Reflection- Fireside Poets

From just reading a few poems made by a couple fireside poets, I have noticed that nature is very much used in this style of writing. This differs from the Puritain writings because that focuses on God more of and then the Rationalism period was just more of trying to prove things, but with this 'nature' business that has been being used in the Fireside Poetry, it's just kind of enjoying the beauty of things that are right in front of you. An example would be the poem A Dream of Summer by John Greenleaf Whittier. This poem talks about all the little things in nature during summer. You can even see in the author's middle name (Greenleaf) that this time was big on nature.

There are also the poems that most people would imagine being in the Romanticism Period- Love Poems. Not all of the literary works in this period are about love in the sense of relationships and all of that. A lot of the time it is about love for nature. But, of course, there are plenty of poems about love. A good example would be My Love by James Russell Lowell. He speaks of a woman that he loves very dearly (and clearly) in this poem. This poem also involves bits and pieces of nature, mostly just similes and metaphors comparing nature and all of that good stuff with the woman in the poem, and these are all good things, obviously since nature was a big deal. So yes, of course there is romance in the Romanticism period, it's just not all romance.

Obviously the historical things that were going on at the time are going to influence the things that have been written around this time. There were also many historical things going on at this time. A Ballad of The Boston Tea-Party was a poem written by Oliver Wendell Holmes and it is obviously about the the Boston Tea-Party.
Something else that was going on at the time that I believe had impact on the writings of this time is the fact that people were slowing moving more and more west in America, which influenced writing about nature and areas that have been "unspoiled."
Once last thing I would like to speak about what influenced some of the writing during this period would also be something we talked about during class. It is a reaction to the Rationalism period. So some of the things are going to be opposite from what the Rationalism period was. This period is now more of anti-science. Just as Rationalism was more of finding out the reasons to things instead of just saying it was God's doing, which would be referring to the Puritan writing style. There are also things that are similar between all of the eras, but those are just the main differences and shows why each of these time periods are different and have their name and shows all the noticeable differences in the time periods.


http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-dream-of-summer/


http://www.poetry-archive.com/l/my_love.html

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-ballad-of-the-boston-tea-party/