Reflection Blog: Romanticism Comparison

Well, I have been researching poems that were created by the fireside poets. One interesting one that I found is called Sand of the Desert in an Hour-Glass by Henry Longfellow. It was a very interesting poem. One thing about the romanticism writing is that in order to fully understand the poem, you must break it down into parts and figure out the true meaning. Romanticism was a reaction the rationalism time period, but the romanticism defines more of the emotional and feeling aspect towards situations, whereas the rationalism period is more about thinking logically and everything having a logical purpose. One characteristic of the romanticism time period is valuing feels and intuition over logical reasoning. In Henry Longfellow's poem, as he is describing the sand, he talks about possible situations that may have happened out in the desert where the sand was taken from. One part of intuition is a gut feeling, in other words you don't really know why or how something is the way it is, so you think of possibilities, which is exactly what Henry did. "Perhaps the feet of Moses, burnt and bare, crushed it beneath their tread; or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air scattered it as the sped" That quote shows that Henry is thinking about the possibilities of what the sand has overcome, as he is just looking at it through an hour-glass. Another major characteristic of the romanticism time period is looking for beauty in the imagination. In Henry's poem, he envisions the sand in the quote "and as I gaze, these narrow walls expand; before my dreaming eye stretches the desert with its shifting sand, its unimpeded sky." From that quote, his imagination is taking him to the desert in which the sand is from. He is thinking about the desert, with the winds that are constantly moving the sand, always shifting, and then it meets the unpreventable or open sky. Another characteristic visible in his poem was looking back towards the past for wisdom and purpose, but once he started thinking about the sand in more modern terms, he turned toward his imagination. He talks about the sand in terms of Mary and the Christ of Nazareth, Moses, the Pharaoh, Mecca's pilgrims, the Ishmaelites, and the anchorites, explaining possible situations when they could have encountered the sand from the desert. When he looks at the hour-glass though in modern terms, he looks towards nature and his imagination for its explanation. Almost like he depends on the history, but the future has little hope. 
Overall, I think the poem does a really good job at showing the romanticism time period. As compared to the Puritans, who played all their reasoning for everything on God. God was the main person for them, whereas the romanticists focus on imagination and past experiences. The rationalism period was more focused on logical reasoning, so they actually searched for scientific explanations for situations. I think the time periods all go together though because they build off each other. First they started with just believing in God, then they moved to believing in God, but figuring maybe he was was not in charge of everything, that there could be other reasoning, and then to figuring out the use of imagination and using the past to help generate the future. 




http://www.readbookonline.net/read/3149/12731/