Romantic Poetry Romantic poetry is the poetry that is spontaneous and emotive in expression, not restricted by rules of music and word game and based on ordinary personal experience and feelings. Wordsworth's romantic poems, like the poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", deal with subjects of creative imagination, childhood memories, beauty of nature, the role of nature as guiding spirit, and about poetry itself. The poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is not only a typical romantic poem, but it also tells us how a poem is written, in the romantic sense.
This poem is romantic in its subject and theme, and in its expression and word game. The subject is that of the poet's personal experience in the nature. The expression is emotive and imaginative. The nature is personified. The poet felt that the daffodils were dancing better than the sea waves. They were happy like the children. Now as the poet is sitting at home, the daffodils revisit him in his mind's eye, and he writes the poem.

The poem is, therefore, not only romantic but also satisfies Wordsworth's idea of what poetry is and how it is written. This is typically as poem
Features to note: * poetry based on "spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions… recollected in tranquility". * poems based on personal experience, and emotional expression of strong feelings and personal ideas. * appreciated life in the village and the natural way of life. * ordinary subjects, usually about the nature, common people, childhood and memories. * importance of imagination. * created imaginary worlds and also believed in the supernatural. * use of sensuous imagery. * different from convention in thought and ideas. * Note that the following features of typical romantic poetry do not apply in the case of Marvell's ‘partly romantic’ poem "The Garden" because it is classical, especially in its form: * typical romantic poems supported revolutionary ideals. * did not regard the restrictions/ limitations of rules of rhythm, wording or structure * used ordinary language. * some, like Blake, were visionary men (inspired by personal and spiritual visions).

Allegory: Allegory is a parallel story. If a single word or expression has an abstract and general meaning, it is called a symbol; but if the whole ‘story’ of a drama, story or poem has a symbolic meaning throughout, it is called an allegory. Read More...

Alliteration: Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds. The repeated consonants normally occur at the beginning of words or in stressed syllables. Read More...

Allusion: An allusion in a literary text is a reference to a personal place or event or to another literary work or passage. It does not have clear identification, that is, it does not tell directly what it stands for. Read More...

Animation: Animation is giving life to non-living objects. If a poet treats a lifeless concrete thing as having life, awareness, will-power, thought, emotion, etc, that is called animation. Read More...

Classical Poetry:The classical or neo-classical poets of the eighteenth century had had made poetry more social than personal, more intellectual than emotional and imaginative, more rule-based than spontaneous. Read More...

Conceit: The conceit is a striking metaphor. It is so original and unconventional that it not only strikes the reader into attention, but sometimes shocks them, being even objectionable or absurd at first. Read More...

Elegy: The elegy was originally the form of poetry on the subject of sadness, especially ‘complaints about love’. Read More...

Epic: One the oldest of the poetic forms, the epic is a long narrative poem, majestic both in theme and style, dealing with legendary or historical events of national or universal significance, involving action of broad sweep and grandeur. Read More...

Epic Simile: The epic simile is a figurative device first popularized by Homer in his epics. It is a comparison that may be as long as a dozen lines. Read More...

Heroic couplet: Heroic couplet is a pair of lines with iambic pentameter; the lines must also rhyme together. Read More...

Iambic pentameter: Iambic pentameter means ‘five iambic feet in a line’. ‘Iambic’ means a unit of rhythm with two syllables where the first is not stressed (U) and the second is stressed (S). Read More...

Image: An image is considered to be a picture created in the mind by words. Generally images are divided as visual images and abstract images. Read More...

Imagery: Imagery is the general term for the use of ‘images’ in poetry. The use of all kinds of concrete, metaphoric and more abstract is called imagery. Read More...

Irony: Irony is an indirect way of criticizing things, and it can be done in several ways. The word ‘Irony’ comes from its Greek root ‘Eiron’, a dramatic character who spoke in ‘understatement’, pretending to be less intelligent. Read More...

Lyric: A lyric is a fairly short poem which is the expression of strong feelings (thoughts, or perceptions) of a single speaker in a meditative manner. Read More...