought it unfortunate that the Romantic poets are so popular among the very young, because they become associated with adolescence. A similar thing happens oftentimes with Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream which, because of its fairies is often seen as a friendly play to have put on by school children, leading many to dismiss it as something with nothing to offer older people. You may associate the Romantic poets with your own immature past, but I know plenty of well read, mature and thoughtful people--people up into their 80's and 90's--who continue to get a great deal out of the works of these poets even after their own youth is long past.

I have long been of the belief that love (or sex) and death (or mortality) are perhaps the two central themes of nearly all art. Undoubtedly there is much more to most good poems on a flower than merely the poet musing on a flower. Another of the Romantics, my personal favorite, put it well:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

Certainly there is more to Cezanne's apples or Mark Rothko's fuzzy squares of color than simple a recreation of a bunch of fruit or lovely arrangement of colors. Surely there's more to Beethoven's 9th Symphony or Bach's Well Tempered Clavier or Mozart's piano concertos than merely a lovely arrangement of sounds. On the other hand... I don't know that I would credit the subject-matter as being the most important aspect of a work of art in any way, shape, or form. A subject matter laden with the greatest "meaning" and "depth" and degree of possibilities can be fumbled by the inexperienced or the amateur... but it can also result in mediocrity in the hands of the most knowledgeable. There are just as many works of academic garbage as there are of laughable amateurishness. Yes, I agree there is trite and fluffy literature. Harry Potter, as you point out is certainly an example... but is it the magic and the fantasy that makes it so? What then do we make of Beowulf or Boccaccio or the Arthurian legends or A Midsummers Night Dream or the Biblical narratives or even Kafka, Calvino, and Borges?

There are any number of works of real artistic resonance that have been produced by artists lacking a real formal education, training, or experience. There are also any number of artistic works of great depth that began in the most humble... even laughable of circumstances. In Die Winterreise Franz Schubert composed perhaps the most moving cycle of leider ever, based upon a collection of mediocre poems. Mussorgsky structured his masterful Pictures at an Exhibition around the less than mediocre paintings of a friend. Spencer's great mock-epic, Muiopotmos is virtually about nothing more profound than the war between the spider and the fly. Baker's Mezzanine may be criticized for its experimentation with minutia... but perhaps he simply did not do it as well as Proust? As such, I am firmly of the belief that it is the art... what the artist does with his or her artistic language to convey the theme at hand... and not the subject matter that is central to a work of art. If this were not so then every school-trained academic with the knowledge of the great themes of art and literature would be churning out endless works of poetic genius. Of course you state you would rather read a poorly written work of substance than a well-written piece of "fluff". I am clearly not of the same mind. A badly painted painting of some grandiose subject matter is ends up being pretentious... and just plain bad while any number of marvelously rendered paintings of nothing more "profound" than the artist's lover have resulted in masterpieces that have stood the test of time. Indeed... I would most certainly prefer to read a bit of "fluff" such as Spencer's Muiopotmos than any number of stiffly rendered expressions of something far more "serious".

I further need to question your equation of the mastery of the abstract form with something superficial. All art forms are a form of language. Some of what the artist has to say is of great seriousness and some is not. To measure the success or failure of the work of art, however, we must look at how well the artist has utilized his or her chosen language not at how well he or she has chosen a theme. I may disagree with much that an artist has to say, and yet admit to his or her artistic achievement. I don't seek out art as a means to reinforce my own prejudices and beliefs. Much that I find in Dante, Plato, the Bible, the Qu'ran, etc... goes against my own beliefs... and yet in no way would I question the artistic merit of the same. At the same time... what do we make of art that clearly is "abstract"? Do we suggest it is but superficial? Where does than place the artistic efforts of Beethoven or Mozart? Or perhaps music, as Walter Pater noted, suggests the perfect ideal for any great work of art: a seamless merger of form and content to the point that they become one. Such a merger surely exists in many of the finest works of the Romantics as in many of the finest works of any artist.

