"particular characteristics of the literature of romanticism includes subjectivity and an emphasis on individualism; spontaneity; freedom from rules; solitary life rather than life in society; the beliefs that imagination is superior to reason and devotion to beauty; love of and worship of nature; and fascination with the past, especially the myths and mysticism of the middle ages." http://www.uh.edu/engines/romanticism/

In this essay I will be looking mainly at Tears, Idle Tears by Tennyson and discussing how it focuses on aspects of imagination and emotion. I will also look briefly at Rose by Walter de la Mare. I will be examining the ways in which they incorporate imagery and emotions into their poems. I will also compare the poems in terms of the degree of imagery and emotion they contain, to see whether some Romantics were more 'romantic' than others were.

Romanticism was a movement in poetry (and art and literature in general) of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in revolt against the type of poetry of previous centuries. It allowed poets to write about anything; no longer were there 'fit subjects for writing'. It introduced the use of realistic-sounding language and talked about first-hand experience, thus communicating meaning much more effectively to the reader. The German poet Friedrich Schlegel first used the term romantic to describe literature, defining it as "literature depicting emotional matter in an imaginative form." The British Romantic poets lived through a period of rapid social change (brought about by the French Revolution) and responded fully to these changes in their writing. Examples of British poets who were highly influential in the Romantic period were Blake, Coleridge, Keats, Scott, Shelley, Wordsworth and Tennyson.

"Many hold to the theory that it was in Britain that the Romantic Movement really started quite early in the 18th century one can discern a definite shift in sensibility and feeling, particularly in relation to the natural order and Nature" (J.A. Cuddon)

Now that I have discussed what Romanticism is, I will now look at Tears, Idle Tears, which is one of the three songs from The Princess by Tennyson. The poem is set out into four stanzas of equal length, and is written in blank verse, meaning that it has no rhyme scheme. The title of the poem is interesting because the word 'idle' can have many different meanings (Tennyson revised it from Tears, Foolish Tears, for this reason). The word 'idle' is associated with laziness, but it can also mean empty, worthless or dead. The speaker in the poem experiences tears and questions what sort of tears they are:

"TEARS, idle tears, I know not what they mean,"

The first word of the poem being 'tears' in capital letters is significant because it is highlighting the subject matter of the poem. Throughout the poem he explores the reasons for tears to find out why he is experiencing them. Tennyson uses an oxymoron when he describes them as:

"Tears from the depth of some divine despair"

The word 'divine' has religious connotations as it means heavenly or sacred, but 'despair' seems opposite as it means to lose all hope; the poet is describing very powerful emotions. I feel that the speaker is saying that one of the possible reasons for his tears is a loss of hope in God. The alliteration of the consonant 'd' creates a very sombre and melancholic tone, whilst also creating a sense of rhythm. Tennyson uses nature imagery when he says:

"In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,"

The image is made stronger by the use of personification, which makes it seem as if the fields themselves are happy, although it is just the feeling they evoke in the speaker. Tennyson uses a paradox because he is describing emotions that contradict each other, despair and happiness. The end of the last line of each stanza is:

"the days that are no more"

This creates a pattern in the poem and also acts as a summary to each stanza, and to the poem as a whole, because the speaker discovers that the reasons for his tears are his thoughts about "the days that are no more". This could mean death, or just simply moments in the past that you can't get back again.

In the second stanza, Tennyson says: "Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,"

The freshness of memories is what is being described here and Tennyson uses an image of the sun shining on a boat's sail to emphasise it. Tennyson believes in religious mythology, and this is evident when he says:

"That brings our friends up from the underworld,"

The 'underworld' is a term that could mean a criminal world, but in this context (and due to the period in which the poem was written) it is obvious that he is talking about the abode of the dead. He says that the beam on the sail will "bring our friends up from the underworld", which suggests that he believes in spirits, or re-incarnation. The beam is like a symbol of hope, as the first two lines of this stanza are hopeful. However the next two lines are about the emotion of sadness:

"Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge"

The speaker is now describing the last beam of sun at the end of the day that is cast over a boat's sail. The use of 'reddens' suggests this because sunset is a red colour. The boat then sinks "with all we love below the verge" which suggests that the spirits that were conjured up by the freshness of the first beam, have now been banished to the depths with the sinking boat. The whole image creates a feeling of gain and then loss, which is sad. The last line is a summary to the stanza:

"So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more"

The speaker is saying that the memories of dead loved ones are both sad, and fresh in his memory, and remind him of the days that are gone.

