Our assignment this time was to read two poems that were written by Fireside poets and compare and contrast them. Both poems that I chose to read were by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He is my favorite fireside poet because I think his poems are the easiest to understand and they aren't too lengthy. The first poem I read was Excelisor by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poem is about a man who ends up dying, but after he sees all these things both happy and sad he always yells excelisor. I was not sure what excilisor meant so I looked it up in the dictionary and it turns out it meant somethign similair to excellent. After all these things happen in the poem such as night fall which is sad and seeing these happy homes all lit up which is a happy time he always yells excillisor. I think this is a typical trait of the romanticism period because the romanticism period is sort of unrational. The unrational thing to do would be to say excellent when something is just not so exellent. Another trait of the Romanticism period is a youthful innocence. In the poem excoliser it says "
THE SHADES of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!"( Wadsworth Excelisor). The man ends up dying in the end of the poem so you know he is not youthful, but it says there that he is a youth. That is a characteristic of the romanticism period. Also another characteristic of the Romanticism is non concrete ideas, otherwise known as abstract ideas. When reading the literary criticism of the piece I found that this was said "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's study of self-sacrifice takes the phenomenon to its logical conclusion, self-immolation, in response to a completely abstract ideal"(Huff-Excolisor). Longfellow was using an abstract idea in his poem which had something to do with death I believe.
Usually poems and other pieces from the Romanticism period have something to do with nature in them because that is a common theme or characteristic. The poem excoliser did not have anything to do with nature, but the other poem I read did. The other poem that I chose to analyze, also by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, was title Aftermath. Aftermath was a lot about nature. It was however about the icky and sad parts of nature, winter. I completely agree with what he says about winter being the aftermath of all the other fun seasons per say. I also read a literary criticism about this piece, and in this criticism it said At 66 years of age when he wrote this poem, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had seen many summers come and go. In its seventh line the poem states that its title refers to the gleanings of a single year's last mowing, the poet also may have been thinking of his life after he reached retirement age, the so-called golden years(Huff Aftermath). I think that the poem was not meant to be taken this analytical, but more in a literal sense of actually being about winter with all the dead crops and dead lives and bitter wind and cold. It says Not the sweet, new grass with flowers
Is this harvesting of ours;
Not the upland clover bloom;
But the rowen mixed with weeds,(Longellow Aftermath). It is comparing winter to summer and how summer is much better than winter because of the new flowers and grass, instead of the dead crops of winter.
Huff, Randall. "'Aftermath'." The Facts On File Companion to American Poetry, vol. 1. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CPAP0010&SingleRecord=True (accessed December 7, 2011).
Huff, Randall. "'Excelsior'." The Facts On File Companion to American Poetry, vol. 1. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CPAP0122&SingleRecord=True (accessed December 14, 2011).
"62. Excelsior. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Yale Book of American Verse." Bartleby.com: Great Books Online -- Quotes, Poems, Novels, Classics and Hundreds More.
Longfellow, Henry W. "Aftermath." PoemHunter.Com - Thousands of Poems and Poets.. Poetry Search Engine. Web. 07 Dec. 2011.
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