Poetry of The Mid- to Late-19th-Century

After finishing the readings for this week, I found one noticeable difference between these poems and the ones from last week. I am able to understand the poems for this week much more easily! Of course, there are reasons as to why the poems seem easier to read. The poets of this time period write in a more modern style, one that most of us are more accustomed to. The poets mainly write in a specific metrical rhythm called "common meter," as I learned this week. This meter in the poems makes it easier to follow and understand.

In “The Darkling Thrush,” a common meter of 8686 and a rhyme scheme of ABAB is used:

“I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.”

Another example is Yeats’ “Adam’s Curse” which uses an AABB rhyme scheme:

“We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;”

The poems of the Mid-Late-19^th Century were less open for many different interpretations. There were usually limited meanings to each poem. Even though each reader might interpret the poems differently, the ideas were mostly related somehow. The poets of this century do not totally break off from this concept though. In Robinson’s “George Crabbe,” almost all readers will agree that it is a poem to honor the late poet George Crabbe. However, the last line is where ideas may differ:

“In books that are as altars where we kneel
To consecrate the flicker, not the flame.”

In addition, I noticed that this week’s poems were more negative. The works of Romantics were much more optimistic. The poets of this century consistently used very gloomy words in their poems.