I certainly agree that Romanticism had its excesses... as did any artistic movement. It certainly could be unrealistic... but so too could Classicism, albeit in another manner. Yes, Romanticism in part led to the notion of the artist as the inspired rebel... but then can we blame the artist for the abuses his or her work was put to by others? Do we blame Goethe for all those impressionable men committing suicide in imitation of Werther? Do we Blame Walt Whitman for Ginsberg and the rest of the beats? Surely that would be one hell of a strike against him. But then we also must credit him for Pessoa, Neruda, and even T.S. Eliot. Personally, I am able to draw a distinction between the artist and the the art. I don't think I would find Michelangelo, Beethoven, Richard Wagner, Picasso, Milton or T.S. Eliot to have been all that personable... but that does not lead me to undervalue their art. Yes, Shelley was probably a jerk... but I couldn't care less. It in no way lessens To a Skylark, Ode to the West Wind, Ozymandias or the magnificent Adonais.

Romanticism is "reactionary"? Well surely a great deal of art is born in a reaction against or in continuation of the world they inherited. Undoubtedly the Romantic may have idealized nature... but this was in reaction to a culture prior that idealized artifice as well as to a world that was slipping into the industrial age. Perhaps Blake's "dark and Satanic mills" seem laughable? Or perhaps he was more prescient than many who embraced the cities and "progress" and "modernism" and "better living through technology". Yes, progress and technology brought us antibiotics and the internet... but it also brought the over-crowded, crime and poverty-laden modern cities, modern warfare, and many other problems. I don't think that the Romantic's idealization of nature was any less naive than the Modernist's and Classicist's embrace of "progress", technology, or "civilization."

I do agree that Romanticism has a far greater appeal to the young... or perhaps that Classicism can seem too... "aloof"... "cold"... when one is younger. Wagner and Tchaikovsky and Rubens and Keats can stir the emotions while Bach and Milton and Pope and Ingres seem too distant... even cold when one is young. However, because I now love Bach and Milton and Ingres and Pope... and because they are artistically far removed from Tchaikovsky and Keats does not mean that I may no longer appreciate their achievements... nor that one is inherently better than the other. Shakespeare, who is undoubtedly a giant by any standard clearly combines the best of both worlds which most certainly may be the best route.

Some posts here really remind me of the concluding words of my thesis on Samuel Beckett. Though written in 2001, I never felt the urge to go back to it repeatedly and read the final paragraph again and again as I have done in last couple of days:

"...Beckett wrote about that which could not be named in our economy of name-giving, name-calling and name-dropping."

The best literature is about love and sex, now that's a good one. Time to change 'long-held' perceptions. Best literature is about expression, its limits and its limitations.

"True wit is nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."

Proust and Beckett very aptly fit this description, both occupying the opposite poles. While Proust shows the minor details of life and their deeper meanings, Beckett empties these deeper concerns of their meanings.

Coming back to Romanticism, Lautreamont's Les Chants de Maldoror (I will keep harping on this one book, the original version is highly recommended but Alexis Lykiard's prose translation is good as well). It shows the true horrors at the heart of the decadence, individualism and disregard for tradition. Maldoror is the true face of the so-called romantic tendencies. We blame the 'swinging sixties' for the bad things that happen in our societies but don't take the time to contemplate where those 'swinging sixties' came from.

Coming back to Romanticism, Lautreamont's Les Chants de Maldoror (I will keep harping on this one book, the original version is highly recommended but Alexis Lykiard's prose translation is good as well). It shows the true horrors at the heart of the decadence, individualism and disregard for tradition. Maldoror is the true face of the so-called romantic tendencies. We blame the 'swinging sixties' for the bad things that happen in our societies but don't take the time to contemplate where those 'swinging sixties' came from.

I've yet to get around to reading Lautreamont... in spite of having had Lykiard's translation for some time now. A real gap considering my admiration of much of the French literature of the era. The horrors of decadence and disregard for tradition (I can't add individualism into that mix as I'm not convinced that the voice of the individual isn't a central value of art) don't need Lautreamont to be pointed out. We can see their excess everywhere in our current culture where everyone is an artist and everything is art. Certainly we can discern aspects of Romanticism that point in this direction, but you don't honestly imagine, for all the lip-service that might have been given to the notion of "inspiration," that the Romantics were not well versed in and well cognizant and respectful of tradition. Most of them were well read in the Latin if not the Greek "classics" as well. William Blake was not only well-versed in the Bible, Milton, Chaucer, and Dante, but also in various Eastern literatures including the Qu'ran and quite probably the Mahabharata. We are not speaking of the "indolence" to use Thomas Disch's term, of those poetic neophytes who follow the rants of Ginsberg and the rest of the Beats and are the literary equivalent of 50-Cent or Metalica: mere ranting. To blame Romanticism for the current disagreeable elements of our culture is as pointless as laying the blame upon the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, or the Roman Empire.

