Romantic Poems - Book Report/Review Example

In January 1795 Robinson uses a fairly traditional form of ten stanzas of four lines each. The rhyme form is aabb, ccaa, ddcc . . . ., creating a sense of flowing inevitability to the poem. The reader follows the writing as if he/she is going through the streets noticing things in the same manner as the poet is describing. Once one thing has been seen it is soon replaced by another and then another. There is no time to linger on the rhyme scheme, although at times a rhyming couplet repeats itself in a slightly different rhythmic form.

This perhaps reflects the fact that the poet sees things that remind her of other details she has just described. The poem is essentially a series of snapshot descriptions of different types of people and object that are found within the city. At times the two halves of a line follow logically from one another, such as the "pavement slippery, people sneezing" that occurs in the opening line; and at others there are deliberate contrasts to accentuate the distances between people's fortunes within the city: "lords in ermine, beggars freezing".

The fact that they are on the same line perhaps reflects the nature of a city: poverty and wealth did quite literally (as well as metaphorically) rub shoulders with one another. Both are very visible and yet quickly replaced by something else. While much of the description appears quite conventional and even at times rather clichd and mundane, such as "lofty mansions, warm and spacious", at other times words are juxtaposed with one another in a more interesting manner. For example, she writes "courtiers cringing and voracious".

The "courtiers" are described in almost animal-like terms here, reflecting the fact that the city is a place that is difficult to survive in. In order to flourish a person may need to be both very careful (cringing) and yet also quick to take advantage of any situation that offers reward (voracious). The poem descends into lists at times, such as "poets, painters and musicians/ lawyers, doctors, politicians" - the descriptive power is found in the sheer variety of people who are described rather than the actual details that she engenders.

The city is a place of contradictions according to Robinson. Thus 'gallant souls" have "empty purses" are there are "generals" who are only "fit for nurses". Those who deserve advantage are often rejected, such as the "honest men" who "can't get places", while it is the "knaves" who have "unblushing faces". Ultimately it seems as though the city, while a growing and vivacious place, also has a good degree of negativity associated with it in Robinson's mind. In the last stanza she states that "ruin" is "hastn'd", as if the city destroys those who are attracted to it while appearing to nourish them with the diversity of experience that it offers.

Perhaps it is the city in the end that Robinson sees as "voracious", and anyone who is sucked within its territory is doomed to eaten by it. Robinson is a pleasant, but little-known poet who had essentially little to offer in way of new ideas regarding a city; Wordsworth is of course regarded as one of the "great" English poets, and the massive