Romantic Poetry and Blake - Essay Example

Blake, being a creative poet, based most of his literary works on a widely popular style of Romanticism, leaving after him the great poems, such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Wollstonecraft, and others. To great regret, the unconventional and enigmatic works of William Blake did not achieve an understanding of people of his time, but exactly now, due to the gradual realization, studying and actively publishing, his works, like his biography – a biography of a thinker, rebel, seeker, mastermind, and sage - are shared.

Investigating both poems it becomes obvious that the author wrote them being in a big inspiration, because all words go from the bottom of his heart, allowing some natural expression to be visible. The poem Infant Joy shows us the true nature of every person because the main aim of all people is to be happy like newborn children who never know sorrow and regret, while their hearts and minds are open to the world and they are looking for good feelings and joy.

Observing the poem The Smile we can say that it describes ‘smile’ as something symbolical to personal feelings and thoughts, while deeper motives of every person are reflected through the smile, making it unique and mysterious. The poem The Smile is a kind of very intimate confession where the author explains the necessity to be ‘smiling’ in the meaning of kindness and tenderness of feelings.

The Romantic period is often described as a fairy tale way of writing and thinking because many authors (Blake is among them) have used an allegory that depicts their complete freedom and independence in their poems and literary works. Both poems allow us to find all descriptions of Romantic poetry in them because they describe the thirst for perfection and refreshing in a case with an infant and the absence of depersonalization of the individual in different kinds of ‘smiles’. Romanticism is inherent in both poems opening the complexity and depth of the man’s spiritual world, his unique originality.

Thus, investigating the extent to which the poems The Smile and Infant Joy are Romantic, it is possible to conclude that they present a willingness to rise above the prose of life, emancipate the diverse ability of the person, and self-realize in literature. Blake, as a Romantic poet, was opposed to the universalization of art and rational approaches to it, peculiar to classicism, used not the mind to write his poems, but he turned on his imagination and listened to his heart, creating short poems and making them alive due to their specific energy and symbolical potential. Read More