Romantic Era Lyric Poetry Analysis

“To a Mouse” – Robert Burns

·         8 stanzas

·         8 sestets

·         AAABAB/CCCDCD/EEEFEF/GGGHGH/IIIJIJ/KKKLKL/MMMNMN/OOOPOP

·         The poet’s tone is apologetic. In the second stanza, he tells the mouse that he is truly sorry for plowing up the mouse’s nest.

·         This poem is pastoral because it consists of a simple farm life. Words like, “pattle”, “coulter”, and “hald” call create imagery as to where the scene was taking place.

·         The poem contains elements of nature because it takes place on a farm and the farmer deals with the destruction of a mouse’s home.

·         The turning point in the poem happens in line 39 when the poet addresses that “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft agley”. It shows that man has no control change, or in this case, his lot.

·         The purpose of writing the vernacular poem in the Scots dialect is so that it seems more authentic to its region and the lifestyle of the speaker in the poem.

·         A farmer plows over a mouse’s nest, and the farmer then tries to apologize to the scared mouse. He tells the mouse that he can eat the corn he grows without being intimidated.

“The Tyger” – William Blake

·         6 stanzas

·         6 quatrains

·         AABB/CCDD/EEFF/GGHH/IIJJ/AABB

·         The tone of this poem is soft and innocent as the speaker asks many questions to the tiger.

·         Blake uses a couple of allusion in this poem. The first one is in line 3, referring to God and Satan when saying “immortal hand or eye”. Another allusion occurs in line 5 where Blake asks a question pertaining to “distant deeps or skies”, or hell and heaven.

·         The “he” in the poem refers to God, the creator.

·         Bale’s purpose in this poem is to show that evil does exist in the work, and he does this by asking various rhetorical questions.

·         This poem asks rhetorical question to a tiger, or beast, why the so-called innocent called creates evil in the world.

“The Chimney Sweeper” – William Blake

·         6 stanzas

·         6 quatrains

·         AABB/CCDD/EEFF/GGHH/IIJJ/KKLL

·         Blake is saying that society now is harsh and cruel, and that people should not fail to acknowledge the dreams of others.

·         The coffin in the poem symbolizes the loss of innocence the child faces when the child is sold as a chimney-sweeper.

·         A young boy who was sold into the chimney sweeping business tells a story about Tom Darce who has a dream about several children who were set free from the dirty business.

·         This dream gives them hope that they will be free one day and that their lives will improve.

“A Poison Tree” – William Blake

·         4 stanzas

·         4 quatrains

·         AABB/CCDD/EEFF/GGHH

·         Blake uses an extended metaphor in the poem to describe human nature. In the second stanza, Blake uses nature to reference the nature of humans.

·         The author’s purpose of this poem is to show that anger can be spread from person to person, so much as to become a poison to society.

·         This poem is about someone who is angry at a friend, and Blake describes how that person’s anger grows into something more, as if a tree was growing.

“Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” – William Wordsworth

·         The poem is in iambic pentameter.

·         The speaker of the poem is at a location, and he has not been there in 5 years. He begins to describe the things surrounding him, and then the memories he had of this place.

·         The advice he gives to his sister is that when he dies, she can remember him through nature i.e. the moon and the wind.

·         Being nostalgic, the speaker reminisces about the time he was here last, and starts to elaborate on human life and how there are three stages to it. Childhood memories are the most pure and innocent.

“She Walks in Beauty” – George Gordon

·         3 stanzas

·         3 sestets

·         ABABAB/CDCDCD/EFEFEF

·         “She” is a beautiful woman who is a pure, innocent, and sweet lady.

“Ozymandias” – Percy Bysshe Shelley

·         Sonnet

·         ABACADEDFEFGHG

·         The irony of the poem is that the statue of the King is broken and lines 10-11 make the irony that all that is left of the feared and dreaded king is the broken pieces of his statue more profound.

·         Although kings and rulers can take control for a while, at some point, they all come down in power to where everything is equal.

·         The speaker meets a traveler who has been to Egypt, where early civilizations once inhabited. The traveler explains the broken statue in the desert and how the sculptor was detailed in his statue so it exuded the king’s actual personality.

“La Belle Dame sans Merci” – John Keats

·         12 stanzas

·         ABCB

·         12 quatrains

·         He realizes that his lover is, once again, gone.

·         The woman in the poem symbolizes the life that he is slowly losing.