The Violet Poem - Victorian Poetry - Research Paper Example

The Violet Poem – Victorian Poetry Victorian poetry is known to characterize literary themes that reflect the poignant realities of the period preceding the age of Romanticism. While the Victorian era may be noted significantly for long-term peace and economic prosperity across the British nation, the height of social and political sensibilities toward the dark nature of social injustice manifests in most figurative compositions as well. As a consequence of reforms implemented to address such issue, the 19th-century English poetics in certain occasions is found to deal chiefly with the realistic rather than the romanticized view of life.

The emergence of ‘violet’ poems, during the reign of Queen Victoria, somehow functions as a collective endeavor to neutralize the various shapes and subjects of poetry, equally drawn from either positive or negative influence of the British society. “Violet Poems” by Christina Rossetti, an Anglican poet of the Victorian era, manifest the impact of the pre-Raphaelite artistic movement upon her intellect. These poems bear the capacity of communicating one’s joy with the wonders of nature, seasons, especially of the lovely flowers and field poppies of different sorts.

Altogether, Rosetti’s “Violet Poems” form a religious yet enthusiastic celebration of life and beauty with the natural creation. This can well be imagined with the work “Who Hath Despised the Day of Small Things?” which opens with the lines “As violets so be I recluse and/ sweet/.” “A Dirge”, likewise, makes use of ‘violets’ this time to demonstrate the truth at earthly beauty is fleeting and that no matter how sweet violets are in the Spring, there comes a time and point of realization of frailty through the worries of life and the inevitability of aging so that the second stanza of the piece proceeds with “The sweet Spring violets never bud again.

” Rosette, however, concludes with a tone of optimism in the third stanza as the speaker in third person confesses “It is enough, / For Thou art with me still, / It is enough, O Lord my God / Thine only blessed Will?”. Jane Taylor, another English poet and novelist, engages her reading audience into a moderately blissful narrative of the poem “The Violet.” Symbolically, Taylor attempts to represent the essence of humble disposition with the beautiful flower that goes in hiding despite its ‘bright and fair’ colors.

Humility, as a theme, is signified by the poet on providing a remarkable personification of ‘violet’ via the third stanza which conveys “Yet there it was content to bloom,/ . And there diffused its sweet perfume, / Within the silent shade.” Other than concrete external looks, Taylor puts further regard on an abstract quality which the ‘violet’ naturally possesses in ample similarity to a gentle human characteristic. Wordsworth’s “CLXVII The Lost Love” discusses a nearly relative treatment of comparing a deceased woman whose good life is never known and whom ‘very few’ could afford to love being “A violet by a mossy stone.

” Nevertheless, Wordsworth perceives her with some degree of reverence as he utilizes simile in “Fair as a star” for Lucy. Works Cited Rossetti, Christina. “Violet Poems.” 2012. Web. 15 Mar 2012. http://americanvioletsociety.org/Arts/Rossetti.htm. Miss Landon. “The Violet.” 2012. Web. 17 Mar 2012. http://www.averyl.com/attic/violet.htm. Taylor, Jane. “The Violet.” 2011. Web. 16 Mar 2012. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182538.