Midterm Part 1

Part 1- Poetry

            William Blake is one of the most renowned Romantic poets. Despite its name, Romantic poetry is not all about romance and love; instead it focuses more on the fundamentals of how people thought of themselves and the world. Blake also input his own spiritual and religious ideas into much of his poetry. Take Blake’s poem, “Little Lamb”, for example. In this poem he shows an innocent child who questions the lambs’ existence. He asks the lamb “dost thou know who made thee?” several times throughout the poem. The narrator, a child, then says, “Little lamb, I’ll tell thee”, showing that this child is aware of the creation of the lamb. He then goes on to tell the lamb that it was a person who “called himself a Lamb” and then “became a little child”. From this statement, he had just compared himself to the lamb, a symbol of purity and innocence and indirectly to Jesus. Blake’s ideals in Romantic Poetry are to add a symbol to compare to and to input religious aspects as well.

John Keats is another Romantic poet whose poem, “Bright Star, Would I were Steadfast as Thou Art” is similar to William Blake’s poem, “Little Lamb”. In Keats’ poem, he is envious of the life the star lives yet at the same time he is also aware of how lonely it is to live like a star. The star in Keats’ poem acts as a symbol in which he is comparing himself too, thus satisfying one stipulation of Blake’s ideals of a Romantic poem. Keats’ also speaks of the star as if it were a deity, almost a God, spinning off of Blake’s input of religion into a Romantic poem. Overall, Keats’ poem, “Bright Star, Would I were Steadfast as Thou Art”, embodies much of Blake’s Romantic poem’s ideals.