Byron, Shelley or Keats?

[Kafka's Crow]

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.

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

[Kafka's Crow]

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.

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!'

[JBI]

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.

[AwayAloneAlast]

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.

[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?"

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.

[Virgil]

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 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.

[nebish]

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...?

[stlukesguild]

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:

[Petrarch's Love]

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.

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...?

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.

[stlukesguild]

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.

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."

[Petrarch's Love]

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."

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

[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.

[stlukesguild]

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.

[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.

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.

[Petrarch's Love]

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.

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:

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,
10
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,
20
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;
30
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,
40
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,
50
In time he should quite quench the sparks that burned within their breast.

Here's a different version:

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.

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.