Influential Lyrics

William Wordsworth's "The world is too much with us"

William Wordsworth (1770-1850), one of the central figures of British Romantic literature, is widely known as a nature poet. He is one of the first writers to develop a sophisticated exploration of the relationship between the natural world and the psychological, perhaps even spiritual flourishing of human beings. This poem in particular is one of Wordsworth's most widely known sonnets, but I've included it here in Influential Lyrics for a particular reason: this poem, together with a lyric called "I wandered lonely as a cloud" which we'll consider in the next episode, will help illustrate a sea-change in much of Western culture that happened in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and that was a driving force of Romantic period poetry in English and that still echoes through economic, political, and environmental thinking in the 21st century.

Charlotte Smith's "Written at the Close of Spring"

This episode focuses on a sonnet by Charlotte Smith, one of the best (and certainly one of the most underrated) poets of the late 18th century. The podcast offers a reading of the poem, an explication, and some commentary on the meaning, value, and significance of the work--particularly in light of Smith's own biography, her status as a woman writer, her place in the "Literature of Sensibility," and her historical importance as a catalyst for the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Alexander Pope, from Essay on Criticism

The present podcast is something of a deviation for Influential Lyrics. Rather than focusing on a single, short, self-contained lyric poem, I'll be focusing today on an excerpt from a longer work called Essay on Criticism, written and published in the early 18th century by Alexander Pope. My reasoning for this swerve is simple enough: there is plenty to take issue with in Pope's philosophy of poetry—and much of the poetry we'll be considering in the next few episodes is a reaction to the neo-classical formality so clearly exemplified by Pope—but a familiarity with, even an affinity for, Pope's technique offers as clear an understanding of the fundamentals of English prosody as you'll find anywhere.

Anne Bradstreet's "By Night when Others Soundly Slept"

This is a seemingly simple, uncomplicated, but intensely religious poem in which the speaker, while lying awake at night, is comforted by a visitation from her Saviour, presumably Jesus, and she rededicates herself to the service of her religion. The poem itself is easy enough to understand, though when seen in the context of Bradstreet's extraordinary biography, we can begin to see why she was such a remarkable and influential writer.

Richard Lovelace, "To Althea: from Prison"

Richard Lovelace (1618-1657) is not quite so famous as some of the other poets featured here on Influential Lyrics, but his work offers some of the best examples of "Cavalier Poetry"--a mode of writing that came into prominence in the middle years of the 17th century. The Cavalier Poets (so named because of their loyalty to King Charles I) produced dozens of poems that celebrate aspects of the "good life." Beauty, love, friendship, and loyal dedication are among the key themes, all typically presented in a joyful live-for-today, carpe diem attitude. The present podcase offers an explication of Lovelace's most famous poem, complete with the necessary historical backgrounds and a brief commentary on the nature of poetic language.