![]() ![]() ![]() Probably the most famous poem Rossetti wrote. Undoubtedly one of Tennyson’s greatest poetic achievements. The poem, partly inspired by Arthurian legend (hence the presence of the knight, Lancelot) and partly by Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, has been read variously as an allegory about the world of fancy and the world of reality, and as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, with the idyllic world of magic and legend which Tennyson depicts being threatened by the arrival of new forces. ![]() Tennyson’s classic narrative poem exists in two versions: a 20-stanza poem published in 1833, and the revised version of 19 stanzas – which is the one readers are most familiar with – which was published in 1842. See the link above to read the poem in full and learn more about it.Īlfred, Lord Tennyson, ‘ The Lady of Shalott’. The narrator starts to view the raven as some sort of prophet. The unnamed narrator sits up late one dreary winter night, mourning the loss of his beloved, Lenore, when a raven appears at the window and speaks the repeated single word, ‘Nevermore’. According to Poe himself, in a later work of literary analysis, if he hadn’t had a change of heart we might well be reading a poem called, not ‘The Raven’, but ‘The Parrot’ (although he may have been pulling his readers’ legs there). It is the only literary work to inspire the name of a sporting team (the American Football team the Baltimore Ravens). This poem had to head the list of a selection of Edgar Allan Poe’s best poems, really. ‘’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, ‘tapping at my chamber door. While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,Īs of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Longfellow’s poem did much to create the modern ‘myth’ of Paul Revere, whose celebrated night-time ride wasn’t mentioned in obituaries reporting his death in 1818. ![]() Revere awaits the signal telling him how and where the British will attack American troops, and when he hears they are attacking by sea, the devout patriot rides full pelt across Massachusetts to warn his fellow Americans. One of the most famous poems about the American Revolution (or War of Independence), Longfellow’s narrative poem, published in 1860, details the journey made by the American patriot Paul Revere on 18 April 1775, with, once again, a good side-helping of poetic licence thrown in. On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ‘ Paul Revere’s Ride’. It’s not quite as creepy as that summary makes it sound, and the way Keats tells it is deliciously compelling and lyrical. On a cold night in a medieval castle, a young lover breaks into his sweetheart’s chamber, hides in her closet, and then persuades her semi-conscious self to run away with him. This is, along with Coleridge’s poem, one of the finest narrative poems to come out of the English Romantic movement. Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire … Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require Young virgins might have visions of delight,Īnd soft adorings from their loves receiveĪnd couch supine their beauties, lily white ![]()
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