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THE POETRY OF NATURE AND THE “GRAVEYARD POETS” POETRY OF NATURE AND THE GRAVEYARD POETS

In which ways do the “Graveyard poets” anticipate the Gothic spirit? Although the consolidation of Gothic literature took place during the nineteenth century, there were several eighteenth-century poets that somehow anticipated the tone and spirit that was later readapted and redefined by the Romantics. The “Graveyard poets” –also known as “pre-Romantics”– comprised a group of writers, among whom we can mention Thomas Gray, Edward Young or Robert Blair, who drew on symbols and images which later became recurrent in the poetry of Blake, Wordsworth or Coleridge. The fascination with nature and the supernatural, the anatomy of death and the bucolic tone of their works was considered a decisive move away from neo-classical aesthetics. THE GRAVEYARD POETS The Graveyard poets were a group of eighteenth-century English poets who emphasized the subjects of mortality, death, and bereavement/loss/grief in their writings. Their poems describe death's physical manifestations, evoke subjective responses such as fear and horror, and contemplate phenomena associated with death such as darkness, the tomb, death's odors, and ghosts. While revealing in the images of death and the grave, the poets in the Graveyard school sought to describe the trappings of death in a way such that the reader would gain an appreciation of death as a transitional phase. In the words of William Lyon Phelps, the poems of the Graveyard school reflect “the joy of gloom, the fondness for bathing one's temples in the dark night air and the musical delight of the screech owl's shriek.” Much of the poetry of the Graveyard school can be seen as a response to, and development from what has been termed the disease of the seventeenth century: melancholy. Melancholy, as understood in the seventeenth century, and expressed in countless literary works, involved a preoccupation with death and the vanity of life, sometimes accompanied by a philosophic detachment or religious optimism regarding the next life, and an emphasis on withdrawal, solitude, and contemplation. While the works of the Graveyard poets include many of these elements, they also expand the range of emotional responses to death to include grief, tenderness, tearfulness, nostalgia, and other states of mind, which at times verge on an aesthetic pleasure in the contemplation of mortality. They also introduce detailed imagery evoking the grave and the tomb, and lay stress on subjective experience, often incorporating personal material from the poet's own life. In their emphasis on the personal and individual, the Graveyard poets are often viewed as precursors of Romanticism. In addition, the Graveyard school, with its depictions of graves, churchyards, night, death, and ghosts, has been seen as laying the groundwork for Gothic literature. Robert Blair's The Grave (1743) is credited with inspiring many of the works of the Graveyard poets, and this work, along with Edward Young's Night Thoughts (1745), set the standard for the school. Thomas Gray's “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751), a meditation on the graves of humble and unknown villagers, is considered a superior example of Graveyard poetry and is perhaps the movement's most famous production. The influence of the Graveyard school eventually spread to America, where its themes informed such notable poems as Philip Freneau's “The House of Night” (1779) and William Cullen Bryant's “Thanatopsis” (1817).

THOMAS GRAY (1716 – 1771) SOME BASIC FEATURES OF HIS POETRY: -

A taste for meditation and retired contemplation. An experimental interest for classical poetic forms.

“ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD” -

A meditative poem that reflects on the obscure destinies of the villagers buried in the churchyard and on the supposed death of the melancholy poet and on the egalitarian nature of mortality. It marks a clear transition from neoclassical lucidity towards the obscure and the sublime: a precursor of Romanticism.

Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" was first published in 1751. Gray may, however, have begun writing the poem in 1742, shortly after the death of his close friend Richard West. An elegy is a poem which laments the dead. Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is noteworthy in that it mourns the death not of great or famous people, but of common men. The speaker of this poem sees a country churchyard at sunset, which impels him to meditate on the nature of human mortality. The poem invokes the classical idea of memento mori, a Latin phrase which states plainly to all mankind, "Remember that you must die." The speaker considers the fact that in death, there is no difference between great and common people. He goes on to wonder if among the lowly people buried in the churchyard there had been any natural poets or politicians whose talent had simply never been discovered or nurtured. This thought leads him to praise the dead for the honest, simple lives that they lived. Gray did not produce a great deal of poetry; the "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," however, has earned him a respected and deserved place in literary history. The poem was written at the end of the Augustan Age and at the beginning of the Romantic period, and the poem has characteristics associated with both literary periods. On the one hand, it has the ordered, balanced phrasing and rational sentiments of Neoclassical poetry. On the other hand, it tends toward the emotionalism and individualism of the Romantic poets; most importantly, it idealizes and elevates the common man. It is associated with the death of his Eton friend Richard West. It has echoes from other poems, a complex organization and a balance of Latinate phrases with living English speech. His finest verse reflects a taste for meditation rather than action, for retired contemplation rather than for public jubilation. The Elegy focuses on a solitary poet, a man of “humble birth” and a stranger to national glory, to fortune, and to fame. The poem’s broader meditation on the obscure destinies of the unknown and undistinguished villagers buried in the churchyard culminates in the celebrated comment on unfulfilled greatness; village Hampdens, mute glorious Miltons, and guiltless Cromwells had both their talents and their potential crimes “confined” by a lack of opportunity. Gray is siding with the passive placidity of rural rhythm and rustic verse. The Elegy intermixes the poetry of country retirement with a self reflexive nocturnal contemplation/musing on the egalitarian nature of morality. He speaks in smooth closing quatrains which form an epitaph, and renders the melancholy poet one with dead villagers.

Gray combined traditional forms and poetic diction with new topics and modes of expression and may be considered as a classically focused precursor of the romantic revival. Scholars regard "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" as one of the greatest poems in the English language. It knits structure, rhyme scheme, imagery and message into a brilliant work that confers on Gray everlasting fame. THEMES LIFE IS SHORT, TRANSITORY, as Line 36 makes clear: The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Because of poverty or other handicaps, many talented people never receive the opportunities they deserve. This poem is a reflection on life and death. It portrays death as something common to all human beings (be rich or poor). He deals with common sentiments and experiences to all human beings (this is also seen in Romanticism). It is an elegy, a poem written about dead people, to mourn somebody and about serious and sad matters. The poet is in the Churchyard and reflects about the people he sees there: they are country people, farmers, poor people who are forgotten. We will find references to their ways of life, to their rural life. He sees these people as obscure, dark because nobody will be hard life, but portrays it as positive (he admires their simple lives, so there is some kind of celebration of rural life against the lives of politicians, heroes (rich powerful people) and their way of living in cities. He sees this rural life as primitivism, but he seems to admire their simple lives close to (we will also find this in Romanticism), that is why he’s called a pre-Romantic). These people are ignorant, they do not have any glory but they are not cruel, either. He sees education, knowledge, and the sophisticated life in cities as hypocrisy. He also reflects on his own death and imagines his epitaph. The mood (melancholy, sadness) and the landscape seem to be connected in this poem, which is also a very common characteristic in Romanticism. As far as the metre, the poem is constructed by four line stanzas (quatrains, “cuartetos”) which rhyme a,b, a, b. It is a iambic pentameter . As for the stylistic devices we find: Parallelism with words and structures (parallel structures and repeated words) Word order is often altered; inversion Personifications Many metaphors Rhetorical questions As for the structure we find: -

First part: lines 1-28  introduction of setting (sunset, churchyard) and protagonists (dead country people; also contrast between their daily routine in the past and what they are now: dead) Second part: lines 29-76  contrast between famous, powerful people and the forgotten lives of rural people. Third part: lines 77-92  death as a common experience to all human beings. Fourth part: lines 93-116  introduction of the poet and reflection on his own death. Fifth part: lines 117-128 the epitaph of the poet

