Reflection: Flowers, Suns, & Shadows

The two poems that I chose to analyze were "Flower de Luce Hawthorne" By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and "Sun and Shadow" By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Written by two different people, I still found that both of these poems were really good examples of the romanticism writing style. The styles were different in their actions, but in their meanings, they both exemplifies true qualities of the romanticism writing style.  

  One of the essential and main qualities that we all have repeatedly gone over and over again, is the use and portrayal of nature withing the poems and literary work.  The use of nature within writing is commonly associated with the Romanticism writing Style.  In "Flower De Luce Hawthorne" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Longfellow exemplified nature through out his poem.  First, taken in the literal meaning, in the title.  Flowers are a part of nature and so we can see right away that, hey, this poem  I am about to read might be from the Romanticism writing period.   In the first to stanzas of the poem, Henry Longfellow expressed nature to deem the setting (Lines 1-8).

HOW beautiful it was, that one bright day 

In the long week of rain! 

Though all its splendor could not chase away 

The omnipresent pain. 

The lovely town was white with apple-blooms, 5

And the great elms o’erhead 

Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms 

Shot through with golden thread.

The next things that sticks out to me as a red flag of Romanticism style writing would be his in depth imput of detail.  Although, yes, this is a poem and it is short, it still goes into great amount of detail and explanation.  Yet it is in a simple way.  Seen in the lines below, Longfellow displays in detail his feelings of looking back to the past and what used to be, his loss, what ever or whom ever he may be referring to (lines 21-28)

Now I look back, and meadow, manse, and stream 

Dimly my thought defines; 

I only see—a dream within a dream— 

The hill-top hearsed with pines. 

I only hear above his place of rest 25

Their tender undertone, 

The infinite longings of a troubled breast, 

The voice so like his own.

In Oliver Wendell Holmes' "Sun and Shadow," the first things that it gets right into is nature and comparing it to something.  Seen right in the beginning, Holmes is describing where he looks to, which is valleys and oceans (Lines 1-3).

As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green,

To the billows of foam-crested blue,

Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen,

I think Holmes is referring to nature as a woman using personification.  Because he talks about the boat and the ocean spraying water. He is showing his adventures battling nature and the different out comes of this.  This is seen below(lines 19-24). Holmes uses nature more that descriptions to give his writing a romanticism style. 

The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves

May see us in sunshine or shade;

Yet true to our course, though the shadows grow dark,

We'll trim our broad sail as before,

And stand by the rudder that governs the bark,

Nor ask how we look from the shore!