John Keats
Biography
John Keats was born in 1795 at 85 Moorgate in London, where his father, Thomas Keats, was a hostler. The pub is now called "Keats The Grove," only a few yards from Moorgate station. Keats was baptized at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate and lived happily for the first seven years of his life. The beginnings of his troubles occurred in 1804, when his father died from a fractured skull after falling from his horse. His mother, Frances Jennings Keats, remarried soon afterwards, but quickly left the new husband and moved herself and her four children (a son had died in infancy) to live with Keats' grandmother. There, Keats attended a school that first instilled in him a love of literature. In 1810, however, his mother died of tuberculosis, leaving him and his siblings in the custody of their grandmother. He died at Rome, and was buried in the Protestant cemetery there. On his desire the following lines were engraved on his tombstone.
“Here lies one whose name was writ in water”
Friends of Keats described him as "eager, enthusiastic, and sensitive, but humorous, reasonable, and free from vanity, affectionate, a good brother and friend, sweet-tempered, and helpful." In his political views he was liberal, in his religious, indefinite. Though in his life-time subjected to much harsh and unappreciative criticism, his place among English poets is now assured. His chief characteristics are intense, sensuous imagination, and love of beauty, rich and picturesque descriptive power, and exquisitely melodious versification.
Quotes from Poetry of Keats
"A thing of beauty is a joy forever Its loveliness increases; it will neverPass into nothingness;"
Quotes from Poetry of Keats
"A thing of beauty is a joy forever Its loveliness increases; it will neverPass into nothingness;"
"In spite of all,Some shape of beauty moves away the pall. From our dark spirits. "
Matthew Arnold
BiographyMatthew Arnold (1822-1888) began his career as a poet, winning early recognition as a student at the Rugby School where his father, Thomas Arnold, had earned national acclaim as a strict and innovative headmaster. Arnold also studied at Balliol College, Oxford University. In 1844, after completing his undergraduate degree at Oxford, he returned to Rugby as a teacher of classics. In 1851 he married and after this he began work as a schools inspector. This was a demanding job but enabled him to travel widely throughout the UK and Europe. Matthew Arnold’s writings, to some extent characterized many of the Victorian beliefs with regard to religious faith and morality. However one significant development in his poetry was that he shared with great clarity his own inner feelings. This poetic transparency has had an influence on many other poets such as W.B.Yeats and even Sylvia Plath.
Quote from Matthew Arnold
“Nature, with equal mind, Sees all her sons at play, Sees man control the wind, The wind sweep man away.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
BiographyPercy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets of the English language. He is perhaps most famous for such anthology pieces as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, and The Masque of Anarchy. However, his major works were long visionary poems including Alastor, Adonais, The Revolt of Islam, Prometheus Unbound and the unfinished The Triumph of Life.
Shelley's unconventional life and uncompromising idealism, combined with his strong skeptical voice, made him a notorious and much denigrated figure during his life. He became the idol of the next two or three generations of poets, including the major Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as William Butler Yeats and poets in other languages such as Jibanananda Das and Subramanya Bharathy). He was also admired by Karl Marx, Henry Stephens Salt and George Bernard Shaw. Famous for his association with his equally short-lived contemporaries John Keats and Lord Byron, he was married to novelist Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein.
Poetry of Shelley
Shelley's unconventional life and uncompromising idealism, combined with his strong skeptical voice, made him a notorious and much denigrated figure during his life. He became the idol of the next two or three generations of poets, including the major Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as William Butler Yeats and poets in other languages such as Jibanananda Das and Subramanya Bharathy). He was also admired by Karl Marx, Henry Stephens Salt and George Bernard Shaw. Famous for his association with his equally short-lived contemporaries John Keats and Lord Byron, he was married to novelist Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein.
Poetry of Shelley
"Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!"
This quote from Ode to the West Wind is symbolic of his style and aspirations and also the sorrows and sufferings of life he frequently encountered.
This quote from Ode to the West Wind is symbolic of his style and aspirations and also the sorrows and sufferings of life he frequently encountered.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Biography
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on October 21, 1772 in the rural town of Ottery St Mary, Devonshire. He was the youngest of ten children, and his father, the Reverend John Coleridge, was a well respected vicar. Coleridge suffered from constant ridicule by his older brother Frank, partially due to jealousy, as Samuel was often praised and favored by his parents. To escape this abuse, he frequently sought refuge at a local library, which led him to discover his passion for poetry. He was an English poet, critic, and philosopher who was, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as his major prose work Biographia Literaria.
Though he's really only known today for his poetry, Col's contributions to the field of criticism and our language were many. For instance, he not only coined the word 'selfless,' he introduced the word 'aesthetic' to the English language. Charles Lamb wrote one of my favorite descriptions of Col in 1817: "his face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient glory, an Arch angel a little damaged." Cole summed himself up this way, in the epitaph he wrote for himself:
“Beneath this sod A Poet lies; or that which once was he.O lift one thought in prayer for S.T.C.That he, who many a year with toil of breath,Found Death in Life, may here find Life in Death”
“Beneath this sod A Poet lies; or that which once was he.O lift one thought in prayer for S.T.C.That he, who many a year with toil of breath,Found Death in Life, may here find Life in Death”
William Wordsworth
BiographyThe second of five children, Wordsworth was born in Cumberland—part of the scenic region in northwest England called the Lake District. His sister was the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth. With the death of his mother in 1778, his father sent him to Hawkshead Grammar School. In 1783 his father, who was a lawyer and the solicitor for the Earl of Lonsdale (a man much despised in the area), died. The estate consisted of around £4500 , most of it in claims upon the Earl, who thwarted these claims until his death in 1802. The Earl's successor, however, settled the claims with interest. After their father's death, the Wordsworth children were left under the guardianship of their uncles. Although many aspects of his boyhood were positive, he recalled bouts of loneliness and anxiety. It took him many years, and much writing, to recover from the death of his parents and his separation from his siblings.
Poetry of William Wordsworth
The work of Wordsworth is singularly unequal. When at his best, as in the "Intimations of Immortality," "Laodamia," some passages in “The Excursion”, and some of his short pieces, and especially his sonnets, he rises to heights of noble inspiration and splendor of language rarely equaled by any of our poets. But it required his poetic fire to be at fusing point to enable him to burst through his natural tendency to prolixity and even dullness. He has a marvelous felicity of phrase, an unrivalled power of describing natural appearances and effects, and the most ennobling views of life and duty. But his great distinguishing characteristic is his sense of the mystic relations between man and nature. His influence on contemporary and succeeding thought and literature has been profound and lasting. It should be added that Wordsworth, like Milton, with whom he had many points in common, was the master of a noble and expressive prose style.
"Not seldom clad in radiant vestDeceitfully goes forth the dawn,Not seldom evening in the westSinks smilingly forsworn."
William Blake
Biography William Blake was born in 28A Broad Street, Golden Square, London, England on 28 November 1757, to a middle-class family. He was the third of seven children, who consisted of one girl and six boys, two of whom died in infancy. Blake's father, James, was a hosier. He never attended school, being educated at home by his mother.
William Blake was a poet, painter, visionary mystic, and engraver. During his life the prophetic message of his writings were understood by few and misunderstood by many. However Blake is now widely admired for his soulful originality and lofty imagination. The poetry of William Blake is far reaching in its scope and range of experience. The poems of William Blake can offer a profound symbolism and also a delightful childlike innocence. Whatever the inner meaning of Blake's poetry we can easily appreciate the beautiful language and lyrical quality of his poetic vision.
"To see a world in a grain of sandAnd heaven in a wild flowerHold infinity in the palm of your handAnd eternity in an hour."
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