How to Be Great
...ried in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened.” Another of Poe’s works, “The Raven” also shows the use of supernatural characters as was common with romantic writers. This famous poem is very supernatural in the presence of a raven and more so what the raven represents. After hearing this intelligent raven repeat the word, “nevermore”, the speaker, “sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the fowl whose firey eyes now burned into my bosom’s core.” Eventually the speaker goes mad thinking about his lost wife and began connecting her memory to this mysterious raven. These two writers were fully enveloped in the dark, mysterious, and gothic side of the romantic works of literature. In fact, romanticism does not just cover these gloomy stories, but includes an array of topics. Among the doom and gloom of the gothic romanticism as well as in other areas of this fantastic style of writing is the curiosity with a unique yet distant past. Many writers were caught up in the “good ol’ days” and wished to spread their ideals among the masses. In “Old Ironsides,” by Oliver Wendell Holmes, the speaker remarks on the old ship’s rough, but still glorious past. “Her deck once red with heroes’ blood, Where knelt the vanquished foe,” is an immaculate example of how some of these writers revered the past. Other writers beg to ask the question of how good the past actually was. Nathaniel Hawthorne does just that in his short story, “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment.” In it, Dr. Heidegger offers some of his old, wrinkly friends, who all shared a wasted past, the chance to start over and be young again. Instead of changing their ways when they became youthful, they actually “laughed loudly at their old fashioned attire, the wide-skirted coats of and flapped waistcoats of the young men, and the ancient cap and gown of the blooming girl.” Although this passage does not highlight romanticism per say, it does go to show some of this romantic author’s ideas on what people do with their pasts if they had the chance to change. Finally, “The First Snow-Fall,” by James Russell Lowell offers a glimpse into a sad past, that of the poem’s speaker. “I remembered the gradual patience That fell from that cloud like snow, Flake by flake, healing and hiding The scar that renewed our woe.” In this excerpt, the speaker is recalling a lost child, his daughter, and how the snow will be coving up her grave and also, in its own way, healing his hurtful heart. This is yet another passage that offers a glimpse of romanticism’s curiosity with the past, and offers an insight into another of its key views. Harmony with nature is a true pillar of some romantic pieces of literature. Authors ranging from James Fenimore Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, Oliver Wendall Holmes, James Russel Lowell, and the like all have a great acknowledgement to nature and its pure demeanor. Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales are completely centered on the hero’s close relationship with nature because he essentially lives in it and with it. While the passage from Deerslayer (chronologically the first book in the series) did not portray the connection with nature so well, Bryant’s works definitely compensated. In his poems, “To a Waterfall” and “Thanatopsis,” he greatly praises nature as a tea...