How Did The Romantic Period Influence Modern Day Poetry?

When we think about modern day poetry, we often don't stop to consider the history behind some of the elements used in this brand of literature. A significant event in history of poetry was a particular movement that sparked the idea that poetry should put emphasis on human emotion, everyday language and situations was the Romantic period. Lasting from around 1785 to 1830, Romanticism was a movement sparked by individuals beginning to focus their intellectual thinking and writing mainly around topics involving the emotional experience, imagination, nature, and freedom. The result of these ideas was this era changing the way that individuals perceived these ideas. One such individual who was a prominent figure in the creation of this movement

Being a poem Wordsworth’s creation, a great deal of his ideas about what type of language poetry should use and what aspects should be focused on are present, but one such element is particularly noticeable in this poem: presenting the ordinary in an unusual way. In the poem, Wordsworth is describing a lonely walk through the hills of a valley, when he stumbles upon an assortment of golden daffodils sitting by the shore of a lake (“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” 2-5). Wordsworth uses this as an opportunity to describe a completely ordinary scene in a completely unexpected way. Rather than simply saying the daffodils were moving with the breeze or that lake water was moving, Wordsworth uses personification to describe the daffodils as “fluttering and dancing in the breeze” and as being “stretched in never-ending line / Along the margin of a bay” with the lake water dancing beside them” (6, 9-10). This technique gives human-like qualities to non-human entities and allows Wordsworth to describe the scene in an unusual fashion all while additionally using vernacular

Rumored to have been created as a result of a real-life situation involving Byron, the poem is an example of poetry containing everyday situations, as well as presenting these occurrences in abnormal ways. The poem describes the narrator experiencing a common affair; having an encounter with and making note of a woman at a party (Byron 1). Upon seeing the woman and being stunned by her extraordinary beauty, the poem presents her attractiveness in an unusual way, metaphorically describing her as being “of cloudless climes and starry skies; /And all that’s best of dark and bright” and comparing her a clear night’s sky (2-3). Later, Byron uses personification when the beautiful woman is described as possessing a “nameless grace” so profound that it cannot be defined with words, that “..waves in every raven tress / Or softly lightens o’er her face” (9-10). Using these writing techniques to describe this usual situation in the beginning of the poem and the attractiveness of the woman at the party, Byron’s poetry reflects many of the ideas that Wordsworth introduced to Romantic