The Romantic Movement

One of the elements of the Romantic Movement in literature was the elevation of Nature as a subject not only for poetry but for study, for life, and as a source of philosophy. This element is seen in different forms in the works of different artists. Romantic poetry such as that by Wordsworth, for instance, takes a more realistic and naturalistic view of Nature than does the more other-worldly sense of Nature found in Coleridge. Each poet features Nature, creates images of the natural world, and makes a connection between human life and the world of nature. This point of view is partially a product of the Enlightenment and of a more human-centered conception of the universe. A comparison of some poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge shows how different poets reacted to the new world-view.

The Romantic period in English literature is usually considered to extend from 1798, when Wordsworth and Coleridge published their Lyrical Ballads, to 1832, when Sir Walter Scott died (Abrams et al. 1-3). The old regime in England took its stand in the face of revolutionary fervor based on the American and French Revolutions. For those who sympathized with the Revolution, they needed a new revolution directed against reason and toward something else, and that "something else" was imagination (Adams 363). Romanticism was a movement marked by a shift in feeling, a shift in sensibility, as well as a new concept of man's relation to the natural order and to Nature in particular. As with

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en Nature and the individual. The poem seems simple in construction, though Wordsworth varies his meter as needed to emphasize certain words and so certain ideas or a certain sense of Nature and the events depicted. The story of the poem is also deceptively simple, but Wordsworth infuses it with considerable complexity as it unfolds. Throughout this poem, the imagery shows the power of Nature both to give meaning to life and to take life when humans venture too far into the wild. It is as if humans were then challenging Nature, which responds by demonstrating who is the more powerful. The poet introduces Lucy Gray as the subject and the center of the poem in the first line: "Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray" (1). This line is also not characteristic in terms of meter. Each of the 16 stanzas consists of three lines of iambic tetrameter and one line of iambic trimeter. The first line of the poem begins with a spondee, however, two stressed syllables that act as a call to the reader to listen. It also emphasizes that Lucy Gray is a well-known story, and as the first three stanzas unfold, it is evident that Lucy Gray is well-known because of her supernatural form and power. The poet inserts himself into the poem from the first--

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