Second generations of Romantic poets

Byron, Shelley and Keats belongs to the second generation of romantic poets,
characterized by individualism and escapism, as well as alienation from society. They
all died very young and away from home, because they couldnt stand living in Britain.
Poetry was no longer regarded as an imitation of life, a mirror of reality, but it
coincided with the desire to challenge the cosmos, nature, political and social order.

Percy Shelley
Almost all works by Shelly show his restless spirit, his refusal of social conventions,
political oppression and any form of tyranny. He believed strongly in the principles of
freedom and love and for him the task of the poet is to help mankind to reach an ideal
world where freedom, love and beauty are delivered from their enemies. Shelley wrote
mainly poems conveying the idea of energy; natural elements were used as symbols
of his ideas.

Ode to the West Wind

The ode is written in the form of a direct address to the wind. It is divided in four parts:
the first three stress the effects of the wind on the Hearth, on the sky and on the water
and the last one the effects on the poet himself. Shelly describes the wind as a symbol
of change and renewal. He asks the spirit of the wind to regenerate hop and energy in
nature in himself and in mankind in general. The wind will carry his words like seeds
around the world and inspire new life.

England in 1819
The year 1819 was remarkable for Shelly in many ways: it was the year of the Ode to
the West Wind and of the so-called Peterloo Massacre in which the English army killed
about 12 pacific demonstrators. Shelly, exiled in Italy but following the news from
England, summarized his nations ill in this sonnet. The poem passionately attacks
Englands decadent and oppressive ruling class. King George III is said to be old, mad,
blind, despised, and dying; the nobility metaphorically suck the blood from the
people, who are oppressed, hungry, and hopeless. Meanwhile, the army is corrupt and
dangerous to liberty, the laws are useless and religion has lost its morality.

John Keats
His lyrical poems are not fragments of a spiritual autobiography, like Shelleys ones;
moreover the poetical personal pronoun I does not stand for a human being, but for
a universal one. Also the common Romantic tendency to identify scenes and
landscapes with subjective moods and emotions is rarely present in his poetry. It was
his belief in the supreme value of the Imagination which made him a Romantic poet.

His imagination takes two form: firstly, the world of his poetry is predominantly
artificial, secondly, a great deal of his work is a vision of what he would like the human
life to be. What strikes his imagination most is beauty: beauty is the only source of
consolation for him who was frustrated in his hops. He focused on eternity and on
personal relation with time. It is mainly the Classical Greek world that inspires him.

Ode to a Grecian Urn

In this Ode Keats describes various pastoral scenes painted on a urn, as he reflects on
the transient nature of human life. He concludes that while everything else is destined
to decay and die, the beauty of art alone lives on forever.