The third stanza begins: "Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns"

The use of 'Ah' to begin the stanza emphasises the fact that the speaker is thinking and the whole poem is a 'train of thought'. The speaker is saying that as well as being sad, he finds it strange to not be able to go back to the "days that are no more". It is the last stanza of the poem is where there is most emotion and sentimentality; a great yearning for something that will never happen again and about lost time. "Dear as remembered kisses after death,

He says that the days that are now gone are as dear to him as the kisses of loved ones that are now dead. There is a sense of deep regret about the past in the last two lines: "deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more." Tennyson is talking about the emotion of love here, and firstly says "deep as love" but then extends it to "deep as first love" to suggest that first love is even deeper. The word 'wild' is a very powerful one that Tennyson uses to describe the regret that the speaker feels. The last line is powerful because he compares life and death and says that his memories of the past feel like a death to him. There is a sense of mystery in the poem as it seems that the speaker knows more than what he is telling us. It seems as if he has deep regrets about the past that are haunting him. Also Tennyson does not make it clear whom the speaker is as regards to gender. The speaker is sentimentalising about the past, and Tennyson sentimentalises in the way that he writes the poem. He deals with many different emotions such as despair, sadness, happiness, love and regret, which he qualifies with images to help the reader to understand them. As the following quote says: "By its very nature, poetic imagery links human thoughts and emotions intimately with the external world. Often it attributes human emotions to natural objects. Sometimes the world is distorted into the shape of a human emotion. Often it is the world itself that shapes the emotion." (Paul Harrison)

Tennyson is obviously very passionate about what he is writing about, so perhaps the person in the poem is Tennyson himself. He said of the poem:

"This song came to me on the yellowing autumn-tide at Tintern Abbey, full for me of its bygone memories ... It is what I have always felt even from a boy, and what as a boy I called the `passion of the past.' And it is so always with me now; it is the distance that charms me in the landscape, the picture and the past, and not the immediate today in which I move." (A. Tennyson, taken from http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/9712/poetry.htm)

I feel that Tears, Idle Tears is very effective in the way in which it describes emotions. The fact that it is written in blank verse helps because it is the only verse form that is able to convey the natural rhythm of spoken English, therefor making the poem more realistic. The images are described very vividly and are used to represent the feelings of the speaker. The following quote is another opinion of this poem: "the melody, the vision and the passionate wail of 'Tears, idle tears' the most moving and finely wrought lyric Tennyson ever wrote." (The Cambridge History of English and American Literature)

Poets of the 20th century felt that to sentimentalise was to diminish the meaning within a poem, and thought that the poetry of the Romantic Movement did just that. Examples of such poets were Thomas Hardy, Thom Gunn and Philip Larkin, who were always searching for effective means of intelligent thought rather than outpourings of emotion. A 20th century poet who did not share this view was Walter de la Mare. Although he was not a poet of the Romantic period, the style of his work is as such that he could be. He was not effected by the modern changes in poetry and continued to write sentimental poetry. His poem Rose is an example of this because it, like Tears, Idle Tears is about memories, and uses nature imagery to reinforce emotion. As an example of how his writing is similar to that of the Romantic poets like Tennyson, the first three lines from the second stanza of Rose say: "Woodruff, far moschantel May the more fragrant smell When into brittle dust their blossoming goes."

De la Mare uses flower imagery and appeals to the senses by describing smells. Like Tears, Idle Tears, the end of each stanza comes back to the meaning of the poem, which in this case is 'Rose' because that is whom the poem is about. This example proves that it wasn't just the poets of the Romantic period that wrote in the 'romantic' style.

To conclude this essay, I feel that although there was a specific period of Romantic poets, the trend can be found both before and after that time. It has been said that poems before the Romantic period contained a 'pre-romantic sensibility' and as I have proved with De la Mare's work the melancholic, sentimental style continued long after the period had ended. I feel that all poetry contains a certain degree of emotion and imagery, but no more than the poetry of the Romantic Movement. The following quote reinforces this point:

"Some of the best literature ever written grew out of the historical, cultural, spiritual, and intellectual developments and turmoils of the late 18th and early 19th centuries." (Dr. David S. Hogsette)

Bibliography

„X Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Third Ed. London: Penguin Books, 1991. (taken from http://www.bartleby.com/223/0202.html)

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User Comments

luntik 2009-04-28 01:16AM
	liki it! ---------------------

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