"True wit is nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."

Indeed!

Obviously both Classicism and Romantism are not real. They are just a matter of perception. That is why some, like Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, Beethoveen, Delacroix, etc,etc,etc seems to live in both worlds. The classification just can not fit them because they provoke perceptions that suits both sides.
Anyways, since we use language and our language allow us to make both Classicism and Romantism as real, it is usually good to ask what exactly do you mean by it. Otherwise they are gross generalizations.
This make me think about Borges (who said he was Baroque and turned be classicist by Bioy Casares, as strange it seems coming from a cetic guy) talking about Poe and Coleridge.
Borges said how funny it was to think that a Romantic guy like Poe when explained the process of creation of The Raven used a classic rational approach while a guy like Coleridge, that for borges is a classicist not a romantic, when explaning the process of creation appealed to romantic images and dreams.
Of course, Coleridge ideas are one of the main influences to build up the "character" of Romanticism (he didn't needed to be one, as Goethe never needed to be one or Rousseau) while Poe's are behind the very realism (and even the symbolism) that happened after him.
So, dad, son, fight.

Shelly is more appealing to me., for he wrote very emotionally not running after a boundary.

I think its Byron, Shelley, Keats, just like the title of the thread. Byron was the finest romantic poet. I really like and respect Shelley, especially for his works of horror poetry, but still he was not as gifted as Byron. Keats was the least favorite of the three. I have read little of his work, other than the grecian urn bit.
cool thread. Something I dislike about the romantics is their focus on religious ideals and struggles. I feel that this tendency detracted from the deep emotional impact of these works. I tend towards the horror works, such as Shelley's "Ghasta." For those of you interested in horror in the classics, please read that epic poem. You will find it thrilling.
Please carry on with your conversation now.

Lord George Gordon Byron, because of his irreverence of none other than The Swan of Avon.

Great thread. I go Keats, Byron, Shelley as a personal preference. I think Keats is the greatest "natural", by which I mean less educated or intellectual poet, and I don't mean that disparagingly. Byron is the greatest wit, and Shelley is the greatest on philosophy, ideals, and ideas. I love all of them dearly. I have to say though Kafka, through my studies of them, Shelley is usually regarded higher than Byron, who we could perhaps say is underrated as a poet, and is regarded more for his personality and lifestyle. If we look at the poets themselves, both Byron and Shelley regarded Keats as the best. I love them all, and as influential poets, I would never put Arnold above them, although he is, I know, very highly rated over here in good old blighty.

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Originally Posted by wessexgirl

Great thread. I go Keats, Byron, Shelley as a personal preference. I think Keats is the greatest "natural", by which I mean less educated or intellectual poet, and I don't mean that disparagingly. Byron is the greatest wit, and Shelley is the greatest on philosophy, ideals, and ideas. I love all of them dearly. I have to say though Kafka, through my studies of them, Shelley is usually regarded higher than Byron, who we could perhaps say is underrated as a poet, and is regarded more for his personality and lifestyle. If we look at the poets themselves, both Byron and Shelley regarded Keats as the best. I love them all, and as influential poets, I would never put Arnold above them, although he is, I know, very highly rated over here in good old blighty.

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Hey! I'm new here so go easy on me, I'm just expressing my opinion.

Personally my favourite poet is Byron, followed by Keats and then Shelley, but I am more familiar with Byron's works rather than the others.

Shelley I think is a bit too intense (I'll probably like him more when I gain more insight on his work), but from what I've read so far he cannot surpass Byron in my book.

Keats is a great poet, but after having so many poets from my country describe nature in a million different forms, I kind of preffer authors who don't focus on it so much. However, Keats is responsible for my favourite quote: "a thing of beauty is a joy forever."

Now, in response to the previous post. By less-educated, do you mean that he hadn't had as much schooling as Byron and Shelley? If the answer is yes, I have to disagree. Keats was well-educated. He had been trained to become a doctor, but gave up on that career when faced with the horrors of having to operate on patients without anesthetic (which had not been invented). This experience altered his manner of thinking; he believed that he could heal people through his writing instead of medicine (or whatever doctors back then used).

Now, as to both Shelley and Byron regarding Keats as the best. Shelley certainly did (he did write "Adonais", and when his body was found after his boat had sank, he had a volume of Keats' poems in his pocket), but Byron didn't seem to be a fan of Keats. I am currently in the process of writing a research paper on Byron and according to what I have found, he didn't like Keats' work that well, and he didn't seem inclined to like him in terms of character.

