Romanticism – Page 5 – Interesting Literature

A Summary and Analysis of Percy Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Ode to the West Wind’ is one of the best-known and best-loved poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). It is a quintessential Romantic poem. But what does it mean? Its closing words are well-known and often quoted, but how does the rest of the poem build towards them?

The best way to go about offering an analysis of ‘Ode to the West Wind’ is to go through the poem and provide a part-by-part summary, pointing out some of the most important features of Shelley’s poem. So, here goes…

A Summary and Analysis of John Keats’s ‘To Hope’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Written in February 1815 when he was just nineteen years old, ‘To Hope’ is one of John Keats’s early poems. Although it is not as celebrated or as polished as his more mature work, the poem is worth sharing, so below we reproduce the text of the poem, and offer a few words of analysis.

A Short Analysis of John Clare’s ‘The Instinct of Hope’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Instinct of Hope’ is a poem by the English Romantic poet John Clare (1793-1864). ‘The Instinct of Hope’ is a sonnet (of sorts), which … well, we’ve already hit upon a curious problem. Is this poem a sonnet or not? Below we offer some words of analysis, but first, here’s the text of the poem.

A Short Analysis of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Work without Hope’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Work without Hope’ is a poem by the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from 1825. A short poem, ‘Work without Hope’ is sometimes regarded as a sort of coda to Coleridge’s far more famous longer poem, ‘Dejection: An Ode’. A few words of analysis of this short poem about work – and hope – may help to illuminate its meaning, but first, here’s the text of the poem.

A Summary and Analysis of William Blake’s ‘Auguries of Innocence’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Unlike many of his other celebrated poems, William Blake’s ‘Auguries of Innocence’ languished unpublished in notebooks for decades after his death, and was only first published in 1863. In a sense, ‘Auguries of Innocence’ provides a backdrop for the poet’s most famous poetry, and is worth subjecting to close analysis. Here’s the poem first: