The Romantic and Victorian Period

In america an age of revolution swept across Western Europe in 1776. It included political, economic, and social forces. During the next century some of the most radical changes ever experienced in human life occured. In 1825 it was a turbulant age, England from an agricultural based society to a industrial nation. The working concentrated primarily in teeming mill towns in Central and North England.

The more radical revolution in France, which started on July 14, 1979, with the storming of the prision, Bastille which had far more serious reprecussions. For the ruling class in England, the French revolution came to represent their worst fears: the overthrow of an anointed king by a democratic rabble. English conservatives feared that the revolutinary fever would spread across the channel. King Charles, an english king had lost his head in 1649: they feared that another bloody rebellion against vested authority was more than most powerholders in England could bear.
It sounds like to me that both of these periods were influenced by fear and bloodshed. Turmoil spread with the occurence of the revolution. Napoleon's armies were outnumbered by british forces. The industrial revolution occured during the romantic period which means goods that were once made by hand were then switched to factory machines. This caused alot of chaos among the working class. This meant people were going to be out of jobs because of the lack of need for them.

I think these periods changed the world for many generations to come because the world slowly went from agricultural based to machine based society's. If you ask me i think it ruined our society. Because people apperciated things much more when they had to make it themselves. Now everything is mass marketed and we waste alot. I learned alot from reading about these periods.

"THE TYGER""tyger! tyger! burning brightinthe forests of the night,What immortal hand or eyecould frame thy fearful symmetry?In what distant deeps or skiesBurnt the fire of thine eyes?On what wings dare he aspire?What the hand dare seize the fire?And what shoulder, and what art,Could twist the sinews of thy heart?And when thy heart began to beat,What dread hand? and what dread feet?What the hammer? what the chain?In what furnace was thy brain ?what the anvil? What dread graspDare its deadly terrors clasp?When the stars threw down their spears,And watered heaven with their tears,Did he smile his work to see?Did he who made the lamb make thee?Tyger! Tyger! burning brightinthe forests of the night,What immortal hand or eye,Dare frame thy fearful symmetry

This poem wasn't exactly romantic to me. It was kinda twisted I mean their talking about hammers and chains...

In the Victorian period which became very different from the romantic, authors and poets had a different way of expressing thoughts and ideas. Alfred, Lord Tennyson was a very good poet, considered once the greatest living English poet. Tennyson always had and never lost the melancholy and sense of chaos that friends and reviewers in his early poems. He was very popular because his poems spoke a beautiful measured language of sense and regarding the sadness of life. This can be seen in one of his poems;

“Tears, Idle Tears”“Tears idle tears, I know not what they mean,Tears from the depth of some divine despairRise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,In looking on the happy autumn fields, and thinking of theDays that are no more.Fresh as the first beam glittering on a snail, that brings ourFriends up from the under world, sad as the last which reddensOver one-That sinks with all we love below the verge:So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawnsThe earliest pipe of half-awakened birdsTo dying ears, when unto dying eyesThe casement slowly grows a glimmering square;So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.Dear as remembered kisses after death, and sweet as those byHopeless fancy feigned-On lips that are for others; deep as love,Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;O death in life, the days that are no more.”This poem takes effect in a emotional perspective probably to the concern of Tennyson at the time. The poem I believe has words that would conclude to the
reader as aspects of the way of life, Tennyson includes “days that are no more” which I believe regards to the end of life or death. In stanza# 2; “Tears from the depth of some divine despair”, I believe Alfred regards to the involvement of something in the religious aspect, perhaps it relates to Adam and Eve’s fall in genesis

This is definatly a very different emotional approach than the Tyger.