Celebrating Autumn with Poetry from the Romantic Era

9/21/2014

Since this column was written in the Autumn, I thought it would be fitting to highlight some poems by writers of the British Romantic movement. The Romantic Era had its origins in the early 19th century, but it reached its peak between 1850-1900. It was largely considered to be a reaction to, and to some extent a rejection of, the preceding Enlightenment Era. The Enlightenment brought with it the Scientific Revolution and the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.

In a recent article about the discipline of folklore , I mentioned that one detriment of these movements was the backlash against folk customs. Because the emphasis was on science and progress, country customs were often seen as backward. The Romantic Movement coincided with the birth of folklore as an academic discipline. Both folklorists and Romantic Era writers sought to press the pause button on this fast paced rush into the future.

Moonlit Landscape by Caspar David Friedrich

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While the Romantic Movement was widespread across both Europe and America, there were differences in how it manifested. Gothic literature proliferated during this period. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, published in 1818, is one such example. While it is considered by many to be a horror story, in actuality it was a piece of social commentary about the advancements in science and medicine. Just as we see science fiction exploring our fears about cloning, or about androids with artificial intelligence taking over humanity, Frankenstein expressed the fears of the rapid advancement of science in the 19th century.

A view of Manchester during the Industrial Revolution. By William Wyld, 1852

Another major theme of Romantic writers was the celebration of nature. This was especially true of the British Romanitics, such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Blake, and John Clare. Industrialization brought changes that were worrisome. Advancements in farming made agriculture more effective, requiring less man power, so country folk moved to the cities in droves looking for work. Nature and wildlife took a back seat to profit making ventures. The rise in scientific thought had taken away the element of the wonder and magic of nature, as it was viewed in a rational and clinical way.

Just as folklorists took society by the shoulders and reminded it to see the value in the stories and customs of its people, the Romantics reminded the world to see the value in the land where these stories and customs were birthed. So, while this issue celebrates Autumn, the season of the harvest, let us enjoy the poetry of some of History’s greatest bards.

Helmingham Dell by John Constable

All Nature Has a Feeling

By John Clare, 1845

All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks
Are life eternal: and in silence they
Speak happiness beyond the reach of books;
There's nothing mortal in them; their decay
Is the green life of change; to pass away
And come again in blooms revivified.
Its birth was heaven, eternal it its stay,
And with the sun and moon shall still abide
Beneath their day and night and heaven wide.

The Voyage of Life Childhood by Cole Thomas, 1842

On the Grasshopper and Cricket

By John Keats, 1816

The Poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead
In summer luxury,—he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
    Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
    The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

Grasshopper" - painting by Cindy Chinn

To Autumn

By John Keats, 1819

1.

    Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
        Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
    Conspiring with him how to load and bless
        With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
    To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
        And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
            To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
    With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
        And still more, later flowers for the bees,
        Until they think warm days will never cease,
            For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.

    Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
        Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
    Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
        Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
    Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound sleep,
        Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
            Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
    And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
        Steady thy laden head across a brook;
        Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
            Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.

    Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
        Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
    While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
        And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
    Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
        Among the river sallows, borne aloft
            Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
    And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
        Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
        The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
           And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Autumn, by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, 1573.

To Autumn

By William Blake, 1769

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stainèd
With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,
And all the daughters of the year shall dance!
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.
`The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust'ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feather'd clouds strew flowers round her head.

`The spirits of the air live on the smells
Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.'
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat;
Then rose, girded himself, and o'er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.

Photo by Jean-Pol Grandmot - Wikimedia Commons

The Solitary Reaper

By William Wordsworth, 1805

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Vintage postcard of a female reaper in the fields

English Woman with Scythe by Henry_Bacon

Will no one tell me what she sings?--
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.