The document contains excerpts from several romantic era works that explore themes of identity, imagination, and nature through poetic language and emotion-driven narratives. It includes passages from Wordsworth on the role of the poet, Shelley on the definition and purpose of poetry, and Keats reflecting on poetry and the imagination in his letters. It also presents short passages from Edgeworth, Austen and others that showcase themes of identity and nature through fictional stories told in epistolary form.

1. Romantic “Manifestos”
Simo Räsänen

2. Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
William Wordsworth
What is a Poet?...He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true,
endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and
tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and
a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common
among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and
volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life
that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and
passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and
habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.
I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.
Examples: “Tintern Abbey,” “Nutting,” “We Are Seven,” etc.

3. A Defence of Poetry
Percy Shelley
Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be “the expression of
the imagination: And poetry is connate with the origin of man.
The whole objection, however, of the immorality of poetry rests
upon a misconception.... [Poetry] awakens and enlarges the mind
itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended
combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden
beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they
were not familiar;...
Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy
delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in
pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is
inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in
sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.

4. Shelley’s Poetry
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless
things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Mujtaba Chohan
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

5. Shelley’s Poetry
Ode to the West Wind – Stanza V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: A
What if my leaves are falling like its own! B
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies A
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, B
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, C
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! B
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe C
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! D
And, by the incantation of this verse, C
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth D
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! E
Be through my lips to unawakened earth D
The trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind, E
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? E

6. From the Letters of
John Keats
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and
the truth of imagination — what the imagination seizes as beauty
must be truth.... (to Benjamin Bailey, Nov. 22, 1817)
[N]egative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in
uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching
after fact and reason. (to George & Thomas Keats, Dec. 21, 1817)
I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity
— it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest
thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance — Its touches of
Beauty should never be halfway thereby making the reader
breathless instead of content.... [Yet] if Poetry comes not as naturally
as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all. (to John Taylor,
Feb. 27, 1818)

7. Keats’s Poetry
Ode to a Nightingale – Stanza 2
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
J. Dietrich

8. Keats’s Poetry
Ode to a Nightingale – Stanza 8
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

9. “Romantic” Ironies

10. “The Irish Incognito”
Maria Edgeworth
It was true that Phelim did not speak with any Irish brogue: his
mother was an English woman, and he had lived much with
English officers in Cork, and he had studied and imitated their
manner of speaking so successfully, that no one, merely by his
accent, could have guessed that he was an Irishman.
"Hey! brother, I say!" continued Phelim, in a triumphant
English tone; "I never was taken for an Irishman in my life.
Colonel Broadman told me the other day, I spoke English better
than the English themselves; that he should take me for an
Englishman, in any part of the known world, the moment I opened
my lips. You must allow that not the smallest particle of brogue is
discernible on my tongue."

11. “Love and Friendship”
Jane Austen
Letter the Fifth:
Mary, without waiting for any further commands immediately
left the room and quickly returned introducing the most beauteous
and amiable Youth, I had ever beheld. The servant, she kept to
herself.
My natural sensibility had already been greatly affected by the
sufferings of the unfortunate stranger and no sooner did I first
behold him, than I felt that on him the happiness or Misery of my
future Life must depend.

12. “Love and Friendship”
Jane Austen
Letter the Ninth:
By our arrival their Expenses were considerably encreased tho' their
means for supplying them were then nearly exhausted. But they, Exalted
Creatures! scorned to reflect a moment on their pecuniary Distresses and
would have blushed at the idea of paying their Debts.—Alas! what was
their Reward for such disinterested Behaviour! The beautiful Augustus
was arrested and we were all undone. Such perfidious Treachery in the
merciless perpetrators of the Deed will shock your gentle nature Dearest
Marianne as much as it then affected the Delicate sensibility of Edward,
Sophia, your Laura, and of Augustus himself. To compleat such
unparalelled Barbarity we were informed that an Execution in the House
would shortly take place. Ah! what could we do but what we did! We
sighed and fainted on the sofa.