Week Two: Quintessential Romantics

Wordsworth is such an amazing writer. His tactics to describe everyday thing is such an eccentric way is amazing. He takes simples things and glorifies them. This is one of the main characteristic of Romantic/nature writers. "We Were Seven," is such an emotional poem. He introduces and describes this beautiful little girl and this child has such a story to tell. It kind of reminds me of Blake’s "The Chimney Sweeper." The little girl speaks of her brothers and sister but mention two that are gone. She says, "Two of us in the church-yard lie." (Line 21) The way Wordsworth worded it is so sad. It touches your heart. This little girl has a constant reminder in her backyard that once they were seven. She plays around her sister and brother graves. This is most definitely traumatizing for a child. How can a child experience so much pain? During this time no one really cared what a child was thinking. The speaker took the time out to ask, then, realized that this little girl has experienced more pain than most.

In "The Lime Tree Bower," Coleridge introduces us to a great power of imagination. Using imagination in this way is both empowering and surprising because it encourages a total and complete lack of respect for the boundaries of time and place. These mental and emotional jumps are often very interesting. This poem is Coleridge’s most famous use of imagination. The speaker in the poem displays an intense poetic mind frame. This   allows the speaker to take part in a journey that he cannot physically make. When he “returns” to the bower, after having imagined himself on a fantastic stroll through the countryside, the speaker discovers, as a reward, plenty of things to enjoy from inside the bower itself, including the leaves, the trees, and the shadows. The power of imagination transforms the prison into a perfectly pleasant spot.

Coleridge is a very eccentric writer. Most of his poems are very descriptive and the speaker seems to usually be in a nostalgic state of mind. In “Rime of the Ancient Mariner," the speaker decides to kill an albatross. The albatross is a respected bird. He then is cursed. The speaker runs into some wedding guests and tells his story. His curse is to tell the story over and over in order to never forget. The imagery in the poem is amazing. He goes into detail about the sky, the horizon, and the weather. He describes the serpents in the water in great detail which allows the reader to picture what is going on. The dead people all around the speaker are terrifying. The description of the horror the speaker experienced on the ship, kind of reminded me of the movie "Ghost Ship" and "Snakes on a Plane." This is definitely what the story would be if those two movies came together.