JAMES THOMSON (1700 – 1748) (FROM THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY) James Thomson, the first and most popular NATURE POET of the century, did not see London until he was twenty-five years old. He grew up in the picturesque border country of Roxboroughshire in Scotland and after studying divinity in Edinburgh, went to London in 1725, bringing with him, in addition to a memory well stored with images of the external world, the earliest version of his descriptive poem “WINTER” in 405 of blank verse. Published in 1726, it soon became popular. Thomson went on to publish “SUMMER” (1727), “SPRING” (1728), and “AUTUMN” in the first collected edition of THE SEASONS (1730), to which he added the “HYMN TO THE SEASONS”. During the next sixteen years, because of constant revisions and additions, the poem grew in length to 5,541 lines. THE SEASONS continued to be popular well into the Romantic period. Thomson´s last poem THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE (1748), is a witty imitation of Spencer; it moves from a playful portrait of the idleness of the poet and his friends to a celebration of industry and progress. THE SEASONS set the fashion for the poetry of NATURAL DESCRIPTION. Generations of readers learned to look at the external world through Thomson´s eyes and with the emotions that he had taught them to feel. The EYE dominates the literature of external nature during the eighteenth century as the IMAGINATION was to do in the poetry of William Wordsworth. And Thomson amazed his readers by his capacity to see; the general effects of light and cloud and foliage or the particular image at the edge of a brook. He tries to view every season from every perspective, as it might be perceived by a bird in the sky or by the tiniest insect, by God or a painter or Milton or Sir Isaac Newton (whom Thomas commemorated in a popular ode). As the poem grew, it became an OMNIUM GATHERUM of contemporary ideas and interests; natural history; ideas about the nature of man and society, primitive and civilized, the conception of created nature as a source of religious experience; as an object of religious veneration, and as a continuing revelation of a Creator whose presents fills the world. SOME BASIC FEATURES OF HIS POETRY: Innovation in his treatment of nature as man´s delight Man as part of universal harmony THE SEASONS -

It anticipates the Romantic Movement in its treatment of nature AS A SUBJECT PROVOKING POETIC ENTHUSIASM, philosophical reflection and moral sentiment. Adaptation of Haydn´s oratorio of that name.

WINTER is written in lines of BLANK VERSE. Thomson went on to publish Summer, Spring and Autumm, to which he added the Hymn to the Seasons. The Seasons set the fashion for the poetry of natural description. Thomson amazed his readers by his CAPACITY TO SEE: the general effects of light and cloud and foliage or the particular image of a leaf tossed in the gale.(=vendaval) He tries to view each season from a different perspective, as it might be perceived by a bird in the sky or by the tiniest insect. As the poem grew it became an omnium gatherum of contemporary ideas and interests: natural history, ideas about the nature as a source of religious experience, as an object of religious veneration, and as a continuing revelation of a Creator whose presence fills the world. The body of Thomson’s encyclopaedic, moralizing masterpiece, The Seasons, suggests a poem variously indebted to  the model of the Latin pastoral,

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to Milton’s blank verse, to the social philosophy of Shaftesbury, and to generally received theories of the so called physico-theologians.