However, overall I think that all three poets are great. Otherwise, people would not remember them today. Their legacy is a sign of just how influential they were both in their writings and in the way they lived their lives.

You are right about Arnold. He doesn't hold a candle to them.

This is a really good thread. Thank you!

I'm now trying to learn more about Shelley's work. Any recomandations?

Keats education as a doctor is nowhere the kind of Educatin that member of nobility like Byron or Shelley, who had university curse and was linked with a group of intelectuals since young age was. I guess that he wanted to mean that, not that Keats was not educated (Some may point for example Keats did mistakes that an intelectual would not do in some of his poems, quoting wrong information, but that is irrelevant to follow Keats poetry and even critical sense, which was suberb).
Byron started as a critic of Keats but later he considered it even attacking harsher critics of Keats - overall, Keats reputation as poet is more steady than Byron and his early death increased the reception of the poems that are published later.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

Keats education as a doctor is nowhere the kind of Educatin that member of nobility like Byron or Shelley, who had university curse and was linked with a group of intelectuals since young age was. I guess that he wanted to mean that, not that Keats was not educated (Some may point for example Keats did mistakes that an intelectual would not do in some of his poems, quoting wrong information, but that is irrelevant to follow Keats poetry and even critical sense, which was suberb).
Byron started as a critic of Keats but later he considered it even attacking harsher critics of Keats - overall, Keats reputation as poet is more steady than Byron and his early death increased the reception of the poems that are published later.

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Yes, he must have meant something different, but I interpreted it in another way. I am impressed that Keats managed to impose himself despite being poorer, but Byron is still #1 for me because of that wit of his. Don't get me wrong, I like Keats too and I agree that his early death made him more popular than he was in his lifetime. However, it saddens me that he could have published more had he not died so young.

I haven't found any info about Byron reconsidering his opinions on Keats, but I should check that out. Thanks for the tip.

He coined a famous vision about Keats being fragile and all and having died with a sickness caused by negative critics of Hyperion (critics a bit too harsh because the links Keats had with a group of poets) and in Byronic style attacked back the critics. The thing is, Hyperion - as Keats reckonized is flawed and the rest of the world would have to wait a little to see the whole body of Keats work where we can see his real genius, so it is natural that the first visions of Keats were more negative than the later.
But to say that Byron considered his the best is a bit too much, not Byron, maybe Shelley who had a more "all around vision" could see something like this (because Keats at least had contact with Shelley). The thing is, since this trio is a bit of mythological trio of romantic poet (early deaths, egoistical, passionate, political, impulsive, etc) and lived about the same age, people like to link one with the other, but except the death chain and Shelley -Byron, they had too little contact with each other and are very different individuals.
The "What if" of Keats helps him to be seen as greater (altough I consider him superior notheless) but Byron was the one that dominated the attentions during their lifes and Shelley was the kind of poet which full scope of work was only understood with time.

recite it over a hip-hop beat...

(the poets are mentioned exactly like your question in a song called 'Unwritten' :)! )ha ha!

I love Shelley; he uses such great imagery. I just can't get over how great his imagery is. Keats definitely had a lot of talent, since he died so young but was able to produce works that lasted so long. I haven't read enough of Byron to comment on him... but I'll try to read some soon... any suggestions?

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Originally Posted by Shya

I love Shelley; he uses such great imagery. I just can't get over how great his imagery is. Keats definitely had a lot of talent, since he died so young but was able to produce works that lasted so long. I haven't read enough of Byron to comment on him... but I'll try to read some soon... any suggestions?

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From Byron I recommend "She walks in beauty", "Don Juan", "Darkness" and "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage". He has many but these are the first that come to my mind.

I love Shelley -and I agree with a fellow member who mentioned his great imagery- but I must confess that sometimes it's hard to separate his poetry from the fascination exerted by his life... ;)

I like William Wordsworth and of course he was words-worth, and of course he composed so many poems and he looked to postural and rural settings, and he thought man can be closer to the maker of him through being in touch with nature.

In fact I like all romantic poets and their poems were written so beautifully as if they have streamed from the well of their hearts.

I do not tag them with a label of romanticism, for they are really much deeper and intenser poe

They chose folks or rustics and simplicity is what they really tried to present through their beautiful verses.

Keats I love, but mustn't forget Coleridge! The dear drunk... =]