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A poem is that species of composition, which is opposed to the works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth; and from all other species (having this object in common with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole, as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part.
—S.T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, Chapter XIV
Poetry is the most important thing in the universe. It is the voice of the universe—the voice of God. Poems are the translation of that voice into words. God does not speak in words. But God is always speaking. God speaks in all things at all times for all people. But only some people can hear him. Those people are poets—or more broadly artists. The job of the poet is therefore to translate God’s voice into words for those of us (the vast majority) who can’t hear it.
This is pretty much what you believe if you are a Romantic poet. You are special. You have a gift that sets you above ordinary people, the gift of perceiving and then transferring the voice of God (but Romantics prefer the word “Nature”) in the natural world as well as the gift of translating that sound so we ordinary people can have a sense of it.
How do you know you’re “hearing” the voice of the divine? You know it from the pleasure it gives you. As you will remember from our discussion of the Ode, Romantic poet William Wordsworth said:
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Appareled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
God speaks in and through Nature. We are part of Nature. But unless we are a poet we get only a dim sense of the divine voice. The poet gets a strong sense, puts what he hears (“feels” becomes “hears” in the translation of the poet), and amplifies our response by writing a poem that we read with pleasure and recognition.
This idea will be presented in many images this week in the poems we’ll read.
First a warning: In the sense we are using it, the word “Romantic” has nothing to do with love. It does not suggest hearts and flowers and boxes of chocolates and evenings around the fireplace with champagne. You have to forget all that. Applied to poetry—and to art and to all the creative and philosophical productions of the late 18th and most of the 19th centuries—known as the “Romantic Era”—it has no specific association with love. It is associated with feeling or emotion, in particular with the feelings and emotions you experience in response to the universe (which is to say “nature”) or to art, but not what we call romantic love.
“Romantic” signifies a movement from a primary trust in reason (of the Age of Enlightenment) to a primary trust in feeling as a path to truth.
Romance and Science: Scientific knowledge is perfectly valid. Science can prove certain things to be true. But its focus is on physical reality. It can determine the speed of light and the rate of global warming. But it ca