PART 3

Conclusion:

1. How much do you know about “Lake Poets”?

“Lake Poets”: Cumbria of England, charming for its lake-strewn valleys, covers an area of 2. 243 square kilometers known as the English Lake District. In point of fact, the region gained its fame when such poets as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, William Wordsworth and sometimes De Quincey were attached to it. These poets were later named Lake Poets or Lakers since they lived one way or another in the Lake District at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Although two of the four: namely Southey and Wordsworth, were Poets Laureate, they were confusingly grouped since Southey and De Quincey do not seem to have subscribed in their views or work to the poetic theories of such romantic poets as Coleridge and Wordsworth who co-authored the famous Lyrical Ballads.

The Lake School, another term that refers to this group of poets, seems to have appeared for the first time in the Edinburgh Review of August 1817. The expression and a couple of others related to the Lake District were not always taken as that of proper respect by the contemporaries. Lord Byron, for instance, referred slighting to “all the Lakers” in his dedication to Don Juan and De Quincey even denied the existence of such a “school” in his recollections of the Lake Poets.

2. How do you see Wordsworth as a Romantic Poet from the poem?

Romantic poets, such as Wordsworth, are known for their special interests in far-away lands and, therefore, their poems are very often dotted with exotic touches. Phrases like “no nightingale” and “Arabian sands” thus give us a flavor of Orientalism of Romantic poetry.

3. What is “The Hebrides”?

The Hebrides, an island group off the western and northwestern coasts of Scotland, were originally inhabited by the Celts and were conquered by Scandinavians who ruled the islands until 1266. The Hebrides passed to the kingdom of Scotland in the sixteenth century after the actual control of the islands for some three hundred years by a series of Scottish chieftains.