“Abundant Recompense”: Great English Romantic Odes (Class Four)

During the early 19th Century, the Romantic movement dominated the culture of western Europe. In England, some of the nation’s greatest poets composed deeply personal, serious, and meditative poems that explored the loss of innocence and vision and the consolations of nature, imagination, and wisdom. As William Wordsworth states in his poem “Tintern Abbey,” “for such loss, I would believe,/Abundant recompense.” In this four-part class series, we will explore four English odes that exemplify the