The Seasons grew in size and scope over some twenty years. The distinction of the poem was recognized as lying both in the diversity and didactic aim of its meditations and in its relatively novel foregrounding of landscape. Thomson’s particular response to landscape conditioned both by HIS ACUTE SENSITIVITY TO THE EFFECT OF LIGHT (a sensitivity shaped by Newton’s Optiks) and by his sense of the economic centrality of agriculture. The wonders of the divine order are implicit not simply in the detailed observations of the workings of nature and in imaginative evocations of diverse climates, contours, and topics, but also in the frequent reference to the harmony established between human exploitation of the land and a divine plan for creation. Throughout the Season great emphasis is laid on the interrelationship of the interests of the country and the town; national prosperity is tied to pictures of agricultural well-being. Nature is a grand encircling theatre of education, but as Thomson’s frequent recourse to descriptions of happy, therapeutic walks in the rustic environs of London suggests, he is insistent on the working landscape from which its real fortunes are drawn. As the opening section of Autumn stresses, human society has progressively evolved from a state of barbarity to one where it has become “numerous, high, polite, and happy, where there is a constructive balance of agrarian productivity and urban trade. Mercantile enterprise is interpreted as the crowning achievement of harmonious interaction of man and nature. Spring concludes with a picture of a happy family. Thomson’s choice of the adjectives “polite” to describe human society, and “elegant”, attached to the idea of economic sufficiency, and his stress on retirement and the place of books in his account of family life indicate the degree to which he trusted to social as opposed to solitary virtue, to philosophy rather than to a creative impulse derived from nature. His responses to the natural world are related to the way it had been perceived by civilized and bookish observers. Thomson’s wide-ranging reference and his evident interest in classification suggest his immediate debt to 17th and 18th century science. He frequent resort to periphrasis. What might appear as digressions serve in fact as contrived contrasts which point up the blessings of temperate climate of north-western Europe. His paeans to philosophy and English learning and literature attempts to place his own work in a national and international context; his play with colour and the effects of light are intended to reflect a vital force, and even the very order in which the poems were finally placed “from Spring to Winter” serves as an extended metaphor of transience and sequence in the created order. Thomson’s poetry stems from trained observation and a blend of the didactic and the descriptive. It offers a broad view of the ultimate rightness of things by exploring images of the vastness, the delicacy, and the multifariousness of the cosmos. His descriptions of extended scenes, and general effects, bring before us the whole magnificence of nature, whether pleasing or dreadful. The gaiety of Spring, the splendour of Summer, the tranquillity of Autumn, and the horrors of Winter, take, in their turns, possession of the mind. Johnson’s work called attention to a field of verse which his contemporaries, absorbed in the study of man, in ethical reflection and moral satire, had ceased to cultivate; it looked back with admiration to models which were almost forgotten, and, through its influence on the poetry of Collins and Gray, it lent impulse to the progress which was to culminate in the romantic movement.

EDWARD YOUNG: NIGHT THOUGHTS (1742 – 1745) "Night Thoughts" is the most commonly used title of a poem by Edward Young published in nine parts between 1742 and 1745. The full title of the poem is The Complaint: or Night-Thoughts on Life, Death & Immortality. The poem is written in blank verse. It describes the poet's musings/contemplations on death over a series of nine "nights" in which he ponders the loss of his wife and friends, and laments human frailties/ fragilities. The best-known line in the poem is the adage "procrastination is the thief of time", which is part of a passage in which the poet discusses how quickly life and opportunities can slip away. Night Thoughts had a very high reputation for many years after its publication, but is now best known for the fact that it gave rise to a major series of illustrations by William Blake.

The work of Edward Young and Robert Blair reflects much of the Wesleyan concern with morality. THE MOOD of the major poems of both writers is predominantly sombre, reflective, melancholic, and moral. Young’s Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality is a blank verse meditation on a death saturated life, on death itself, and on resurrection and immortality. Young divides his poem into nine sections, or “nights”, each of which responds to atheistic emptiness or deistic vagueness by arguing for EVIDENT POWER OF GOD IN NATURE AND FOR INHERENT PROMISE OF ETERNITY. The darkness of the night, Young affirms, aids “intellectual light”. Much of the argument takes the form of urgent, largely one-sided, debate with an infidel youth called Lorenzo but the debate has little real direction, pattern, or conclusion despite the ever-present reminders of the frailty of life and the imminence of divine judgement.

ROBERT BLAIR (1699 -1746) He was a Scottish poet. The eldest son of the Rev. Robert Blair, one of the king's chaplains, and was born at Edinburgh. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh and in the Netherlands, and in 1731 was appointed to the living of Athelstaneford in East Lothian. In 1738, he married Isabella, daughter of Professor William Law, with whom he had six children. His family's wealth gave him leisure for his favourite pursuits: gardening and the study of English poets. Blair published only three poems. One was a commemoration of his father-in-law and another was a translation. His reputation rests entirely on his third work, The Grave (1743), which is a poem written in blank verse on the subject of death and the graveyard. It is much less conventional than its gloomy title might lead one to expect. Its religious subject no doubt contributed to its great popularity, especially in Scotland, where it gave rise to the so-called "graveyard school" of poetry. The poem extends to 767 lines of very various merit, in some passages rising to great sublimity, and in others sinking to commonplace. The poem is now best known for the illustrations created by William Blake following a commission from Robert Cromek. Blake's designs were engraved by Luigi Schiavonetti, and published in 1808....