Romanticism

Characteristics:
-symbolism
-religious and philosophical allusions
-motifs and imagery
-appreciation of Christianity
-passionate/emotional
Common Themes:
-return to nature
-the supernatural
-love of the common man
-strange and far away places
-nationalism
-romantic heroism
Well Known Poets:
-William Wordsworth
-Lord Byron
-John Keats
-William Blake
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
-Percy B. Shelley
-Samuel Coleridge

Last Sonnet
Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priest-like task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
-John Keats