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Matthew Arnold

Victorian Age (1832-1901)

About Life :-

Arnold was born in Balham, Valley of themes in 1822.

He was the eldest son of the Dr. Thomas Arnold. He was appointed as

Inspector of schools in 1851 and some years after he married the daughter of a

judge. He held the government post for 35 years (1851-1886). For ten years

(1857-67), during his inspectorate, he was also professor of poetry at Oxford.

He was died in 1888.

Education :-

He was educated at Winchester Rugby and Balliol College, Oxford.

Career :-

Arnold’s works divides itself into three periods: Poetical,

Critical and Practical. The poems of Matthew Arnold can be classified into

narrative, Dramatic and lyrical poems.

His Works :-

His works are stated below:

Sonnets

1. Sohrab and Rustum 2. The Tragedy of Merope 1858 3. Last Poems 1867 ETC…

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Literary Criticism

1. On Translating Homer 1861

2. Culture and Anarchy 1869

3. Friendship’s Garland 1871

4. God and The Bible 1876

5. Church and Religion 1877

Other Works

1. Rugby Chapel

2. A Southern Night 1857

3. Giest’s Grave

XHitesh Goswami

Writer

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Ode to the West Wind

About Poet:

Shelly was the greatest romantic poets of all who lived very short life. Shelly wrote much poetry of the highest quality in all the principal verse forms.

Shelly was a revolutionary by nature and like his nature, much of his poetry is unconventional. As he was a dreamer, his verse can be mystical; as he was an artist, so his verse is musician. He wrote beautiful odes of which The West Wind.

Introduction:

Ode to the West Wind is an ode written by P. B. Shelly in 1819 near Florence, Italy. It was published in 1820 by Charles and James Oilier in London. A Lyrical Drama in four acts with poems.

Some have interpreted the poem as the speaker lamenting his inability to directly help those in England owing to his being in Italy. At the some time, the poem expresses the hope that its words will inspire and influence those who read it.

Perhaps more than anything else, Shelly wanted his message of reform and revolution spread, and the wind becomes the trope for spreading the word of change through the poet-prophet figure.

Some also believe that the poem is due to the loss of his son, William in 1819. And the ensuing pain influenced Shelly.

Structure:

The poem begins with the three sections describing the wind’s effect upon earth, air and ocean. The last two sections are Shelly speaking directly to the wind, asking for its power to lift him like a leaf. He asks the wind to take his thought and spread them all over the world, so that the youth are awoken with his ideas.

The poem ends with an optimistic note which is that if winter days are here then spring is not very far.

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Critical Appreciation:

The Ode to the west wind was composed in the autumn of 1819, when Shelly was in Florence. According to Shelly the poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood.

The west wind is to the poet not only a source of poetic inspiration but also a spirit – a supernaturalism power. Frederick A. Pottle points out that the “Breath” which Shelly invokes was to him as real as the Holy Ghost was to Milton. Angela Leighton argues that the odes are an invocation of that power which is the source of all activity, political as well as literary.

It is because the west wind is seen by the poet as something much more than a wind that there is a tone of prayer in the first three stanzas, each of which ends with the plea. Shelly was a passionately religious person. He believed that there is a spirit in nature which transforms the material world. Shelly perceives that spirit in the west wind.

Autumn is the season that proceeds winter which is the season of death as implied in the last lines of the ode as well as in the phrase Dark Wintery Bed in stanza І.

The Wintery Bed mentioned at the end of the first part of this stanza has two connotations; it is a deathbed and it also a bed in the solid from which new life will be generated.

While the first stanza describes the creative and destructive powers of the wind on the land, the second stanza directs our attention to the effect of the wind in the sky. The wind now exerts its force on the clouds.

The first stanza presented the wind as both destroyer and preservers. The seeds buried by the west wind will be regenerated by the same wind later. The poet, however, mentions nothing of the New Year that will be born. Instead he concentrates on the terrifying effects of the wind on the clouds which culminate in torrential rain accompanied with lighting and hailstorm.

The poem began with a description of the onslaught at the wind upon such passive, will-less attributes of nature as the leaves and the seeds. In the second stanza, the wind becomes a transformer: it transforms the clouds into furious wind. The poet too wants to be roused us into action.

The poet is aware of himself as a shattered man even in this part of the poem. He grieves that he has reached the autumn of his life: What if leaves falling. He acknowledges his sadness. But he knows that sadness can produce sweet music.

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Conclusion:

The poem is a highly controlled text about the role of the poet as the agent of political and moral change. This was a subject Shelley wrote a great deal about, around 1819. With this strongest version of it articulated the last famous lines of his Defense of Poetry. The words which express what they understand not, the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

XHitesh Gauswami

Writer

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William Wordsworth

William John Wordsworth

Born: 7th April, 1770.

About Life:

William Wordsworth was born at Cooker’s Mouth, Cumberland in the Lake District on 7th April, 1770. He was the second eldest of the five children of John and Anne Cookerson Wordsworth. His father was a law agent and rent collector.

In 1798, Wordsworth and Coleridge published The Lyrical Ballads.

In 1802, he was married Mary Hutchinson.

In 1839, he was honored by Oxford University.

In 1843, he became the poet Laureate.

Education:

He was educated at Hawkshead Grammar School and did his matriculation at St. John’s College, Cambridge.

Career:

William Wordsworth began his career as a poet at quite an early age when he was yet a student. At the university, he composed poems which found a peace in college magazines. His works as a university student An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches are of notice.

His Works:

1. The Prelude:

It is an autobiographical poem, consisting of fourteen books. Begins in 1799 and was completed in 1805 but published a year after poet’s death in 1850.

2. The Excursion:

It runs in none books. It is based on poets done for nature.

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3. His great Poems:

He published two volumes of poems in 1807 which represents the fine flower of his genius.

The Solitary Reaper.

I wandered lonely as a cloud.

Ode to Duty.

Resolution and Independence.

The sparrow’s Nest.

My heart Leaps.

Michael.

4. His Sonnets:

His memorable sonnets are-

It is beauteous evening calm and free.

The word is too much with us.

West Minister Bridge.

London.

To Milton. ETC…

XHitesh Goswami

Writer