Lake Poets Famous Poems

Horace, Latin in full Quintus Horatius Flaccus, (born December 65 bc, Venusia, Italy—died Nov. 27, 8 bc, Rome), outstanding Latin lyric poet and satirist under the emperor Augustus. The most frequent themes of his Odes and verse Epistles are love, friendship, philosophy, and the art of poetry.

In English literature, the key figures of the early Romantic period are considered to be the group of poets including William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. Later they became known as the Lake Poets, named after the Lake District in the north-west of England where they lived.

• Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth.
• Fears in Solitude by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
• The Rainbow by Charles Lamb.

critic Samuel Johnson

William Wordsworth

The Lake Poets were a group of English poets who all lived in the Lake District of England, United Kingdom, in the first half of the nineteenth century. As a group, they followed no single “school” of thought or literary practice then known. They were named, only to be uniformly disparaged, by the Edinburgh Review.

1843

Thomas De Quincey

The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet’s Mind; An Autobiographical Poem is an autobiographical poem in blank verse by the English poet William Wordsworth. He never gave it a title, but called it the “Poem (title not yet fixed upon) to Coleridge” in his letters to his sister Dorothy Wordsworth.

14 sections

Between 1770 and 1850, the intellectual life of Europe came to be dominated by what historians have referred to since as the romantic mood. The doctrines it represented and the literary and artistic works it produced came to be known as romanticism. He wrote some of the first romantic poetry. …

Later, when feeling far more vulnerable, the speaker describes their vessel as simply being ‘bark. ‘ The repeated use of ‘and’ throughout the poem gives it a spoken feel, like someone telling a story. Oxymoron – An oxymoron is used in line six as the speaker. states ‘it was an act of stealth, and troubled pleasure.

The main idea of “Prelude” is that as we grow older we grow more sophisticated in our views about the world. This poem is autobiographical, and was intended to be Wordsworth’s views on life when he was younger and the changes in his views as he got older.

The term ‘elfin pinnace’ could be translated as ‘fairy boat’, a metaphor for the now heated mood of the poet. Elves were often viewed as sexual and lustful. The simile reminds us that anything man tries to produce is merely imitating nature which does it better.

The Prelude is a long autobiographical poem in which William Wordsworth depicts his own spiritual and poetic development. In this excerpt, Wordsworth recounts an episode from his childhood, when he stole a small boat and rowed into the middle of a lake at night.

The main conflict explored in the poem is that of between nature and humans, or ​man vs nature​, and is investigated through a young man’s attempt to ​control nature​through his stolen rowing boat.

As Wordsworth explains in The Prelude, a love of nature can lead to a love of humankind. In such poems as “The World Is Too Much with Us” (1807) and “London, 1802” (1807) people become selfish and immoral when they distance themselves from nature by living in cities.

The key theme of both poems is power, as it shows the conflict between nature and man, and that nature always wins. Both poems are about mans conflict with nature, however The Prelude shows a spiritual journey of reflection, whereas Storm on the Island suggests that the things we fear have power.

Although both poets present nature as the ultimate power, in ‘The Prelude’, Wordsworth presents nature’s power as terrifying, whereas, in ‘Ozymandias’, Shelley presents power of nature as destructive. After telling us the story of Ramesses II, the narrator says ‘Nothing besides remains.

Prelude, musical composition, usually brief, that is generally played as an introduction to another, larger musical piece. The term is applied generically to any piece preceding a religious or secular ceremony, including in some instances an operatic performance.

Wordsworth’s prelude explores his childhood thoughts and the ways in which he has changed and grown over time. This portion begins with the speaker as a boy and explores his feelings of peace with nature. Then, an event occurs which changes the speaker’s feelings toward the world.